Between them they spend a cool £15m a year on technology.
The magic circle firms have woken up to the need to be technologically ahead if they are to gain a competitive edge over their rivals. Adrienne Margolis talks to the men at the cutting edge of legal IT
Clifford Chance
A spell at GCHQ might not be the obvious background for an IT director, but such an intriguing experience prepared Clifford Chance’s (CC) top IT guy for the top legal assignment to date: the merger of the century. Appointed last August as director of systems integration, Brian Collins had the unique task of literally putting the merger together.
The brief: amalgamating the information and communications systems of the expanded firm in the lead-up to and following the merger with Rogers & Wells in the US as well as preparing for the later merger with Puender Volhard Weber & Axster in Germany.
It was a delicate task and one that demanded considerable technical, managerial and cultural skills., and the firm needed someone who knew what it was about.
Having worked with CC since February 1998, initially on information security, then on project, document and
information management, Collins was ideally placed to assist when, in the summer of 1999, CC signed the deal to merge with Rogers & Wells.
Having also worked with management consultants KPMG in the early 1990s, Collins says “I knew something about the dynamics and politics of partnership”.
And the Bond factor certainly helped. Running a global operation as technical director at GCHQ was an excellent platform for a merger that would be a first. “The job was about continually integrating global systems,” he recalls of his time at GCHQ.
Collins was attracted to the CC post because of the level at which the firm pitched the job.
“The director of systems is immediately under the CEO and in daily contact with the CEO and chairman. It puts the role higher than anywhere else I have worked, except GCHQ. I felt it was where it ought to be.”
The business is interested in exploiting information systems to the full; managing documents and finances is key. Collins sees his role as trying to make internal operations more effective. There is no question over the resources. “The money is there if we need it – and we may also be able to increase efficiency,” he says.
Dealing with demands from clients for online services is another aspect of the job. “We have to make sure we do not over-reach ourselves. By focusing on the delivery of infrastructure, we are trying to take a measured approach,” he says.
Collins says he relies on his business colleagues in the law firm to help decide the priorities for IT. “We want to move at a pace commensurate with our ability to deliver,” he stresses. Developments need to take the merger into account, too. Systems co-exist, but it will take another year before there is uniformity.
“CC has 200 people working on IT, mainly in London. We also have IT staff based in New York, Frankfurt and Hong Kong. We have found that some offices have been operating with more sophisticated features than others, and that systems do not work together automatically. With e-mail, for example, we have achieved interoperability. But we have just mounted a global project to unify the e-mail system, which should be in place by May.”
Collins’ approach is to buy off the shelf as much as possible. “But if there is a major issue for compliance or
differentiation, say with tax laws or accounting systems, we develop our own systems, For example, we operate in 20
currencies, and the inter-relationship is complicated,” he says.
“We do have people capable of developing customised solutions, but all development is focused against well-defined objectives.” These objectives can be to deliver facilities that clients have requested.
The firm developed its Fruitnet website to help with deal management involved in ‘Project Fruit’ – a buy-out covering 19 jurisdictions. Fruitnet enables documents to be stored and distributed rapidly. These can be accessed by anyone around the world who is working on the deal. It is now being made more widely available to clients.
As the pace of change in IT quickens, Collins envisages lawyers being able to manipulate an increasing amount of information from their desktops. “We need to make it easier and more intuitive, not just what software package suppliers provide,” he says.
What differentiates CC and its IT products from its competitors? “People come to us because of the quality of our lawyers, not because they need technical features, which we can deliver. If someone thinks they are buying technical wizardry, they have a problem. As always, IT is the enabler.”
