Bulworth

I know that this is a legal systems blog but I just saw a great movie that I have to share with you.

Bulworth, written, directed and acted by Warren Beatty. A black comedy and satire, beautifully played out with a real political sting. A bravura piece of film making. Well, for Hollywood anyway. Well done Warren, yeah hup. Five stars.

Debt recovery specialists Results Legal live with Web Collaborator

Results Legal is an innovative and specialist law firm, dealing purely in debt recovery, insolvency law and commercial disputes. With offices around Australia the firm is quickly making a name for itself as one of the leading providers of these specialist services in the country.

Founder and Managing Director Karl Hill puts the business’ success down to a focus on quality of service, proactive file management and effective internal systems, meaning the firm maintains a clear and competitive fee structure.

“Our goal was to take all of the stereotypes and frustrations associated with law firms and improve on them. Faster time frames, clearer costs and better communication” says Hill.

Key in dealing with Results Legal’s clients is the use of Red Rain’s Web Collaborator system.

“We wanted to be able to provide our customers with complete transparency into all the work that we do for them and do it 24/7. Web Collaborator has been fantastic for this. The clients love it” says Hill.

“Our view is that the client should be able to, at any point in time, see the latest information about their matters and we work diligently to keep this up to date in our internal LEAP system, as a part of our quality processes. Web Collaborator then knows the change has been made and makes it available to the client” says Hill.

The firm manages the whole process through the LEAP application. They set up an email address as a “web user” and then attach it to a matter or matters. Web Collaborator recognises that this has happened and, the very first time, emails the user a log on and password. It also extracts the matter information and designated documents and synchs them into the cloud. The user then logs on and they can send see the information in a completely secure environment. Web Collaborator then monitors for new matters and new information to be published.

“The beauty of the tool is there is no need to worry about setting up and managing complex web servers and security and the like. We don’t want to worry about technology, we want to concentrate on looking after our clients and being the best lawyers we can be in our chosen field” says Hill.

Another powerful feature is the ability to publish file notes and receive instructions back from the customer that are automatically posted to the database and immediately emailed to the applicable lawyers and staff members within the firm.

“We have found that customers are using this facility extensively and it has made the entire interaction process easier and simpler for all parties” says Hill.

Overall Results have seen an excellent return from their investment and the software is now a key part of their business offering.

“We are very happy with what we have been able to achieve with the system and dealing with Red Rain has been an enjoyable experience. They are professional, know their stuff and the quality of the software is fantastic”.

Taking a Law Firm to the Cloud

We did a “cloud” project for a client a few years ago that I didn’t realise was a cloud project at the time. The firm was a 45 person legal practice with offices in 2 of Australia’s capital cities. We had done a lot of work with their application systems and brought a lot of productivity improvements in the previous year or so but now the hardware infrastructure was starting to creak at the seams.

At the same of the lease for one of the offices was expiring and there was the potential to rationalise office space, given that headcount had been lowered from the abovementioned improvements in business systems.

To set the scene, the existing hardware infrastructure was in a bit of a mess.

Firstly, the servers had been replaced and virtualised a few years earlier but all that had been done was mapping the previous physical servers into a virtual environment rather than restructuring to a more efficient approach.

The result was that we were running out of space on the main production servers even though there was plenty of space available on the SAN. Fixing it meant a reasonably large project engaging consultants as we didn’t have this type of expertise in house. On top of this the Citrix environment that was in place for one of the offices was very old and creating issues that were addressed in the current version however this was a project in itself as well.

Secondly, while a standard operating environment for the desktop was ostensibly in place, it wasn’t really effective and, as we provided more integrations and productivity tools for the lawyers, we found that we were having to go to each PC to load software. This was because different environments and policies on different machines had evolved over the years. What the user really noticed however was the 1-2 minutes that it took the computer to load once they turned it on in the morning. Once more a sizeable project was required to fix this.

Thirdly, a firm of this size can’t afford to have a big IT department but still have a wide range of technologies to look after. Having all the skills and knowledge in one or two people is a) difficult to achieve, and b) risky, and hence costly, when one of those people moves on for whatever reason.

The result of all this was that we had to do something and our company was commissioned to document requirements and put an RFI to the market place to assess what was available. This was sent to 8 organisations: outsourced management providers (with our servers still in house), companies hosting of our servers through a managed facility as well as Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) or cloud providers (but we didn’t know that’s what they were at the time!).

Interestingly, two firms said they wouldn’t be responding and another said they would be proposing because they were such a great fit, but then didn’t. These companies obviously all had too much work in the middle of the GFC!

In the end we chose one of the IAAS providers as the best fit for our needs. The solution is a standard desktop delivered by a Citrix client with all server infrastructure existing somewhere else (actually data centres in Melbourne and Brisbane). We don’t have our own servers but effectively rent a “slice” of the infrastructure a larger data centre.

Access in the office is through a small LAN that connects via a land line. Out of the office access to the same desktop occurs through Citrix web access. Microsoft licensing, eg. the operating system, Office, Exchange, Sharepoint, SQLServer, etc… is bundled as a part of the monthly cost. Core business applications are installed on the servers and delivered via the desktop.

The business case for the approach was compelling and the saving we saw included:

• Computer room costs – floor space, air conditioning, electricity
• Depreciation costs on the capital equipment: servers, racks, etc…
• Our corporate Microsoft licensing agreement
• ISDN line costs between the 2 offices
• 1.5 heads in staff costs.

In all we calculated the cost savings at approximately $250,000 per annum, a sizeable chunk of cash for the partners of a small firm. With the new environment having been in place for a year and a half, I can confirm that those savings have fundamentally been achieved.

Of course, one consideration for the firm was the risk involved and the partnership was justifiably nervous. Our first port of call was our PI insurance provider and there was a small increase in the premium as a result but nothing of a tangible nature. Next we researched, however we couldn’t find any similarly sized law firm in Australia that had gone down this path. The provider did give us two chartered accounting firms as references and discussions with them proved that they had had a positive experience (and their environment was more complex than ours) and this was some comfort.

In the end, our principal concern was in the provider’s continuing existence and we took some solace that they were a listed company, although that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot these days. The basic view we took was that this was an emerging technology and that this was where the market would be going. We figured that the likely scenario was that the provider would be acquired by a bigger organisation as the market rationalised and this is indeed what happened 12 months later.

So the firm bit the bullet and signed up. A pretty gutsy decision looking back and getting it all happening did have its issues but now it is all settled in they are seeing the benefits, and not just the financial ones above. But that’s a another blog!!

Press Release: Web Access for LEAP Customers

Web Collaborator allows LEAP Office users to provide their clients with access to defined matter information and associated documents via the Internet. Clients can also send instructions and notes via Web Collaborator that are seamlessly loaded into the LEAP database, with the practitioner involved automatically notified by email.

The software is the first application in Australia to be built for the legal profession using the Microsoft Azure platform for delivery via the cloud. The client simply installs the Web Collaborator service on their LEAP server and data is published via the software to a secure, robust and scalable environment that ensures optimal performance for the firm’s clients. No additional investment in infrastructure is required.

 “Web Collaborator allows LEAP customers to provide the same type of web access capability that Australia’s largest law firms provide their clients. In today’s demanding market, the software provides a competitive advantage to the firm by giving the client immediate access to documents, status and the information about their matters without the firm needing capital investment or changes to their business processes” stated Stephen Butler, a Director of Red Rain. “Not only is customer service improved but costly interruptions from telephone calls can be avoided” he added.

The software is completely integrated with LEAP Office and the Red Rain development team have been working closely with LEAP software engineers over the past 12 months to ensure that a robust, complete and seamlessly integrated utility is available to meet customer needs.

“We are delighted to have been working with Red Rain on the creation of this new module for the publishing of LEAP data to the web. We believe that Web Collaborator is an important add on to our offering to the market place and adds further value with to our overall solution for our customers” said Richard Hugo-Hamman, Managing Director of LEAP Legal Software.

Red Rain’s plans are to further enhance the product based on initial feedback from first customers and interested parties and then extend the technology to create new modules for lawyer access.

“Now that we have built the fundamental architecture for publishing to the web with the Azure platform we have many ideas for the access of information for lawyers and are currently investigating what is possible with tablets and other mobile platforms” added Butler.


http://www.redraincorp.com/webcollaborator.html

Join me on Twitter at @sbutler59

Join me on Twitter at @sbutler59