Recent technological developments in communication have created considerable opportunities for law firms to allow fee earners to be more flexible in their work patterns, while also improving business continuity, reducing client service times and achieving overall cost reductions.

Larger law firms are able to cut costs by seeking the economy of global teleworking, outsourcing and decentralised structures. Smaller firms are now able to afford systems to provide all the information and resources their fee earners require to deliver client service and reassurance at all times.

The growing need to flex and react quickly to meet clients' expectation for a quick response also underpins the growing appetite among law firms to seize the technological advantage.

Law firms may have good reason to invest in communications technology, but to achieve the benefits they must work closely with their communications suppliers. However, with so many hardware options and service providers to choose from, all of which are floating their own agendas, it is no easy task.

The challenge law firms face, therefore, is in navigating the best solutions and integrating these against the current of change on which the convoys of competing providers and specialists float and battle.

Improved efficiency

One firm that has taken advantage of these improvements in communications technology is media specialist firm Wiggin. With offices in Cheltenham and London and a specific focus on a sector that is changing with incredible speed, it has long recognised the importance of keeping up to date with what communications technology can offer a law firm.

A state-of-the-art integrated communications infrastructure has been developed to enable users to increase productivity and service. This comprises the Interwoven Document Management System, Elite Practice Management, Elite Apex CRM, client extranets and internal intranets, the internal Wiggin system, the LANs and WANs, the global (i.e. mobile) IP links and ADSL/SDSL leased line links.

A direct result of this has been a reduction in the ratio of support staff to lawyer, from 2.5:1 to 1:1. The productivity of Wiggin's 35 lawyers has also increased; while they can be more flexible by working at home when needed, they can now work as efficiently whether in transit, in the office or at home.

These achievements have been attained through a team effort comprising IT manager, Graham Ferrer, chief operating officer, John Banister, and their communications supplier, Cheltenham-based Total Telecommunications Limited (TTL).

Banister explains: "It is all about building a technical infrastructure and support system that allows our fee earners to focus on their work and clients without having to worry about technical hiccups. We do not claim to be market leaders in this area, although I doubt that there are many firms of our size with as sophisticated systems.

"Naturally, things do go wrong occasionally and ideas, systems and processes can hit a temporary brick wall. At these times we work with our suppliers to identify options and generally are very successful in finding and building ways to work around problems."

Convergence

Ferrer sees communications technology not as a cost to slice but a solution to exploit. He believes too many law firms evaluate communications one dimensionally, although he admits: "It is hardly surprising considering the array of sup-pliers on the market. With each supplier offering endless packages, options and offers, you could end up so confused you lose sight of the solution.

"So, we took a different route. I wanted to integrate all our voice and data networks into one true converged IP solution to improve service and reduce costs."

Ferrer did a cost and efficiency audit to support his thinking and he was able to justify Wiggin procuring all its requirements from one independent supplier. He was then able to develop a close relationship with that supplier to steer in integrated changes he wanted across the range of media.

Law firms present great opportunities to adopt technology advantage because of the need for flexible work patterns and the value placed on their lawyers' time; a point Banister explains: "The other issue has been the need to manage this integration and system development and delivery to a budget. We are not blessed with the massive IT resources of many of our larger competitors. In this respect we have been very reliant on our in-house expertise and knowledge of the market provided by TTL."

TTL is able to supply one clear, itemised bill, with a range of reporting options, for all Wiggin's communications spend.

IP telephone system

Considerable improvements in client performance and staff reduction have been achieved by Wiggin's investment in a new telephone system. The old system, an Ericsson MD110, offered inflexible traditional telephony.

Ferrer made a comparison between retaining and upgrading the existing infrastructure versus the outlay for a new full IP system over five years. When taking into account reduced maintenance costs, savings relating to moves, adds and changes and the opportunity to replace the CISCO routers and related overheads with a converged solution between London and Cheltenham, the cost of implementing the new system was calculated to be less than that to upgrade the Ericsson technology.

The system now provides seamless communication between Cheltenham and London, with identical logon, voice-mail and fax integration. Recorded calls and voicemail create media files that can be routed to the digital dictation system.

So successful is this that they have added another 2MB link between Cheltenham and London. The new link was chosen to give increased bandwidth to cater for increased traffic as well as resiliency.

An alternative supplier was chosen so in the event that the original link fails, the second link could take the strain and vice versa, also by the use of duplexing hardware when both links are available a seamless 4MB connection between Cheltenham and London is in effect.

Business continuity

Wiggin maintains its own disaster recovery suite, which enables it to provide everyone within Wiggin with a means to stay productive. The 4MB inter-office link has enabled all data to be seamlessly mirrored to the firm's London office.

A case in point was a major power failure recently, which lasted a couple of days. The recovery systems were activated and worked flawlessly. Users worked via virtual private network (VPN) tunnels and GPRS cards from wherever they were, and client service was not interrupted.

Mobility, all the time

Banister explains the importance of mobility: "We have managed very successfully to put systems in place which enable our fee earners to be able to communicate and have access to all the information and resources they need, when they need them"

… at home

Every partner's house is provided with broadband, a router and VPN and a home office PC so they are able to work as efficiently from home as they can in the office.

… in the car

Partners regularly need to travel between the Cheltenham and London offices, a journey that can take three hours. This dead time has been turned into work time. Chauffeurs are employed so each partner can work using their laptop equipped with 3G data cards to enable high-speed connectivity via their laptop.

These work by providing a fast wireless connection allowing access to voice-mail, the internet and email. Charging is based on data transferred rather than connection time, enabling a cost-efficient way of accessing larger volumes of data on the move.

… on the move

Wiggin has also invested in the Black-Berry Enterprise Solution. The firm switched from XDAs to BlackBerry devices because of user preference for its intuitive functions and its 'push' technology enabling emails to arrive without the need to dial up. An unexpected user benefit has been the extended battery life, performing twice as long as the XDA.

The BlackBerry has fast become a favourite device with law firms, not least because of its security virtues. It is one of the leading devices for mobile security for IT policies and encryption, using AES and Triple DES.

Many deployment tasks including activation, termination and upgrades can be undertaken by Ferrer 'over the air'. According to TTL, this is key to protecting lawyers' data should a device be lost or stolen.

While none of this will appear revolutionary to many in the large City firms, the key for a small niche firm such as Wiggin has been to get all these individual elements of the system to work together. This, in turn, provides fee earners with the technical excellence and, ultimately reassurance, that they require in their delivery of client services.