IT MANAGEMENT: Our IT friends in the North

Pinsent Curtis
Colin Smith, IT director at Pinsent Curtis, has been at the firm since 1991. “I came from a purely IT background. I had done programming and technical support for companies such as ICL and software houses.” After working on the sales side, he decided to move to a more professional environment. He judged that IT policies within law firms had not been fully formulated, which meant he could have some input.
Smith spoke to a couple of law firms and realised that their IT strategy was determined by senior partners. “Legal-specific software houses were reactive, and there was no real moulding of strategy,” he says. Smith discovered he could make his views heard because IT professionals within law firms have a different set of skills from lawyers. “You can devise an IT strategy that the company can grow with, but senior management needs to be supportive,” Smith says.
“You have to sell yourself, and keep a positive frame of mind. You also have to align yourself with various partners, and understand the politics of the organisation.”
Smith believes there is a range of standard IT support systems that national firms need. “Inter-office communication is critical,” he says. Intranet, extranets and e-mail can all be used. “E-mail was the easiest to install. It took off in the firm about four years ago. Now 98% of the staff use it.”
Smith acknowledges that partners are funding IT improvements out of their own pockets. During the last two years, management of the IT budget has become very specific, he says. “I have to make a strategic case, although on-going maintenance is underwritten. Projects must have business benefits, a time frame and be assessed for the training that they might involve.”
Another critical aspect of IT is project management, he says. “For example, Pinsent Curtis has introduced a Lotus Notes package specified for its own use. I have always steered clear of in-house development. I prefer to customise from off the shelf.”
There have been a few major issues that the IT department has had to deal with in the last 18 months. “We have undertaken major tasks such as replacing the practice management system, putting electronic time entry on every lawyer’s desk and dealing with Y2K,” Smith explains. “The key has been forming working practice groups and following a laid down method for each new programme.”
The one area that tends to be overlooked is the impact on working practices, Smith says. “Because we have spent two years educating lawyers in IT, it is easy to miss the need to maintain the quality of support.”
As the emphasis shifts to client needs, a bigger team is on the agenda. “We have the right broad skills,” he says. “Now we are recruiting individuals with specific skills. We are keen to move into information services for example, which will deliver research material to the desk for lawyers.”
“We are also looking at electronic packaging of legal expertise. Our own house is in order and our lawyers are comfortable with technology. But we have to keep drip-feeding training, and we need to keep assessing it. We do a lot of floor walking to see how people are coping.”

DLA
Daniel Pullock, IT director at DLA, started his career in management consultancy. With a PPE degree from Oxford he joined Andersen Consulting from university and says they put emphasis on technical skills. He spent several years consulting to companies such as Shell and National Power, before deciding he wanted broader experience.
In 1994, Pullock joined Dibb Lupton Alsop (DLA) to develop a case management system for the firm. The legal sector was just getting to grips with developing bespoke systems for internal use.
The IT department grew rapidly on the back of firm growth. “In 1995 there were 900 people in the firm, now there are 2,200. I built an IT capability from scratch. I used to describe it as a city with the infrastructure of a village. Now we have built the infrastructure for a city,” Pullock says.
All law firms need practice management systems, including time recording and billing systems tailored to their needs. Pullock regards off-the-shelf software systems as “toolkits” that can be modified.
“In the mid-1990s, people thought there were loads of areas where case management systems could be adapted,” Pullock says. But, unless a law firm wants to re-engineer its entire business, the strategy could not work. For personal injury case management alone, “it was a two-year project to get the system live”, Pullock explains. By that time, he was involved in much wider systems development and management, including banking litigation, motor recovery and debt collection.
“The partnership looks to you to identify requirements and resources and to make decisions. They either trust you, or sack you if it does not work,” Pullock says. He adds that lawyers accept they do not know about IT, so he takes charge of the firm’s IT strategy.
The IT agenda was pretty much set in the 1990s, Pullock says. “It involved word processing, document management, e-mail, practice management and case management. Lots of firms spent the ’90s ticking boxes and getting IT installed. At DLA, the process was productivity based.”
The agenda is now changing. “The whole thrust is to close the gap between the potential of individuals, and what the technology can do for them.” This involves a huge amount of training. “In the last 18 months, we have doubled the size of the IT training team. We have a curriculum and an established competence level for each level of fee earner.”
People have reacted well, Pullock says. Clients are often asking the law firm to use certain technology, such as extranets, and without the training, there is the danger that the client will know more than the lawyers.
DLA has to construct programmes with the capability to do business for clients, Pullock says. “We have won lots of pitches because of technology.” But he is aware that the challenge is how best to apply the technology. Only recently has the IT sector managed to attract good professionals in law firms, says Pullock. “Generally, I do not recruit people from within the legal sector,” he explains. “You get a fresher approach by bringing people in from other areas, such as financial services.”
Another inhibitor to new developments within the firm is that its reach is increasingly global. When the firm opens a new office, for example, in Hong Kong, the IT department has to deliver communications seamlessly. “Because clients want facilities in different languages, this adds to the complexity of the IT department’s work.” Pullock says. Pullock has been looking into voice recognition software, but thinks it might be a blind alley. There are difficulties with accuracy and because the way people work does not just involve a stream of words, he says. DLA will be looking at “pushing the envelope on e-business”, Pullock reveals. “We want to deliver databases online to clients – bringing e-businesses to services in a different way.” The firm provides a database on medical experts to clients, which is getting about 300,000 hits a year.
“We are getting better at what we are doing. The demands are increasing all the time.” Pullock says his job is changing too. “I spend 10%-15% of my time exploring business opportunities or on advisory work with clients.”