As a law firm that specialises in advising IT companies, one might expect Masons to be the kind of practice that focuses its resources on procurement of the latest gadgets and bleeding-edge software. But far from it. The main focus of the firm’s IT department – for the past four years led by IT director Kevin Connell – has been on developing a highly resilient infrastructure, something that a number of law firms have ignored.
Connell arrived at Masons intent on pursuing a ‘best-of-breed’ strategy and his first move was to migrate the firm’s e-mail system to Microsoft Exchange 5.5 – followed by the installation of iManage as a firm-wide document and content management platform. “We always had one eye on where iManage could take us in terms of client extranets, knowledge management (KM) and intranet development,” Connell says.
