Law firms now depend on a wide range of technologies to communicate with clients and other service providers. As the legal industry consolidates, many of the surviving firms are operating ever larger networks of offices. Providing effective means of internal communication is increasingly important to ensure consistency of service, distribution of vital know-how and better team working.

At the same time, many lawyers are now faced with a communications overload – swamped with e-mail and expected to be contactable 24 hours a day, seven days a week via a growing number of devices and delivery mechanisms. To be unavailable at any time is increasingly unacceptable. But how should they and their firms manage this rapidly growing burden? The growing demands for home and mobile working facilities will surely have an impact.

Nathan Morris, a spokesman for Star Internet, admits that exciting developments in the telecommunications field have been pretty thin on the ground recently. "It is more a case of things that have been around for four or five years and used to be cutting edge, now becoming a reality for most companies," he says. "For instance, it is no longer difficult to roll out a VPN."