One good reason to move to Java 8 (if you haven't already done so)

One of the most useful things introduced by Java 8 is the Optional class (https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/Optional.html). It is a container object that wraps either a value or null, to represent the absence of a value. You can quickly understand the benefits coming from it: a better way to handle the existence of null values with no need to explicitly check for nulls and possibly less chance to have NullPointerException exceptions. Some code like this

// The method call below could return null
User currentUser = getUser(id);
Role role = null;
if(currentUser != null) {
  role = getRole(currentUser);
}

becomes:

Optional<User> currentUser = Optional.ofNullable(getUser(id));
Optional<Role> role = currentUser.map(u -> getRole(currentUser));