Legal Technology Journal

Herbert Smith’s group chief information officer, George Kalorkoti, brings an entrepreneurial approach to the firm’s information systems and resources, based on working with the business and building a winning team that is keeping the firm ahead of the game.

When I met George Kalorkoti, group chief information officer at Herbert Smith, he had lost his voice, so our interview was necessarily low key. However, Kalorkoti certainly means business. Over the past few years, he has presided over a dramatic transformation of Herbert Smith’s information systems (IS) introducing cutting-edge systems and building an entirely new infrastructure to support the firm’s international expansion.

Kalorkoti joined Herbert Smith in September 2003. His background is slightly unusual for a law firm. In his former role as managing director of a management and IT consultancy, he was brought in to transform a loss-making company into a profitable one – and he successfully turned the business around and disposed of it in a trade sale. At Herbert Smith, he brings the same entrepreneurial energy to a different challenge: although the firm was expanding, its information resources were suffering from a lack of investment and needed updating to meet the demands of a 21st century Magic Circle firm. An infrastructure for the 21st century

Kalorkoti is responsible for IS in the UK and internationally, including systems infrastructure, underlying technologies and telephony, and controls the firm’s worldwide IS budgets. ‘I focus on IS rather than IT,’ he explains. His rationale is that it is easier to convince the partners of the value of investing in new systems that support their work and save their time than to attempt to persuade them of the merits of particular IT tools and applications. However, there was no escaping the fact that significant investment was required. When Kalorkoti joined Herbert Smith, the firm had four separate IT systems based in London, Paris, Moscow and Asia covering the firm’s global network. Each system was different and there was a great deal of customisation, so Kalorkoti set about consolidating systems and processes across the firm. ‘A firm’s systems infrastructure is only as good as its weakest point,’ he explains. Kalorkoti started by restructuring the management of IS, assembling a new team to manage the considerable task of rebuilding the firm’s infrastructure from the ground up. ‘Fortunately, I didn’t have to build a team from scratch,’ he says. ‘It developed through a combination of promotion and recruitment.’

Kalorkoti’s six-strong IS team comprises five people responsible for specific functions – business projects, applications, technology, customer services, international/training – and one with overall responsibility for purchasing, with the remit of getting the very best deal from the firm’s suppliers. It was also important to get the whole team working together under one roof – previously they were spread across the business, but now they are all based at City Gate House in London.

Kalorkoti emphasises the importance of a one-firm approach, so the choice of systems and applications was critical. In a bid to minimise customisation and standardise systems and processes across the firm, his strategy is based on forging strong relationships with key suppliers – persuading them that the specific tools and resources that Herbert Smith requires should become part of the standard package that they offer all firms. On this basis, he has developed strong working relationships with a number of key suppliers.

Kalorkoti emphasises that IS needs to be an integral part of the firm’s overall business strategy and needs to reflect what is happening in the firm. In the past 12 months, Herbert Smith has grown both revenues and profit by about 25%. ‘It is mostly organic, international growth, but international expansion is always a challenge for IS as it means incorporating more offices and people into the network,’ he says. In this regard, his skills as a former managing director and management consultant are invaluable. Kalorkoti explains that in his former career he did a lot of consultancy for partnerships, including Herbert Smith, having worked with the firm since 1981. ‘It makes you good at problem solving,’ he says. ‘Rather than fixing each issue you have to identify what the underlying problem really is and solve it.’

Supporting international expansion

Herbert Smith now has one system instead of four, and deploys the same mix of best-of-breed products across all its offices. These include Interwoven for document management, InterAction for CRM, Aderant’s CMS for billing and accounts, Workshare for document comparison and Symantec’s Enterprise Vault for archiving. ‘You can access any document in any part of the world, but it is not a centralised system,’ explains Kalorkoti. ‘For example, each office has a local DM server, but it is the same Interwoven system.’ Having an autonomous system in each office avoids latency issues and supports business continuity. ‘However, other systems are only suitable for implementing centrally. It is a matter of identifying what will work best across the firm’s various international locations.’

Although Herbert Smith is about 75% UK-based, its international operations are continuing to expand rapidly, so it is important to put in place systems that are scalable and work in different locations. This is less of a problem than it was in the past as suppliers are recognising this need and developing systems accordingly. For example, Herbert Smith’s growth has focused on expansion in the Middle East, China and Russia – all regions that raise potential language issues. Fortunately, recent versions of many of the systems now support Unicode data, enabling the system to integrate contact data from all users and sources, regardless of character set or language.

Steering the systems supertanker

Unusually for a law firm, Kalorkoti has produced a formal written IS strategy which is adjusted to align with the firm’s business strategy. A key part of this is the ability to anticipate the firm’s future systems requirements. ‘It is important to be prepared,’ he says. ‘You can change your overall strategy very fast, but systems take longer. You need to adapt them gradually to fit the firm’s business strategy. Systems are the supertankers of the corporate world,’ he adds.

One way of speeding up the process is to minimise customisation and lawyer training. Kalorkoti avoids customisation on the grounds that it tends to be more expensive than standard packages, less reliable and more time consuming. Tailored systems take longer to build and users require specialised training. So it follows that his strategy is based on avoiding customisation. ‘It is hard enough getting busy lawyers to make time for essential training – this is still a big challenge,’ he says. His ideal objective is zero customisation, although that is not always possible. ‘All customisation requests have to be approved by me and I always do my utmost to say no,’ he smiles.

Kalorkoti prefers to put together a mix of standard components using a combination of in-house and external expertise. His team access specific expertise when they need it, working with consultants and suppliers to create the best and most lawyer-friendly solution. For example, when the firm needed to improve its accounting and time recording system, they worked with Aderant to decide precisely what should be added to the package they were already using rather than pursuing the more expensive and disruptive strategy of looking for a new package.

Continuous improvement

Kalorkoti presides over an ongoing programme of continuous improvement. These are just a few examples of over 50 projects that the IS team is currently undertaking across the firm.

E-mail management

Like all law firms, Herbert Smith handles huge volumes of e-mails. A combination of Symantec Enterprise Vault and Interwoven’s document management system makes relevant e-mails available to everyone working on a matter, and the archive, which is discoverable, has online and offline capability. A matter-centric document management system, which is linked to the practice management system, means that all information concerning a particular matter is available to all lawyers working on that matter.

System resilience

When Kalorkoti joined the firm, disaster recovery was a one-way process – the firm could invoke its disaster recovery arrangements but could not then bring systems back in-house. The firm now uses NetApp and Veritas Cluster Server to support two sites – one in Exchange House in the City and one in Hounslow – which run in parallel so that they can switch from one to the other while minimising system down time. This system will be rolled out to the firm’s international offices along with new versions of the document management and accounting systems following the switch to Office 2007, which is a significant project as it involves training lawyers to work differently. ‘The challenge is the culture change,’ says Kalorkoti. ‘Over recent months the firm has undertaken a focused and significant training effort,’ he adds.

Internal telephony

Another ongoing project is the firm’s new telephone numbering scheme which is designed to reinforce Herbert Smith’s one-firm approach by introducing a single internal telephony system covering all the firm’s offices. It operates over the firm’s wide area network, which uses Verizon. Each individual will have a five-digit internal telephone number, which is the last five digits of their DDI number. Further projects cover systems security and beefing up the network as the firm continues to expand.

Management information system

A recent innovative information initiative was the implementation of the firm’s management information system (MIS). This uses a data warehouse system – based on Business Objects – to give partners an instrument to navigate the firm’s financial and, in due course, other management information via the intranet. This provides easy access to financial and other information, which is updated daily, and facilitates analysis and report creation. Crucially, the information is presented in an accessible and user-friendly format. MIS creates graphical representations enabling partners to view work in progress, chargeable hours and billing to date at a glance. It also presents different views, enabling partners to tailor how they look at the information. They can choose to access all of the firm’s information or break it down by department, practice group or even by individual lawyer. ‘You can opt for a helicopter view or you can drill down to particular details,’ explains Kalorkoti.

This classic management consultancy approach reflects Kalorkoti’s commercial background. The MIS project has continued to develop over the past 18 months, and Kalorkoti and his team are currently enhancing it further, working closely with the firm’s CFO and adding more functionality and security to make the system more widely available (with appropriate restrictions) so that individuals can access all the information that is relevant to their practice.

Working with the partnership Kalorkoti identifies his biggest challenges as ‘keeping the lawyers happy; anticipating the market and making the right calls in terms of new technology’. ‘Technology needs to be balanced with investment,’ he says. ‘Making sure that partners understand the value of investing in IS means showing them a clear reason for making the investment and demonstrating value for money.’ He therefore always has his eye on the bottom line, aiming to spend less than his counterparts in other firms in terms of a percentage of revenue, while gaining comparable benefits. He emphasises that investing smartly means applying business disciplines and making sure that partners buy into the firm’s IS strategy.

Kalorkoti reiterates that he sees himself as ‘the managing director of Herbert Smith IS’. In other words, he owns his part of the business and is committed to making it a success. To ensure that Herbert Smith IS is providing its customers with the best possible service, he established an IS committee comprised of equity partners that meets once a month to discuss strategic direction and priorities. ‘They are my board of directors,’ says Kalorkoti. The fact that the IS committee is chaired by a partner ensures that Herbert Smith’s IS strategy genuinely reflects the firm’s priorities, drawing a clear distinction between IS needs and delivering on the firm’s requirements. The purpose of the committee is to identify those requirements, which are constantly shifting, so that Kalorkoti and his team can deliver information services that meet them.

Kalorkoti emphasises the importance of working closely with the partners and the firm. He sees his greatest triumph as achieving a stable, effective IS management team, infrastructure and systems. ‘Any system is a great success if nobody mentions it – that is because if it works and meets partners’ and lawyers’ needs it is taken for granted, if it does not there will be a lot of mentions about its costs and unsuitability,’ observes Kalorkoti. His is a low-key approach with a tremendous impact on the shape and the smooth running of IS at Herbert Smith.

George Kalorkoti is group chief information officer at Herbert Smith.