A Practitioner’s View: Evolving Backup and Recovery at a Leading Law Firm

This blog shares a practitioner’s perspective on evolving data resilience in the legal sector. It is based on an interview with a Network Engineer at a law firm. Nikita Bhuma, Customer Advocacy Specialist at Rubrik, authored the piece, providing context and practitioner notes.

For a law firm with over 400 attorneys, protecting sensitive client data is as vital as winning cases. Each day, the team manages large volumes of confidential legal documents and personally identifiable information (PII). The IT organisation views data protection not as a checklist activity, but as a core pillar of client trust and regulatory compliance.

That mindset has guided their evolution from slow, tape-based backups to a modern, resilience-first architecture designed to ensure that when incidents happen - as they inevitably do - critical systems and data can be restored quickly and predictably.

Law firms have become prime targets for cyberattacks, not just because of the sensitivity of the information they hold, but also because disruptions can directly impact active litigation and client relationships. Industry research shows that professional services firms remain among the top sectors hit by ransomware, and breach response costs can escalate rapidly if data recovery drags.

For this customer, backup and recovery aren’t just IT operations - they’re a business continuity function. Fast, verified recoverability helps minimize downtime, reduces client impact, and sustains confidence in the firm’s ability to safeguard information.

Before adopting Rubrik, the customer relied on a legacy tape-based backup solution that created more drag than defense.

• Full backups stretched beyond 24 hours, sometimes exceeding 36.
• Restores from tape took hours or even days, particularly for large databases.
• Manual hardware handling and tape management consumed valuable staff time.

These constraints meant that, although data was being backed up, the customer’s ability to recover quickly and consistently did not align with evolving expectations for cyber resilience and operational continuity.

When evaluating next-generation solutions, the customer’s goals were simple: faster backups, faster restores, and fewer manual interventions. During testing, early performance issues surfaced due to environmental configuration factors. Rubrik’s engineering team engaged directly, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the customer’s IT staff to tune performance until results met expectations.

That early collaboration demonstrated both technical capability and partnership commitment—key factors in the firm’s decision to move forward with Rubrik.

The firm’s current design follows a hybrid resilience model, balancing on-premises speed with cloud-based durability. On-site storage enables rapid restores for daily operations, while cloud integration ensures geographically separated disaster recovery and long-term retention.

Architectural cornerstones include:

• Hybrid deployment: Local speed with cloud-based redundancy.                
• Broad workload protection: Coverage across hypervisors, databases, and SaaS.                
• Seamless integration: Designed to work with existing enterprise storage and virtual desktop tools.                

The transition from the legacy backup system to Rubrik was planned and executed to avoid disruption. Key to this process was the streamlined deployment, which was completed rapidly across the customer’s primary and secondary locations.

By maintaining continuity of protection during the cutover, the customer avoided gaps in backup coverage. The streamlined deployment also minimised operational overhead during the migration period, enabling the customer’s team to focus on validating the new environment and configuring protection policies.

With PII-heavy workloads, precision matters. The team has built policies around strict recovery time and retention goals, prioritizing systems that underpin time-sensitive legal and business processes. Rubrik APIs now power automation, reducing manual effort and ensuring consistency across a dynamic environment.

Backup is only half the story, recovery confidence is the other half. The firm conducts regular, full-system recovery drills and uses Rubrik’s Live Mount feature to instantly spin up databases or systems directly from backups. These frequent, low-friction exercises prove out recovery readiness, strengthen operational discipline, and keep RTOs tight.

The shift from legacy systems resulted in significant improvements in both performance and operational efficiency. The results speak through numbers and time saved.

• Full backup cycles dropped from 36 hours to just a few.                
• Major system RTOs went from “uncertain” to a predictable few hours.                
• Deployments that once took multiple steps and manual oversight now finish in minutes per site.

The impact isn’t just speed, it’s confidence. The IT team now spends more time validating strategy and less time fixing workarounds.

From the practitioner’s perspective, three factors stand out:

• Balanced protection: Keeping on-premises copies for high-priority workloads ensures recovery even when connectivity is limited.                
• Regular testing: Routine recovery drills keep everyone sharp and systems validated.                
• Smart automation: APIs and standardised policies remove human error and operational friction.                

For other organisations in similar environments, the takeaway is clear: resilience isn’t about a single tool or task: it’s a continuous design decision.