For a small firm, there's really no way around having someone else host your email. Whether you get an IMAP server or Exchange, it's going to be cost prohibiti

For a small firm, there's really no way around having someone else host your email. Whether you get an IMAP server or Exchange, it's going to be cost prohibitive to host it yourself, so you'll have to pay a hosting company to manage it for you. I don't see how that would be any different than Google hosting it, and it would be significantly more expensive. In my experience supporting law firms, they all use Exchange hosted in their own rack on-site, but I've only worked with firms with 10+ attorneys.