Microsoft 365 vs Google Workspace: Which Is Right for Your Law Firm?

When law firms ask us about moving to the cloud, the conversation usually starts with email. But the real decision involves document management, legal hold capabilities, data retention, ethical compliance, and how well the platform integrates with your practice management software.

We've migrated dozens of professional services firms to both platforms over the years, and the right choice depends on your firm's specific workflows, not on which platform has better marketing.

Microsoft 365 Business Premium is where most law firms end up, and for good reason. The integration between Outlook, Word, Excel, and SharePoint creates a familiar environment that most legal professionals already know. The learning curve is minimal, which matters when your attorneys bill by the hour and don't want to spend time learning new tools.

The real advantage for law firms is in compliance features. Microsoft Purview provides data loss prevention, sensitivity labels, retention policies, and legal hold capabilities that align directly with bar association requirements for protecting client communications. eDiscovery tools built into the platform make responding to discovery requests significantly less painful.

Google Workspace excels at real-time collaboration. If your firm has multiple attorneys working on the same documents simultaneously, Google Docs handles concurrent editing more naturally than Word's co-authoring feature. The search functionality across Gmail and Drive is genuinely superior.

Google Vault provides retention and eDiscovery features, though they're less granular than Microsoft's offerings. Where Google falls short for many law firms is integration with legal-specific software. Most practice management platforms, document management systems, and legal billing tools are built to integrate with Microsoft first.

Both platforms offer strong baseline security with multi-factor authentication, encryption in transit and at rest, and admin controls for data access. Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes Defender for Office 365, which provides advanced threat protection against phishing and malware specifically targeting email.

For firms handling especially sensitive matters, Microsoft's information barriers and communication compliance features provide controls that Google Workspace doesn't match at the same price tier. If you handle government contracts or classified information, Microsoft's GCC and GCC High environments are purpose-built for those requirements.

Google Workspace Business Standard runs about $14 per user per month. Microsoft 365 Business Premium is $22 per user per month but includes significantly more security and compliance features. For a 15-person law firm, that's a difference of about $120/month. Factor in that Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes Intune device management and Defender, which you'd otherwise need to purchase separately, and the price gap narrows.

The hidden cost with either platform is migration and configuration. A poorly configured Microsoft 365 tenant with default settings is barely more secure than on-premises Exchange. The value comes from proper setup: conditional access policies, DLP rules, retention policies, and ongoing administration.

For most law firms in our service area, Microsoft 365 Business Premium is the stronger choice. The compliance tooling, legal hold capabilities, and deep integration with legal software tip the scale. That said, if your firm already runs on Google Workspace and your workflows are built around it, migrating to Microsoft purely for compliance features may not be worth the disruption. The better investment might be layering additional security tools on top of your existing platform.