Emergency Response
During inclement weather, our attorneys and staff are prepared to take precautions to protect themselves and their families so that recovery will be swift and sure. We take precautions every day to protect your interests, your confidential information, and your records. A weather emergency doesn’t change our concern for providing quality service to you.
As soon as practical, our offices will be open and operating as usual. Your attorney, however, might be working out of an alternate location and will contact you as soon as possible. In case of evacuation from our coastal offices, telephone calls to main numbers will be routed to our switchboard in Columbia. You can contact the Firm at 803.799.2000 or 1.800.237.2000.
In the meantime, if your business could be impacted by severe weather, Nelson Mullins urges you to
- Review your own emergency response plan and make sure your employees are prepared.
- Review your insurance policies and other important documents and place copies in a safe place.
- Perform an inventory of your equipment and make sure you have tarps to cover them.
- Heed any evacuation mandates from your emergency response officials.
- Make sure your emergency supplies are refreshed.
To Our Employees
Your safety and the security of your family are our primary concerns. We urge you in advance of inclement weather to review your response plans with your family. Heed any evacuation order. Offices in coastal areas should review their procedures and note the following:
We will communicate updates about inclement weather and the Firm’s response via our Audix broadcast system. We also need to hear from you through this system if you are evacuated. A Nelson Mullins information card has been provided to each of you offering pertinent contact information for you to use during instances of this nature.
You should keep this card in your wallet or purse or otherwise have it with you at all times. The broadcast messages will be updated regularly and following any impact. In the event you are unable to return to the office when we reopen, or if an evacuation extends beyond 48 hours, we ask that you initiate a reply to these broadcast messages by identifying yourself, telling us where you are, giving us a means to get in touch with you, and letting us know that you are all right, or by letting us know that you are in need of help. In these circumstances, every employee should respond via the Audix reply or by e-mail to the emergency e-mail address shown on your information card.
In the event of a hurricane, we ask everyone to assist in preparing for the storm. In all of the exterior offices, computer and telephone equipment should be disconnected and moved to interior offices and storage areas. Monitors and computers should be turned off and then power cords should be unplugged from the back of the equipment, not the wall. Leave cables and cords in place at the wall connections. Administrative assistants should confirm that your assigned attorneys’ equipment is properly disconnected and stored.
Desks in perimeter window offices should be completely cleared of all items. All files and documents of any kind must be secured in desks, credenzas or file drawers. Administrative assistants will be responsible for securing their work area, as well as that of their assigned attorneys. Members of the local storm team will cover desks in the windowed offices with plastic sheeting secured by tape.
After the equipment is removed, desk surfaces cleared and papers stowed, close the doors to the each of the perimeter offices.
Computers and telephones in the inner offices and at the AA workstations do not have to be moved, but you should still turn these items “off” and unplug power and telephone connections from the back of each device.
A storm team in each office will make certain that vulnerable equipment and files are wrapped in plastic in order to best avoid water damage should there be leaks in the roof, or if water should come under or around the doors, or in the event windows are smashed.
We will power down our computer network and phone system. It is possible that power will be shut down throughout the entire building.
When there is a power outage, normal communication lines do not work. To compensate for this, we subscribe to a service provider that will redirect calls that are placed to the main telephone and fax numbers for coastal offices to the Columbia office switchboard. (Individual DID numbers or Rightfax numbers will not be functional during the outage.)
Citrix access will operate for attorneys and staff who have a Citrix fob and Internet access.
Should a strike by a major storm be predicted, the Governor will likely call for a mandatory evacuation of the coastal area(s). Most of you probably have already made arrangements to go to a particular place in order to ride out the storm. There may be instances where work commitments would dictate individuals, with their family, come to Columbia in order to complete required services to our client. In such client related cases, or should you find that the plans you have made for your family are unavailable, someone in our Facilities Department should be able to assist you.
During a mandatory evacuation, all of the servers in your office will be physically removed, transported and reconnected to provide business continuity while the office is inaccessible. As long as you can access Citrix (from a hotel or other places that provide Internet service), you will be able to access your e-mail, PC-DOCS, DTE and other essential programs.
We sincerely hope that our steps for preparedness will never be put to the test, but in the event they are, we want to take all of the possible steps to make sure that all of the members of our Nelson Mullins family are safe and well, and that our client service remains unbroken.