BlackBerrys to Servers

BlackBerrys to Servers

Cost savings and efficiencies drive law firm investment in technology.

By David R. Corder

Associate Editor

This is a busy time for Sarasota attorney Elvin Phillips. Within weeks, each of the 44 lawyers at Williams Parker Harrison Dietz & Getzen will get a new BlackBerry. It's Phillips' job as the firm's administrator to ensure the seamless integration of these handheld wireless communication devices - great tools for e-mailing and attorney scheduling - with the firm's in-house computer system. Soon the firm intends to activate the BlackBerrys' cell phone option to further increase efficiency.

To complicate matters, Phillips just installed Microsoft Office 2003 on one of the firm's nine computer servers. The enhanced capabilities of this suite of business software require some familiarization. So he had to schedule a week of training to educate the legal and support staff.

In the meantime, Phillips negotiated the leases on four high-speed copiers/scanners to enhance the law firm's existing document management system.

Although he wouldn't talk about cost, Phillips acknowledges the technology upgrade this fiscal year takes a considerable bite out of the firm's operating revenue. To put the cost into perspective, however, he cites an estimate he heard earlier this year at the American Bar Association's TechShow in Chicago, one of two national technology trade shows he attends each year. He says many law firms devote around 3% in annual operating revenue to technology purchases.

"I could get to that 3% with no problem at all, depending on what your definition of technology is," he says. "The issue is whether you need a major upgrade or conversion. That will obviously affect your cost, because you have to pay for it at one time."

It appears Phillips' firm shares much in common with the 1,524 solo practitioners and law firms that responded to the ABA's 2003 technology survey. The survey shows that less than a quarter of solo practitioners and law firms have a multiyear strategic technology plan. Only one in five solo practitioners and firms, about 20% of the respondents, have a multiyear technology budget.

"We're consistently upgrading our systems as it becomes necessary," Phillips says. "That necessity is based on our philosophy that we're not on the bleeding edge but on the leading edge."

For the most part, Phillips expressed an opinion GCBR heard over again in interviews with attorneys and administrators at five Gulf Coast area law firms that seem to be among the leading purchasers of technology. They say the investment in new technology is worth it only if it produces immediate efficiencies and cost savings.

Size counts

About three years ago, Carlton Fields PA, based in Tampa, hired Mark Schneider to develop a technology plan to complement its then-pending headquarters relocation. Once Schneider and his tech staff drafted the plan, the firm hired consultants at Deloitte & Touche to validate it.

The plan first focused on the infrastructure in its new offices at Corporate Center Three at International Plaza in Tampa's Westshore business district. Workers installed three, conduit-clad fiber-optic lines on divergent routes, which ensures consistent Internet access except in a dire instance such as a hurricane. The plan also called for converging telephone switches.

"That takes advantage of two technologies: a typical fiber-optic line coming into the building, but then all of our calls between each of our seven locations are routed across a wide area network over voice-over-IP (Internet protocol)," Schneider says. "So, if I was to make (what normally is) a long distance telephone call to our Atlanta office from Tampa, the call would actually ride our network to the switch in Atlanta, and then that switch would make a local phone call. So our clients are saving because of our efficiencies."

Carlton Fields also relies a technology known as multiple protocol label system (MPLS). Schneider says this allows each of the firm's offices to communicate with one another without costly dedicated telecommunication lines. That's another savings for the client.

"It's a star-type of network rather than point to point," he adds.

With the infrastructure in place, Schneider says the law firm now focuses on empowering the firm's nearly 200 attorneys through the best available technology.

"Now we can concentrate on the collaboration-type tools on their desktop," he says. "We have collaboration tools like extranets (intranet extensions to the Internet). We want to bring that closer to the attorney to provide them with an anywhere-anytime environment."

All of this comes at a cost, Schneider acknowledges. He says the firm's annual technology budget averages about $21,000 an attorney. That's about 4.7% of the $86 million in revenue the law firm reported in American Lawyer's most recent survey of the top 200 U.S. law firms.

To evaluate its spending habits, Schneider says, the firm relies on proprietary technology surveys published by researchers at organizations such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, CitiCorp and LawNet.

"Each year, we try to keep a level playing field as far as budgetary matters," he says. "We target ourselves in the range of firms that are within 400-plus attorneys. But we spend a little more than a firm our size."

Cost matters

On the other end of the spectrum, small law firms such as Sarasota's Wilson Jaffer PA don't have the luxury to devote 3% to 5% of their annual budgets on technology. That doesn't imply anything about a firm's technology literacy. In fact, much of the legal work at this three-member law firm centers on computer and intellectual property law. So the Wilson Jaffer lawyers tend to have a more intimate understanding of technology's role in society, even though the firm relies on a small network of personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Because of the firm's knowledge base, Wilson Jaffer member Douglas A. Cherry agreed to serve last year as chairman of the Sarasota County Bar Association's Technology Task Force. While serving as chairman, Cherry's firm tackled a new challenge common to many other firms. The federal court system had advised law firms to prepare for its new paperless filing requirements. That's not all that difficult: It requires a small investment in the Adobe Acrobat software, which enables a user to convert word processing documents into PDFs. But the real challenge comes with the filing of exhibits and images, which must be scanned into digital form.

Under Cherry's guidance, the task force used the collective bargaining strength of the association to negotiate discounted lease agreements on high-speed scanners for members who needed them. The task force recommended a Panasonic DP-3520, which copies, prints and scans about 35 pages a minute with a monthly lease price of $240 a month.

"We did some due diligence and thought this was the best deal," he says. "(Wilson Jaffer is) in the process of getting one of those high-speed scanners. It's essential for every law office."

In Cherry's opinion, it's not necessary for a small law firm to buy expensive equipment, such as a dedicated server that serves as the computer network's central storage unit. "With a small firm, you don't need a single server," he says. "You can have several workstations. You can have (and network to) a 'fat client,' the computer with the largest hard drive, for storage."

This also brings Cherry to an important technological point that he thinks some people tend to downplay. That's the discipline it takes to maintain the equipment, such as optimizing the operating system, daily backing up the data or maintaining an archival system. "With any technology you have to have the business process and the discipline in the office," he says. "Even with the greatest technology, without the discipline, all you have is a bunch of hardware."

Realistic goals

Such discipline also is necessary when it comes to the hype over the long-anticipated "paperless office," says Carol Hague, chief operating officer at Clearwater's Johnson Pope Bokor Ruppel & Burns LLP.

"We have paperless solutions in place, but our short-term goal is not to become paperless," she says. "That's our long-term goal. Our short-term goal is to painlessly integrate the paperless solutions. We've been very successful in doing that. It's completely changed the way we work."

About two years ago, Hague says, the 36-member firm came up with a solution to link its central computing system in Clearwater with its Tampa office. It installed a Citrix Metaframe server and linked the two offices through a dedicated broadband communications line. But the firm's attorneys also may access the operating system from anywhere via the Internet.

Hague wouldn't discuss the cost of such technology. But she talked about the difference between the thin-client operating system Johnson Pope uses vs. the more traditional network of personal computers. Thin clients are desktop computer terminals, without internal storage systems, linked to a central computer server.

For instance, Hague says, it costs from $800 to $1,000 or so for a good desktop personal computer. On the other hand, the thin client terminals cost from $300 to $400.

"You can only use (the thin clients) internally, but it's a great cost saver," Hague says.

This critical attention to price and functionality also underscores the process Hague used to evaluate high-speed copiers/scanners.

"I will tell you the discrete cost that takes everybody by surprise is on the server side," she says. "You have to have the (computer) memory and the horse power (processing speed) to implement a scanning solution."

It took her almost a year of research to decide on a Cannon Image Runner scanner that uses the eCopy software for document management. Employees can send e-mails directly from the scanning workstation.

"I really started looking strictly at scanners, the bare bones scanning solutions, and quickly decided that (the price) was going to be a large number," she says. "By the time you combine the server and the scanning equipment, it was probably going to be in the $40,000 range. I decided that was not really a cost-effective solution for us."

To overcome the price hurdle, Hague waited for the leases to expire on some of the firm's basic photocopy machines.

"We waited until we had some copiers whose leases were terminating, and we actually got better technology with scanning solutions at a lesser lease rate than the old copiers," she said.

Client needs

Over the past year, Todd Rains, administrator at Sarasota's Abel Band Russell Collier Pitchford & Gordon Chartered, drafted a five-year technology plan and implemented it. This is how he summarizes the ultimate goal of the 33-member law firm: "The investment in technology is driven by the needs of our clients," he says.

Rains, too, wouldn't talk about the firm's investment costs. "We really haven't broken it down as investment cost per attorney," he says.

"I can certainly put a dollar figure on the cost. But the firm has been reluctant to share that dollars and cents. When it comes to being able to provide top-notch, fast service to our clients, we've not been reluctant to make the investment for the long-term."

The firm uses a Microsoft Windows 2000 file server, Microsoft Exchange 2000 server for e-mail and a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 for backend database purposes. Earlier this year, the firm installed a BlackBerry Enterprise server, acquired 35 handheld units and linked that communications system to the Internet through a Citrix Metaframe server.

"The most significant advancements we've made is with the BlackBerry and Citrix servers, which allows all of our attorneys to basically have 24/7 access to clients and client information," Rains says. "The great thing about the enterprise server it allows real time access to the contacts, calendars and obviously the technologically savvy clients who want to contact their attorneys at any time."

This system already has paid a wealth of dividends, Rains says.

"We had a case in point where one of our attorneys in mediation needed specific case law to present to a mediator," he says. "(The legal staff was) able to pull it up here in the office, save it as a document and e-mail it to the attorney in mediation, and we were able to provide that to the mediator to make a ruling.

"In the old days, that would require taking a break, getting on the phone and asking them to fax it over," he adds. "This system allows the transaction to take place in a matter of minutes rather than hours."

Just as most of the other law firms, Abel Band has invested in high-speed copiers. But the firm purchased a Kyocera Mita model as an all-in-one copier, scanner and printer. To manage documents scanned, copied or created, the firm purchased a software program known as PCDocs and sold by Hummingbird Ltd.

"Our technology needs are examined at least annually, or as needed," Rains says. "Our goal is to try to maintain the system to be current and not more than two versions behind a software package. It's a compatibility issue. To make sure we're current, we evaluate it frequently as it relates to practice needs."