Legal Technology Journal

The CIO at personal injury specialist Minster Law explains how service-oriented architecture and Enterprise 2.0 is transforming the firm.

Minster Law, a leading personal injury player in the road traffic accident (RTA) sector, has ambitious plans to launch an exciting new legal product proposition post- Clementi and become a force to reckon with in the general practice market. LawAngel is a new 24/7, 365-day general practice service available to the general public and providing legal peace of mind and expert assurance. For Minster, it represents a new and ambitious business direction that requires an equally ambitious technology transformation.

When former Accenture senior technology solutions leader Neil Boddy joined the legal services sector, he took a long hard look at IT capability within the industry and concluded that it had significant gaps in service management and project management as well as delivery methodology and capability. Worryingly, in his view, when he scratched below the surface of available legal sector commercial off-the-shelf packages, he realised the underlying architectures would present unexpected constraints to his technology vision.

With the introduction of LawAngel, Minster planned to revolutionise legal service provision in the RTA personal injury sector and Boddy, as CIO, knew that only ‘ground up’ technology transformation could help the firm achieve its stretch objectives and create an environment and a technology platform to realise Minster’s future goals – and quickly. ‘I saw a real opportunity to make a difference at Minster,’ he says. ‘The potential benefits of improving technology are understood at the highest levels. The extent of the change required was a matter for discussion for sure, but the firm’s fierce ambition and appetite for change certainly made my decision to join Minster very easy.’

An extensive audit of Minster’s existing systems and methodologies revealed significant gaps and evidenced that the current systems – hardware, software, methodologies and process – were not capable of supporting the stretch objectives set by the chairman and board. ‘It was certainly clear from the outset that although the existing systems were adequate for their original purpose, they were not an appropriate platform for the planned significant changes,’ comments Boddy. ‘What a fantastic position to be in as a CIO.’ he adds.

Rip IT up and start again

For Boddy, ‘ground up’ technology transformation was not just about replacing old systems, although that was certainly part of it. The systems had reached ‘end of life’ for Minster and there were pressing issues to deal with. A key challenge was to introduce new systems that iteratively moved his vision of a fully integrated service oriented architecture (SOA) forward without disrupting existing services and technologies. It was clear from the outset that the disparate systems within finance, legal services, accident management and even facilities, including all the support systems around communications, knowledge and document management, needed to be overhauled and replaced, with applications that were both ‘fit for purpose’ and ‘service oriented’.

The choice was limited and although functionally many products fitted the bill, the hidden system architecture did not. It was time to develop the people, processes and methodologies and build an enterprise SOA vision and strategy and sell it to the senior team. The choice for Boddy, having previous experience with enterprise application integration technologies, was Enterprise BizTalk given the available .NET developers currently on the market.

Laying the foundations

Matthew Briggs, Minster’s CEO, aims to grow the business to three times its current size by 2010 and become a top 25 UK law firm. Recognising that business transformation and growth on this scale required cutting-edge technology delivered by methods that minimised risk and increased the chances of success, his first strategic investment was to take on Neil Boddy, an industry big hitter with the right expertise and experience to lead the technology transformation that was required to build the platforms for business excellence.

Briggs deliberately targeted individuals with strong blue-chip backgrounds for his senior team. ‘We recognise the benefit and value of employing people with varied skill sets and expert disciplines,’ he says. ‘We also know that to achieve our ambitious growth strategy and deliver step change performance we require the full engagement of all stakeholders. These people need to continually perform at the top of their game and are empowered to deliver challenging results within a demanding environment.’

Breaking away from tradition

Although some of the concepts and technologies discussed in this case study are not generally associated with a traditional law firm, Briggs explains that Minster is far from traditional. ‘Our people are not traditional lawyers and a number are not lawyers at all,’ he says. ‘To build a successful law firm and continue to deliver market leading performance in a very dynamic and changing market requires a specific blend of technical expertise combined with strong corporate leadership. Therefore, we choose our people very carefully with a clear appreciation that the enterprise culture we have within Minster is well served by people who have built prolific careers in bluechip organisations. Many of our senior leaders have been specifically chosen from leading corporate entities, and bring with them structured disciplines and results focused methodology. They also have an embedded passion for delivering success and that is reflected in the service we provide to our clients, business partners, stakeholders and shareholders.’

‘We do not describe ourselves as unorthodox; rather, we are pioneers who are number one in our chosen field and operate an enterprise which is geared to deliver superior levels of service against a rapidly changing legal landscape,’ he adds.

New beginnings

Boddy’s background is delivery of large-scale finance and government systems with a detour to ISP Freeserve along the way. The legal sector is a new direction. ‘I am new to this sector so I started by researching what was available on the market,’ he says. ‘I went in search of suitable finance system and case management packages (including accident management systems) that would, at least, move me one step towards the bigger picture – a complete SOA with case management providing a service but finding the right solution was not as easy as I thought it would be.’

When Boddy looked around the legal technology solutions market is was clear to him, in his view, there was not a great deal out there that could do the job, in the way he needed the system to operate.

‘All the product and solutions providers, understandably, put their systems at the heart of the business and build on them. But that is not what we wanted. We need technology that can provide a service to a wider architecture, to form a component piece not the hub, so that we can access business logic and build new services delivered through multiple channels – and take them to market easily. There are good packages that do the job for the legal sector, but none with an architecture that reflects how other commercial sector enterprises are building their systems.’

So Boddy decided to start again. ‘Explaining that to Matthew Briggs was a real heart-in-mouth moment,’ he says. Fortunately, Briggs did not need convincing. ‘After all, he had set the ball rolling and like all good leaders, he realised that the medicine for this particular ill wouldn’t taste good and he was prepared for this message.’

Technology philosophy

Before joining Accenture, Boddy led operations, infrastructure and development departments for Freeserve Plc and rode the wave as internet technologies, agile methodologies and enterprise delivery revolutionised communication and commerce worldwide. He is now applying those skills at Minster. ‘It is key to my philosophy to ensure that technology enables real business services – a business needs to react to the market and to the frequently changing needs of its clients. My experiences working for the internet pioneer, Freeserve, combined with the major change rigour at Accenture have provided me with a great legacy of technology innovation and blue-chip delivery expertise,’ he says.

Boddy is applying this approach in order to maximise the success of Minster’s complete, ground-up technology rebuild. Currently, he is a long way down the programme plan towards success employing iterative development methodology – Rational Unified Process (RUP).

‘As Minster is beginning to appreciate, RUP is fantastic and very agile, but it also allows systems and service to be tried out and elaborated upon very quickly,’ he explains. ‘Minster is already way out ahead of its competition in terms of how it operates and performs,’ he adds. In Boddy’s opinion, legal services are almost a decade behind the rest of the commercial playing field, so there is a lot of catching up to do – especially in the way technology and services are delivered and consumed. Briggs set Boddy a clear remit within Minster: to bring to the UK’s leading personal injury legal firm blue-chip thinking, enterprise technology thinking and delivery capability. This was a fundamental set of components to fuel the firm’s business transformation plans. ‘This is a dream role for me – being able to come to an organisation with such an appetite and prepared to be brave,’ comments Boddy.

Steadying the technology ship with ITIL and PMP best practices

Given the size of the project, the first thing that needed to change was not the technology at all but the people, processes and methodologies. Minster needed to de-risk the transformation programme. Delivery of consistent, monitored services with clear governance around change, configuration, service and release management was vital. Minster needed to be very clear about the configuration items making up the existing services – to use Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) terminology.

Steadying the ‘technology ship’ before wheeling the systems into the transformation operating theatre was the number one priority. Boddy believes that ‘delivering on shifting sands’ is a sure fire way to build failure into any programme plan. ‘The shifting-sand effect needs to be managed,’ he explains. ‘A crucial element of any big change programme is to make sure that the target is not moving unpredictably. I say unpredictably as business as usual change is inevitable and you can not ask the business to stop – you just need to channel through appropriate mechanisms, capture quality data and triage it.’ ‘Any senior technologist is aware that the business will still be moving under your feet while you build the new “nirvana”. A crucial element in managing this is to create the processes and culture to make change effective and structured – a clearly defined and well understood mechanism is key – another is to set expectations within the business.’

ITIL v3, PMP and CMMi Level 3

Project Management Institutes: Project Management Professional qualification (PMP) and Capability Maturity Model (CMMi). ‘More acronyms than you can shake a stick at,’ explains Boddy. ‘They may be simple to say, but they are not simple to achieve. Facilitating this level of significant change required introducing a culture of successful delivery, change and service management using a full ITIL (version 3) framework. The prize for Minster at the end of the process was CMMi Level 3.’

Boddy explains. ‘Our top priority is to deliver for Minster, but along the way we are determined to ensure that we create repeatable, industrialised processes and be recognised for it. Gaining CMMi Level 3 is high on my agenda and needs to be obtained by what we do right now. At Accenture, CMMi was a strategic objective and I have made that an objective for us too. It is not a badge of honour; it has real meaning, cuts delivery costs and improves delivery times. Not many law firms have it on their radar right now, but it is central to our strategy.’

Boddy, who is a qualified project management professional (PMP), is keen that all his delivery people have a clear objective to gain PMP experience and introduce PMP best practice wherever practical, and help deliver repeatable, industrialised processes that help achieve CMMi Level 3. ITIL is another critical component of his strategy. ‘Minster has an active development personal programme and we were keen to supplement it with ITIL qualifications to ensure that the business systems team has a consistent understanding of the methodologies and processes needed to transform our IT landscape.

Without that common service framework we would be introducing risk rather than reducing it.’ Starting out with the service desk Boddy began by creating a skilled service desk to channel change requests and incidents and with stretch ‘first-time-fix’ targets of 75% (currently at 78%) remove pressure from the ‘back office’ engineers and developers. That valuable time can now be channelled towards the larger transformation programme.

The entire business systems team has been up-skilled in ITIL best practice to understand the finer points of the framework ensuring that developers, engineers and database administrators also understood the difference, and definition, between an incident and problem – in ITIL-speak, at least. ‘The service desk has created a professional channel for all request fulfilment, change request, incidents and problems and we can better manage expectations, be more accurate about the delivery of change and, more importantly, deliver schedules of change that can be triaged against the larger transformation programme for delivery impact and inclusion wherever required,’ says Boddy.

Significantly, Minster has also introduced service-now.com, an online Software as a Service (SaaS) tool that manages to tick all the boxes as far as Boddy is concerned. ‘It provides a strong supporting ITIL framework; it is online, available 24/7 to our business partners and internal colleagues and it delivers service provision (through our service catalogue) and creates real transparency for incidents, change requests and problems.’ The benefit of the ITIL introduction has been clear. The ITIL framework supported the team, building a robust service catalogue and now delivering 99.99% service availability across all services, providing the stable platform that Boddy required to deliver his transformation programme. Box ticked. Service oriented architecture – service not boxes Legal service providers put their case management systems at the heart of their business and build everything from this position. Boddy does not share this view. His view is that the case management is simply a service – one of many – an important one but not at the heart of the business (not from the technology architecture viewpoint at least).

‘To place a case management system, or any business specific application, at the heart of the business is inviting your old problems back in,’ he explains. ‘Hard-wired integration, multiple application programming interfaces doing the same task and a case management system that becomes far too complicated and stretches beyond its original remit are not good for maintenance and far from ideal when it comes to adding in new services, suppliers and systems.’

Boddy is replacing Minster’s case management system with IRIS Legal Solutions’ Legal Office but he emphasises that that is not at the centre of the business. Instead, he has opted to introduce an SOA enabled through the introduction of Enterprise BizTalk servers at the very core of all Minster’s systems and services.

Enterprise BizTalk will allow Minster to create a standardised set of services that lifts application functionality into a enterprise application integration layer, allowing key functionality to be accessed by a whole new set of technologies, services and bespoke applications.

‘This approach allows the Minster’s development team to build systems with core case management, finance and legacy systems functionality, and any other ‘attached’ system/service available to them. Portals and case tracking – online services with rich system functionality – will free up the way people work at Minster. Business partners and clients will access those services through a variety of new media,’ explains Boddy.

‘A very powerful tool for any business is the ability to centralise business application logic and not duplicate it through multiple systems because they do not “talk” to each other,’ he adds. ‘I want to be able to provide the full set of functionality, currently provided by the leading case management system (IRIS), to disparate services and systems available to any other connected system, channel and service within our remit. This has great implications for how we do business creating services that are online and accessible and quick to change.’

IRIS Videss

Although the case management system is not at the centre of all things at Minster, replacing one clearly represents significant risk especially in the context of changing everything else around it. This is where his expertise as a PMP is invaluable and why he decided to partner with IRIS Legal Solutions and their Videss/Legal Office products. ‘It is obvious. I needed to partner with someone who recognised what I am trying to achieve and be willing to come along and develop their products accordingly. My selection of IRIS, and Videss/Legal Office, was as much based on their willingness to adapt their technologies as it was based on their products’ “visible” functionality and so far they are shoulder to shoulder with us.’

Minster has been stretching Iris Legal Solutions every step of the way – both in terms of solutions and delivery. IRIS account manager Andrew Hawley agrees. ‘In Minster Law, we have a business partner who constantly challenges our creativity and pushes innovation to its limits,’ he comments. The Videss system has to deliver open web services, standardised integration and online services to enable employees to work remotely and securely but through the introduction of an SOA architecture that will be a driver for Minster’s future development.

Open source and Enterprise 2.0

Through Boddy’s willingness to innovate he recognises that the business, those on the ground floor as well as at the top, were ready to do things differently and felt that the time was right to get rid of the intranet and SharePoint systems in favour of Open Source and Enterprise 2.0 (dare we say socially engineered systems). ‘Enterprise 2.0 technologies, Open Source and social systems are enormously prevalent in the outside world and I wanted to bring some of that in-house at Minster,’ says Boddy. ‘Users have become sophisticated and are no longer scared to work with new technologies. In recent times the intranet and SharePoint system were sadly neglected tools (as they are in many organisations) requiring specific technical input to keep them up-to-date.’

Boddy introduced wikis and social engineering systems, making employees responsible for communications and keeping information up-to-date. The system is self-policing too. ‘Although policies, manuals and procedure form a significant chunk of the content, the social element of the systems keep people coming back as they own the content they place there,’ he explains.

The new system is a great success. ‘We have never had so much up-to-date content from policies, events information, newsletters updated procedures even down to the Dilbert cartoon of the day RSS feed,’ says Boddy. ‘People use the systems as they would Google, Facebook (not quite but someway towards) and Wikipedia, and they have fun with it. That is how we communicate and keep people engaged during very changing times and importantly we are introducing new ways of working that people are already very familiar with in the outside world. People are definitely having fun with this too – a real success criteria for buy in,’ he adds.

Back to the future

‘In essence, I am ripping out every piece of kit, application and service we employ in the business and replacing it with best practice, future-proof enterprise built technology,’ says Boddy. ‘In most organisations, the project would take three to five years; we’ll be complete by mid 2009. I am doing now what I wish I knew how to do ten years ago. It’s a real back to the future moment.’

‘I am sure the there will be an accelerated learning curve in the legal sector as firms realise the importance of doing things the enterprise way. We want to do this now and create real advantage,’ he adds. ‘The scale and complexity of the project would be a risk – were it not for the bomb-proof project management and delivery processes we are employing through ITIL and PMP best practices. They work for the big players and I believe that they will transform IT in Minster Law and the legal services industry in general.’

With Boddy at the helm, Minster Law has recognised and acted on the need for change. Boddy acknowledges that building competitive advantage has required painful surgery in the form of significant change and the firm is not out of the woods yet. However, he believes that Minster’s decision to deliver SOA services and Enterprise 2.0 technologies will surely see an explosion of multi-channel, multi-faceted services from the RTA giant, so watch this space.

Neil Boddy is CIO at Minster Law.