Bristol firms’ commitment to IT and innovation is the envy of many IT directors at larger London-based firms. Kieran Flatt looks at the IT strategies of three of Bristol’s leading firms and finds that, in terms of IT investment, they are giving the City a run for its money
Osborne Clarke, the biggest law firm in the west of England, is heavily into technology and dedicated to the quest for continuous improvement. “I would describe the firm’s approach as forthright, aggressive, flexible and client-oriented,” says Nathan Hayes, head of IT. “A strong vision for the future makes it easier to introduce changes. There are always politics involved with any IT development because of technology’s potential to change the working culture.”
At Osbornes, IT is seen as an important element of a broader drive for innovation, rather than as a separate
function in its own right.
The firm has created a department responsible for change and progress, dubbed the ’21C team’, which
provides overall steerage and global strategy.
“The team is very business-focused and one of its main functions is to examine best practice from other sectors,” Hayes says.
Current topics to be examined are reporting systems and what he terms “the subjective nature of service delivery”. Hayes is leading an ambitious project that he says will promote a culture within the firm where knowledge is highly valued. The initiative involves setting up document and knowledge management systems and a portal-style interface on a standard iManage platform. Hayes’ team is currently halfway through the implementation phase.
According to Hayes, the outstanding features of iManage are its ability to integrate with other systems, the product’s flexibility and ease of configuration. He says he does not hold with the notion of heavily customising the generic package because it would make further development more difficult. “We will, no doubt, use iManage as the basis for our intranet portal,” he says.
“But on the extranet side no single product is suitable, so we will be packaging different portals into one client extranet.”
At Osbornes, the success of product rollouts is measured by the time taken for the firm to see a return on the investment. “Managing the integration of new systems is a difficult task,” Hayes says. “There must be an early payback because clients’ expectations change.”
He admits to feeling strongly opposed to developing in-house applications. “We used to do it,” he says, “but the speed of delivery and the quality were below par.” Success in this arena is contingent on the size of a firm, Hayes explains.
He says the firm has not yet reached sufficient size to support an internal development team. Nevertheless, he leads 22 full-time support staff – to the envy, no doubt, of many IT directors in comparably large London-based firms.
“This demonstrates the senior partners’ commitment to IT,” he says. Hayes describes the firm as “very much a Microsoft house”. The firm’s predilection for Microsoft
products – it has just upgraded its Microsoft Office
applications – is based on the full integration of core
applications and the software giant’s track record of cheap and consistent service. “Functionality matters,” Hayes says.
Using generic applications does not mean Osbornes is short on innovation. One of its most progressive initiatives is a system that enables fee earners to listen to their e-mail remotely on their mobile ‘phones.
Hayes says the firm is considering integrating this with a digital dictation package to enable users to have documents created remotely, at all hours, via a skeleton secretarial staff operating around the clock.
Osbornes’ top priority is its impending move from its two office blocks facing each other across a leafy park in the city centre – a stone’s throw away from its rivals – to a brand new complex next to Temple Meads station. Hayes is running a number of product trials in preparation for the move, which he sees as a major opportunity to further streamline and upgrade the firm’s IT capability.
Burges Salmon, Bristol’s number two firm in terms of size and revenue, is not one to head the pack when it comes to IT solutions, but it is no dinosaur either, insists Iain Hepburn, the firm’s IT director. Instead it plays a waiting game to determine the optimal moment to adopt an IT application – which usually involves closely monitoring those ahead of the pack.
Hepburn describes the firm as being “at the cerebral end of the spectrum”. Citing 15% growth per year since
he joined four years ago, the firm’s middle-of-the-road IT strategy – letting others do the testing – seems to have worked so far, but Hepburn admits that, as the pace of change accelerates, fortune may well start to favour the early adopters.
One of the factors in Burges Salmon’s changing approach to IT, according to Hepburn, is the constant trickle of top-performing lawyers fleeing the capital in search of a better quality of life in the West Country. “We never have much of a problem persuading people to relocate,” he says. Many newcomers bring with them a familiarity with IT systems that helps Hepburn build a strong case for increasing the firm’s investment in new technology.
One major initiative at Burges Salmon is what Hepburn refers to as ‘long reach’. “We have never had many mobile or remote users, but with the new policy things are starting to change,” he says. The firm is running a pilot programme in which 22 lawyers across all departments are testing a remote working facility. Hepburn is careful to address the inherent security pitfalls that remote working and laptop computers can bring. “There is a fine line between security and user-friendliness,” he says, warning that frustration ensuing from tortuous encryption procedures can kill users’ enthusiasm for an application to the extent that the project may fail.
Usability is one of the reasons Burges Salmon recently purchased an iManage content management system. Unlike many other firms of a comparable size – especially in the capital – Burges Salmon had no previous experience with knowledge management (KM) solutions. “I am very pleased with the product, but we are coming from a position of having to start from nothing, so it is vital we get the training right,” Hepburn says, adding that the firm brought in an external KM consultant to ensure that the rollout goes smoothly. The team has decided to focus initially on integrating the system with standard desktop functions such as Outlook Express and Word, before concentrating on the system’s client-collaboration function, which some of its clients, such as Orange, the mobile telecommunications company, are keen to exploit. “The dealroom element of iManage is something we are very keen to develop,” Hepburn says. The other persuading factor in Burges Salmon’s adoption of iManage was the perceived resilience of its three-tier system. “The way the system is designed suggests that it will be able to handle problems better,” says Hepburn, who opted for the system in preference to Docs.
Despite a good track record in terms of expansion, Burges Salmon is determined to remain a Bristol-focused firm. With increased size has come the need to conduct some of the firm’s business in London, but Burges Salmon has taken an unstaffed suite of meeting rooms rather than a complete City office. Hepburn sees this as evidence of the firm’s reluctance to dilute the power base of its Bristol stronghold.
In a further move to increase the status of its information support team Burges Salmon is currently angling for a director of know-how to join the executive board. Candidates must have a legal background in the practice of law.
Bevan Ashford prides itself on the currency of its knowledge systems. It was one of the first firms in the region to install a dedicated intranet system four years ago. “The biggest issue is keeping the information up-to-date,” says Mike Robinson, director of IT. Even now that the new Hummingbird enterprise information portal (EIP) is running smoothly, supported by a Fulcrum knowledge management system, and all fee earners have easy access to a dazzling array of externally provided data, Robinson says 80% of the information used on the intranet is internally generated. “The reason I chose Fulcrum is that it fitted into the way we work, it looked good and there was a lot of functionality there,” Robinson says.
“One of the functions everyone loves is that you can summarise a complex document with one mouse click,” Robinson says of the Hummingbird system. Before Bevan Ashford bought the product, Robinson arranged for the in-house legal support team to summarise some legal documents with a view to comparing their output to that of Fulcrum. “The main points picked up by the program were almost exactly the same as those picked up by the professional support team,” he says. “Another strength of Fulcrum is that it can look for documents with similar formats as well as for words and topics. It is a very powerful, very clever and very useful piece of software.”
“The results are not always perfect, but it performs a
30-minute task in seconds,” says Heather Robinson, head of information services. “A summary would read better if a human being had written it but all you want is to know what the document is about, so it is perfectly adequate.” She says the summary function is very useful to fee earners when they have to explain a complex and lengthy document to clients over the telephone. “It helps you to put what they need to know into one sentence,” she says.
The firm is using its new portal to encourage home and mobile working. According to Robinson, about 60 to 70 people have access at home to anything they would have on the desktop of their PC in the office. One of the other main benefits the Robinsons expect Bevan Ashford to reap is a reduction in IT-related training costs. “In the past we have had to train people to use a large number of different products, but with the portal as a single entry point we have been able to cut the cost and time devoted to training,” Heather Robinson says.
Bevan Ashford has rolled out the standard, off-the-shelf product without modifications, but it runs in conjunction with the firm’s own knowledge map, which was produced in-house. “As a general rule, we tend to customise everything to suit Bevan Ashford,” Robinson explains. “But in this instance we thought it looked pretty good. We did not want it to do anything more, although it could be made a bit prettier and slightly more user-friendly in certain places.” He decided to use it for a year and customise it once he had had time to digest the feedback from users on how they would like it to be modified.
Bevan Ashford has been downloading case and financial information to some clients, in some form or other, for the past eight years.
Bringing the firm up to date, Robinson is in the process of setting up individual client extranets. “This year more and more clients are expecting us to have knowledge management in place and are expecting to be given access to it via an extranet facility,” he says. So far Bevan Ashford has one live extranet handling work for a client. Robinson says he intends to use it as a test bed for the development of collaborative facilities for other clients.
With a view to easing the administrative burden inherent in managing extranet sites, Robinson is looking at a product called iChange from Novell, a web-based application with a secure log-in, single sign-on. “It is a bit like a portal, really,” he says. “It enables you to access applications, such as your diary, or project plans.”
Ever the pragmatist, Heather Robinson is careful to balance her enthusiasm for the portal interface as a move towards a paperless office environment with a down-to-earth view of the extent to which lawyers will be prepared to change their working culture. “I believe this is the way forward, but even though I am very committed to technology, I do not think we will see a paperless office in my lifetime,” she says. “Sadly, when our users get the information, they tend to print it off before reading it. The problem is, that piece of paper becomes out of date the moment the document is printed.”
