IT director Tim Dutton outlines how technology has supported TLT’s rapid growth and helps to deliver enhanced services, as well as fostering excellent communications and a collaborative online community.
Since TLT was formed in 2000, both headcount and turnover have tripled and the 72-partner firm currently comprises 650 people, including 323 lawyers. TLT’s rapid growth has included acquiring offices in London and Piraeus. The London office opened in 2005 when TLT acquired Lawrence Jones following client research that found that the firm’s banking clients wanted TLT to establish a London presence. The Piraeus office was acquired in June 2007 when the firm merged with international commercial law firm Constant & Constant, complementing TLT’s existing banking and finance practice, and bringing additional resource and expertise in real estate, commercial trade, shipping, logistics and transport.
Although the firm is headquartered in Bristol, more than 60% of its business is drawn from outside the South West. As well as its financial services clients, TLT advises FTSE-listed and other leading national and international organisations in the leisure, retail, technology and media, and built environment industry sectors.
A fresh approach
The challenge for IT director Tim Dutton is developing and maintaining an IT system that responds to the changing needs of one of the UK’s fastest-growing law firms. This includes the capability of rapidly integrating new practice areas, businesses and people into the expanding TLT community and establishing new ways to improve TLT’s efficiency, reliability and service delivery for the benefit of clients. Dutton’s aim is to use technology as creatively and as innovatively as possible to enhance the firm’s competitive position and to work hand-in-hand with the firm’s clients, and their IT teams if necessary, to help clients achieve competitive advantage through the efficient and effective delivery of legal services. This is achieved by using new and existing technologies to enable better sharing of information, quicker completion of activities, more streamlined processes and reduced costs.
Dutton’s background combines financial and legal services. He worked at AMP in Australia and Zurich Financial Services as well as Bond Pearce and Burges Salmon before moving to TLT 18 months ago.
Dutton was drawn to TLT by its reputation for innovation and commitment to investing in IT, which is evidenced by his board-level role and the expansion of the IT team from 29 when he joined to 35. ‘The management team really understand the challenges that face a firm that is growing so rapidly and are prepared to invest in responding to those challenges,’ he says. ‘We need sufficient resources in order to respond quickly and innovatively to the changing needs of our business and the changing needs of our clients.’ Dutton’s team includes IT trainers and a business process management (BPM) group of eight, which is focused on driving down costs and improving efficiencies across the firm, enabling any savings to be passed on to the client, further enhancing the firm’s position in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
The IT team also enjoys a high profile in the market. Dutton was recently consulted by a national law firm in respect of some work the team did in response to a recent change in legislation. Other innovative initiatives include TLT’s pensions extranet (see box out). ‘My team is exceptional, and only with an exceptional team can we do outstanding things for our clients,’ he says.
Delivering to clients
Dutton’s strategy going forward is based on two core priorities. ‘One is about making the best use of the 35 people in my team and making sure that they work well together and continue to do a fantastic job. The other is continually exploring how we can use our skills to help drive the aims of the business and work with the partners to add more value to the services we offer our clients.’ Dutton and his team work closely with TLT’s lawyers to improve client service delivery, often collaborating with clients’ in-house IT teams to find the best solution. For example, TLT regularly uses extranets and virtual datarooms to support clients’ needs. ‘The idea is that IT is not a support function, or a separate part of the business,’ he says. ‘Collaboration is a vital part of the service we deliver to our clients. Unless lawyers and IT professionals work together and have mutual respect for each other, the two groups will not necessarily deliver the right solution to the client.’
Dutton acknowledges that the legal sector presents challenges in this respect. The fact that lawyers need to be highly responsive to a very demanding business environment is reflected in the demands that are placed on all services within the firm. ‘TLT’s collaborative culture means that extremely tight time scales are often a matter for negotiation between the client, the lawyer and business support services. Taking that approach makes it work for all,’ he says.
Sharing knowledge
TLT’s internal IT systems are also improving client service delivery. Dutton emphasises that TLT is built around the needs of its clients. ‘The opening of our London office is an example of our commitment to respond to our clients’ needs. The IT and communications teams have done a lot of work around how we disseminate client information around the firm to ensure that we all know what is going on with our clients, what is happening in their sectors and what is affecting their business so that we can support them proactively.’
Culture is always a significant challenge when it comes to leveraging the information held in a firm’s various systems. ‘We have done a lot of work around the way that lawyers work with systems to capture and reuse client information,’ says Dutton. ‘Together with the business development team we have written an online system that publishes key information on our top clients within the firm. This builds on our InterAction client relationship management (CRM) system. InterAction is an enabler and it is best used with workflow tools to capture activity behind the scenes as part of our normal day-to-day processes. That means looking at the way we do things – and want to do things – and re-engineering our processes to fit our culture and capture that knowledge,’ he adds.
TLT uses several methods to identify key information that resides within the firm’s various systems, and applies manual and automatic processes to capture and reuse that information.
Dutton is currently preparing TLT for another significant change – an upgrade to Interwoven’s new matter-centric document management system. As the new system will be tailored to the firm’s needs, Dutton and his team have established a working group, which represents people across the firm. ‘The idea is to engage with people and make them feel part of the change,’ he says. ‘We are working with them in an iterative and collaborative way. We are taking on board their feedback and incorporating their ideas into the design of the new system. Obviously any idea is scrutinised to ensure that in addition to meeting the users’ needs, it meets the needs of those people who will support and operate the system going forward.’ The plan is to launch the new document management system later this year. Managing change is an ongoing process for Dutton and his team – on average they create a new client extranet or major system enhancement every month.
Dutton also highlights the need to drive consistency as the firm expands and grows – whether organically or by acquisition. ‘Consistency is underpinned by the fact that all our lawyers use the same technology,’ he says. ‘The challenge is to select the right systems and make sure that they work. We have been successful on both counts because we work very hard to understand our lawyers’ requirements and make sure the technology delivers what they need.’
Engaging people in change
TLT’s IT team has been critical to ensuring that everyone is working towards common goals. ‘It is important that everyone knows what is going on in the firm, so we use a number of channels to deliver key strategic messages,’ says Dutton. TLT’s IT team worked closely with people across the firm, including the directors of knowledge, business development, risk management and HR on developing a new SharePoint intranet which was launched in June 2008. The intranet was launched under the name Atlas. ‘We ran a competition and had a significant number of responses,’ says Dutton. ‘Two people chose the same name and they won iPods!’
Atlas represents a significant change to the way people work. ‘Atlas is highly interactive, so people have been given training on how to navigate it and, crucially, how to upload and share information,’ explains Dutton. ‘The communications team is also promoting its interactive features and the benefits that it offers individuals. It is important to show people the benefits to them personally to ensure that it continues to be used.’ Internal communication is key to managing the series of changes that accompany the firm’s IT strategy. ‘IT is largely about managing change and that depends on effective communication,’ adds Dutton. ‘My team relies heavily on the internal comms team to make sure that the right messages get through.’ As well as introducing more functionality, improving access to information resources and facilitating knowledge sharing, it focuses sharply on internal communication. ‘The intranet has become our central information hub, promoting a variety of initiatives around the firm,’ says Dutton.
Part of Dutton’s strategy is to reduce the firm’s reliance on email for internal communication. ‘Our senior partner, Robert Bourns, is our sponsor for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and we are working together to launch future CSR initiatives on the intranet,’ he explains. ‘We have adopted the retail concept of posting banners on our intranet to advertise internal initiatives. For example, if someone is doing a parachute jump in aid of TLT’s charity of the year, we would advertise that on a rotational basis on the home page of the intranet to help attract sponsorship. At any one time we have a couple of dozen CSR initiatives, events and green campaigns that we want to promote.
The SharePoint intranet enables us to raise the profile of those campaigns without being invasive. We apply the same internal marketing concepts when we introduce key technology changes within the business.’ The intranet is also used for drawing attention to some of the benefits that the firm offers its staff. There are blogs, forums and message boards where people can buy and sell items. ‘Whereas our intranet was previously limited to information resources – like a library – now it also supports our online community,’ says Dutton. ‘For example, there is a TLT community section where people can buy and sell things, and advertise events that are not always directly related to work. Using different communication channels to engage staff is an important part of our internal culture, and what makes TLT a great place to work.’
Underlying this comprehensive internal marketing campaign is the strategic concept of combining IT and internal communications to maintain continuity across the business as it expands, drawing people into the TLT community and making sure that information and knowledge resources are delivered across the business.
The future is virtual
In recent months, Dutton has focused on a number of projects designed to make the firm more efficient and support its expansion, building on the existing foundation of IT within TLT. ‘I wanted to introduce some of the technology that I had used elsewhere,’ he explains. ‘When I was at Zurich Financial Services, I was UK programme manager for the Wintel (Windows/Intel) server consolidation project, a European-wide project to consolidate the organisation’s technology and run their whole European IT operation out of its Zurich headquarters. The technology that was being used was VMWare – virtualisation – and it was exactly what TLT needed to meet its challenges, so I introduced VMWare at TLT.’ The ongoing virtualisation project is already producing financial, operational and stability benefits as well as improving resilience and business continuity. ‘We are currently in the process of migrating from physical servers to virtual servers,’ says Dutton. ‘Ultimately, the entire system will run in a virtual environment. That will give us the flexibility to move servers between offices in the event that we have a single problem with one server or if we have a significant problem which affects, for example, all of our IT services.’
Like many working in legal technology, Dutton is a huge fan of virtualisation and brings a positive experience from his previous role at Zurich. ‘Virtualisation is one of the reasons why the IT industry is an exciting place to be at the moment,’ he says, explaining that business continuity and disaster recovery is simplified by replicating systems and files in different locations and synchronising them. ‘In the event that you lose one system, you simply switch over to the other one. Four or five years ago when people were talking about this the technology and associated risks were not well understood by the IT industry. This technology is still leading edge; however we are confident that we know the challenges and how to face them. There are risks that you need to be aware of, but if you have the people in your team that you need and trust to manage and mitigate the risks, then the benefits are significant. We are on track to complete the project by the end of the calendar year.’
Virtualisation also facilitates the firm’s expansion as virtual servers are replicated in TLT’s offices to provide local services. ‘With virtualisation and other key systems design changes, our response to expansion is much quicker than would otherwise be the case,’ adds Dutton. Security and business continuity continue to represent key challenges for the IT industry, and the virtualisation project facilitates both expansion and business continuity, particularly as TLT continues to attract clients from across the UK.
Value-added services
The IT team has also been reviewing the services it offers thebusiness and applying the principles of IT infrastructure library (ITIL), which focus on delivering excellent IT support to internal customers. Dutton has introduced this approach in a gradual and progressive way, focusing on culture and process – with encouraging results. ‘ITIL is all about IT service support and delivery. The team has been very responsive and we have had fantastic feedback about the changes to our IT service,’ he says.
The IT team is enhanced with a team of professional trainers who have been looking at ways of improving the use of IT within the firm. Dutton has also focused on supplying value-added services for clients. ‘We are working with financial services businesses creating extranets and providing other value-added services that help us win tenders and grow our business,’ he says. ‘This involves a great deal of collaboration between our lawyers, our clients and our IT team. We work together as one team trying to attain a common goal.’
Next steps
Like CIOs in industry, Dutton spends a significant amount of time out in the business, ensuring that IT projects and initiatives are fully integrated into the firm’s strategy going forward. The idea is to build on current initiatives and look at offering more services that directly benefit the firm’s clients. This means keeping close to the partnership, and working with lawyers and their secretaries to identify how technology can make their lives easier. ‘I have two key objectives when it comes to developing details around our strategy: to listen to people and find out what they need and to educate people about the opportunities that technology can offer them,’ he says.
A key part of this is getting feedback from users on how IT is performing. In addition to the firm’s annual IT survey, in October 2007, Dutton established an IT strategy group consisting of key stakeholders across all areas of the business. ‘The idea is to ensure that the IT strategy is integrated into the business plans and meets the firm’s aspirations,’ he says. ‘At each meeting I demonstrate the latest technology and talk about opportunities for IT to solve business problems. This has inspired a number of initiatives that will be developed over the next months and years. Ideas can come from anywhere in the business and I am very keen to make sure no ideas are lost,’ he adds.
TLT clearly focuses on the people side of IT and it is currently working on a three-year plan to develop a CRM system that improves communication around client data to further enhance client service. ‘It is about consolidating the firm’s expansion and providing a consistently excellent service across all the firm’s offices,’ says Dutton. ‘Our differentiating factor is that our lawyers offer their clients more than just legal advice: they think laterally around how they can make our clients’ lives easier. Technology continues to offer us more opportunities to improve client service.’ He cites as examples client extranets and internal efficiencies achieved through BPM and workflow systems, as well as internal communications, knowledge sharing and CRM, adding that the cost savings derived from these internal efficiencies in terms of lower overheads are passed on to clients, enhancing the firm’s competitive advantage, particularly in the current downturn.
Dutton’s current focus is virtualisation and BPM. ‘The new generation of BPM tools offer exciting opportunities to make further efficiencies and reduce the cost of our service to clients,’ he says. Clearly, TLT’s approach to IT reflects this fast-growing firm’s exceptional ability to adapt its services to the particular needs of clients and rapidly respond to the shifting dynamics of the legal services market.
Tim Dutton is IT director at TLT Solicitors.
