Legal Technology Journal

In this case study, IT director Steve Sumner explains how the purring engine at Taylor Vinters evolved, and his plans for the future.

In 2006, Cambridge-based Taylor Vinters won the Managing Partners Forum European Practice Management Award for best financial management. In 2007, it was rated by the Financial Times as one of Europe’s leading innovative law firms, partly based on its creative approach to developing client relationships. Now it has just been shortlisted for another European Practice Management Award. Where did it all go right?

Four-button financials

Taylor Vinters’ award-winning financial management is underpinned by ‘four-button reporting’, a firm-wide application that provides all lawyers and their secretaries with desk-top access to the firm’s key performance financials. Everybody is encouraged to use this information and to take responsibility for managing their own results. This innovative technology has helped the firm achieve notable reductions in both work-inprogress and debtor days. Sumner explains that the ‘four buttons’ refer to four key financials:

• fees – with actual and target figures;
• work in progress;
• outstanding bills – linked to the credit management system;
• and recorded hours.

‘We have now developed the reporting feature further so that people can access specific details and print a tailored report,’ he says. ‘It started off with an overall view, but we’ve now made it possible for people to look down to individual matter details.

For example, lawyers can look at their own client base and see where there are outstanding bills. The information they see is up to the minute and therefore accurate.’ It is also directly linked to the firm’s credit management system, so that lawyers can view any comments recorded by the credit management team regarding the status of an unpaid bill to ensure they know the latest position.

In addition, a simulation game of financial management was used to give newly started lawyers a creative way of learning about law firm financial management. Sumner explains: ‘The effect of altering the key financials is shown, targets and their achievement are explained, and the contribution an individual can make is highlighted, together with how the costs can affect cash flow and profitability.’

The system reads the information from the firm’s practice management system, which is supplied by Miles 33, who designed the four-button system as an additional model to its financial software. Its development was driven to help the firm achieve the specific objective of delivering better value from its practice management system. ‘Originally the reporting function was not as strong as some of the other products, so we engaged with the supplier to see how they could meet our requirements, and this was the result,’ adds Sumner.

Enhancing CRM

Sumner selected Microsoft Dynamics for Taylor Vinters’ CRM platform. He felt that it compared favourably against other CRM products and offered the potential for closer integration with the firm’s core Microsoft infrastructure.

Part of that infrastructure is the SharePoint-based intranet, and Sumner saw this as a way to bring together the Miles 33 financial system and Microsoft Dynamics CRM to enable users to carry out detailed enterprise-wide searches. Sumner goes on to explain how the system works: ‘You can search for a client either by name or by client number. From there a results list is shown of likely matches… The user can then select one to set the remit of the display of information. You can then view the summary CRM details about that individual or company – including key financials. For example, you can see the turnover of fees over a period of time, what matters have been opened, how much money we hold on their client account or how much they owe us in bills – most systems record these figures; the difference is that these can be accessed by simply searching for a name. You can also view the most recent documents that have been produced for that client, so you can get a real-time snapshot of the current situation.’

Following the success of four-button reporting, Sumner is now looking at presenting marketing reports as part of this information display. ‘For example, if a fee-earner had arranged to speak to a client, they could find out who else in the firm had worked with them and when,’ he says. ‘We are also trialling the use of Infopath for people to enter a standardised format of marketing report information straight into the intranet, assuring the marketing information is consistent and structured, and dispensing with the need to enter everything through Word.’

A key solution that was provided early on in the intranet’s life was for a referrals system to be written. Sumner explains: ‘We looked at what information we wanted to store and how that could best be displayed and interrogated by the firm, and set about getting it done in SharePoint. It was completed in a couple of weeks from concept to delivery and received rapturous applause from people. Some asked what software product it was, as they had not seen anything like it before. We knew from this that SharePoint could offer us so much, perhaps at a fraction of the cost of conventional software development.’

Sumner continues: ‘The intention is to broaden our capability, even to provide lawyers with desk-top access to the entire workflow process, creating new clients and matters, updating the data on CRM, and other things besides. The idea is to see how much we can make SharePoint the access point for everything they need to do.’

Will SharePoint make the intranet the place to be? If follows, therefore, that Sumner is investigating the possibility of switching to a SharePoint document management (DM) solution and considering whether it represents a viable alternative to Interwoven and OpenText/Hummingbird’s well-established products. Taylor Vinters has used OpenText/Hummingbird products for over 12 years, so that experience will mean a critical eye will be cast. ‘A number of firms are exploring the opportunities SharePoint may lend for document management. I have a core list of 15 must-haves that any solution will need to provide – any one of those criteria not being met will mean failure. I am in conversation with firms as far away as Australia and Sweden, looking at what they have done and are doing with SharePoint in the DM world, and a number of UK developers are underway with their SME offering for DM. Whether it will be good enough to compete is yet to be seen. It’s an interesting time and the challenges are great,’ says Sumner.

In the broader context of IT requirements for the firm, Sumner says: ‘The issues are common to most firms. We need to ensure the constant high availability and growth of our core systems, word processing, e-mail, digital dictation, document management and financials, together with adopting solutions that ensure our changing business needs are met. Some changes are brought in by the legislative bodies, such as the new Code of Conduct Rules; some arise from our wish to be better at what we do, such as Lexcel practice management standards.’

Money laundering is another critical consideration, as Sumner explains. ‘Early on we adopted a method of scanning IDs and storing them in the DM system so they were searchable and accessible by all,’ he says. ‘We soon decided to create a money laundering section on the intranet: we put the guidance notes, user guides and training material on the page, together with a searchable copy of all the IDs, providing all relevant content in one place, something which has been very successful.’

Sumner believes that the new Code of Conduct Rules for solicitors will push firms into developing case management and matter management systems, and providing more structure around how data is stored. This includes documents, e-mails and task logs. ‘We are examining the practicalities of a SharePoint-based solution bringing together document management, e-mail and CRM all into one screen or portal, it will be interesting to see what Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) can bring to the table,’ he explains.

What stage in the process has he reached? ‘We’ve had some demonstrations and costings on some new products ahead of their release to market. We are also looking at the capability of other business management tools that are already available, such as Visualfiles M2, Axxia dna and FWBS’ Matter Centre.’

The idea is to make it as easy as possible for users to move around between different applications. ‘There is a view in legal IT that lawyers live in Outlook and secretaries live in Word, and much of the software is written with that in mind,’ says Sumner. ‘But fee earners commonly run multiple applications simultaneously – Word and Outlook as well as financial systems and time recording – and they can already move around between those if they want to. We’re looking at the practicalities of introducing a feeearner desktop that’s effectively their landing zone.’

This offers the potential for significant efficiency gains. ‘For example, users currently use addresses from their Outlook contacts within Word to write letters. An integrated system would enable CRM to feed that information so that things such as company address changes would require only one update and the changes are applicable firm-wide. We are constantly looking for ways of working smarter.’

Sumner’s strategy is focused on harnessing technology to enable everyone in the firm to work smarter.This strategy is facilitated by the fact that Microsoft has now developed the technology to make integration cheaper and more practical than ever before. ‘The SharePoint portal server that was released in 2003 opened up the possibility of bringing together multiple databases in disparate locations to be queried from one place, and it’s relatively easy to set up. SharePoint 2007 offers even further usability features, including key DM functions, such as item level security,’ he explains. The plan is to create linkages between different functions and automate some routine processes, reducing the need for lawyers to physically switch between the various applications they use. ‘For example, lawyers need to find addresses and carry out routine checks and balances. They also need to record their time against the various activities involved in each matter. We want to make that easier and more intuitive,’ says Sumner. ‘We already have computerised time-recording. It works well, but people still have to spend time doing that actual recording. It’s accepted because they have always been trained to time-record – you might say it “goes with the job” – but how inefficient is it to need to enter every timeline for the day,’ says Sumner. ‘If a lawyer is amending a document, the system should be able to automatically record the time and if the starting point is selecting the matter you want to edit the document for, time recording should follow and the DM should know too.’

Sumner emphasises the importance of ensuring that new applications are not onerous, so that fee-earners accept that technology is positive and represents an improvement to their practice; it helps them work easier and smarter. This also brings clear benefits to the firm.

Supporting client service

IT projects at Taylor Vinters are focused on supporting the firm in providing excellent client service as it continues to expand. The firm has strong IP and technology practices and has recently been appointed to the government ecommerce legal panel. Clients therefore have come to expect a high level of competence in technology matters. Although leveraging technology helps the firm connect with its clients and maintain its market position, Sumner emphasises the necessity of providing – within reason – uninterrupted access to reliable and efficient IT resources. ‘Everyone in the legal sector has the same issues. Our first priority is to maintain the flow of documents and e-mail, as well as digital dictation and time-recording systems. Then we have the project and innovative stuff, which help the firm provide a good service to its clients so that we continue to achieve high client satisfaction.’

IT also underpins the efficient management of the firm. The CRM system supports business development and client retention. ‘We are better prepared to deal with clients when we have access to all relevant information at the touch of a button,’ he adds.

User friendliness is crucial. Many of the projects currently being implemented, such as automatic time recording and real-time reporting, are happening in the background. However, Sumner emphasises that people do need to buy into using new resources, even when they require minimal or no training. Indeed, too much training can be counterproductive. ‘You can roll out new software and give people very comprehensive training, but they generally use only a small percentage of its capability,’ he notes. ‘There’s no point in taking up people’s time to teach them things they will never use.’ Having said that, he uses different practice groups to pilot new applications and uses their feedback to tailor the technology to the firm’s business requirements.

Engaging with lawyers and managers

Genuinely supporting the business means engaging with different user groups and delivering what they need in terms of IT. Sumner illustrates this with a recent example. ‘Lawyers in our corporate practice often needed to access all the transactional documents relating to a matter – reference bibles that often contained many hundreds of different documents. They were using CDs, but through the team’s page on the intranet, they now have a section so that anyone who needs them can access these documents, easily and efficiently,’ he says.

It is part of Taylor Vinters’ management ethos to keep people informed and involved in the running of the firm. Of course, this is evidenced by the financial information software described in previous paragraphs. As well as taking the time to interact with users at all levels of the hierarchy, Sumner attends partner and board meetings and has regular meetings with the managing partner and financial director. ‘I have a copy of the three-year business plan and I look at how IT can help deliver the firm’s objectives, from the broad strategy right down to putting the bibles on the system for the corporate team,’ he says. He also keeps in touch with different user groups. ‘When we’ve done something specific for one team, I tell other teams about it and sometimes we can create a similar tool or application for them, so there’s an element of cross-fertilisation in terms of developing resources.’

Timing is everything

The timing of changes and upgrades is critical. Sumner has taken control of this by investing in a corporate Microsoft licensing plan that includes upgrades. This enables him to decide which upgrades to choose and when to implement them to maximise the benefits to the business. For example, he has decided to delay upgrading to Vista or to Exchange 2007. ‘Although Exchange 2007 has a lot to offer, it is a substantial upgrade to undertake and we need to be sure that we are confident about that upgrade process and the requirements that come with it, both in hardware and software. So we will upgrade when it best suits us or there is a clear business proposition that requires it to be used.’

Sumner and his team are looking into upgrading to SharePoint 2007. ‘We’re currently using SharePoint 2003, but 2007 has a lot of new features. So we’re trialling SharePoint 2007 in a test environment,’ he says. ‘I am also having discussions with some of the vendors, suppliers and resellers whose services are based on SharePoint 2007 about its capability.’ As well as consulting with partners and users about their IT requirements, Sumner has regular conversations with suppliers to discover what various applications can do and how they are applied in other organisations. ‘It’s all about looking at the technology that’s out there and finding new ways of applying it to real-world issues,’ he adds.

These online conversations and meetings with vendors have led Sumner to take a closer interest in Microsoft’s Live Communication Server (LCS) and Live Meeting. ‘IT suppliers use Live Meeting to demonstrate their products to us,’ he says. ‘As LCS and Live Meeting are mainstream applications from Microsoft, they will snap in with all our other Microsoft products. We’re currently looking into how we might use it to benefit the firm or individual teams. If people can work on the same document simultaneously and also know when people are available – not just within our firm, but outside too – they will save time and deliver better client service.’ Trialling a product does not guarantee that it will be implemented, however. Sumner needs to take all relevant factors into consideration before taking a decision. ‘Sometimes the answer is no, or notyet – the culture is not necessarily ready for it or it’s simply too expensive. In the end you have to take a value judgement.’

Virtualisation

Virtualisation is another hot topic. Sumner explains that a good virtualised infrastructure makes it easy to deploy new applications. It also underpins business continuity and disaster recovery planning. ‘Virtualisation enables individual applications like our debt recovery programme, which has only two users, to have their own virtual server. Before virtualisation, completely different applications would share the same server, which might produce conflicts. There were also continuity issues. For example, if one application needed updating, other applications on the same server would stop working. With virtual servers, each application can have its own server. Therefore, virtualisation improves the reliability of the system by reducing interdependence.’

As Sumner explains, with virtualisation it is also straightforward to move resources between servers. ‘For example, if you’re jumping from ten users using SharePoint to 100 users, you can simply add more memory and disk space. Virtualisation helps keep the system up and running, although it still requires monitoring and proactive alerting,’ he says. ‘We have invested substantially in virtualisation technologies over the past few years and have realised savings in equipment costs, and the incidental costs of requiring floor space, power and air conditioning, whilst at the same time delivering a level of management flexibility into our IT systems that you just could not do before. Our business continuity model is based upon virtualisation. In the old days it would take hours to recover and recommission a failed server; virtualised ones can take seconds and in some cases it can be totally transparent to the users that a failure has occurred at all, if the right structure is in place.’

Offsite storage and remote access

In the interests of business continuity, Sumner is investigating the possibility of swapping around the firm’s server base so that the main server is located remotely and the on-site server becomes the disaster recovery location. ‘Our computer suite is not custom-built; it’s former office space that has been transformed into a computer and communications room,’ he explains. ‘A purpose-built suite has high security, power generation facilities, fire detection and suppressant facilities which are far better than those in any office environment. At the moment all our live servers are running in our office building. We have back-up servers at a remote site about 25 miles away. The live office servers copy all our data across to that remote site. In the event of a disaster at the office, the firm would be running from the remote site. Although that would work for a limited number of users, we’re considering relocating our live systems to a purpose-built remote site where they will be better protected. For example, a power cut to the main building would shut down our servers, whereas some purpose-built remote sites are hooked onto the national grid and have back up generators, so it would require a much more serious situation for them to lose power.’

Sumner recognises that shifting the firm’s live servers to a purpose-built remote location would involve significant costs, but these could be offset by freeing up additional office space for more lawyers. ‘If we could do that, the firm would be earning money rather than spending it!’

It is general knowledge that working in the legal sector involves long hours. Sumner and his team used Taylor Vinters’ recent office refurbishment as an opportunity to trial remote working with a view to extending the firm’s remote and mobile capability and further enhancing business continuity, as well as supporting client relationships. The issues that have arisen so far tend to involve people rather than technology, so in terms of IT strategy, the project was a success, enabling lawyers to keep in touch with their clients outside conventional working hours.

Sumner’s approach acknowledges the trend for IT to be more closely integrated into the running of law firms. ‘Law firms and lawyers generally are more aware of the value IT adds to their work and they’re much more interested in engaging with IT than they were five or ten years ago. IT also offers more opportunities – as IT-aware lawyers are becoming partners they have expectations of what IT can do to help them and want IT professionals actively involved in the business.’