Cover Story

A Change in Business Dynamics

Law firm finds a powerful, scalable, flexible, secure, non-disruptive and cost-effective communications solution.

In many respects, the law firm of Bowman and Brooke LLP typifies the successful traditional business. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Bowman and Brooke is one of America's leading trial firms, specializing in defending product liability cases. The firm's reputation for excellence, and helping its clients win in the courtroom, has attracted a blue chip client list that includes such Fortune 500 organizations as General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Toyota, Polaris and Ecolab.

To serve its clients, Bowman and Brooke maintains several core practice groups that are experts in the areas of product liability, construction defect, patent infringement, consumer warranty, toxic torts and commercial litigation. The firm maintains a staff of more than 450–including about 150 attorneys–that is based out of offices in Detroit, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Richmond and San Jose, in addition to Minneapolis.

With clients around the globe and legal experts and support staff spread throughout the country, properly managing its distributed environment has always been a challenge for the firm. To best serve its clients, Bowman and Brooke organizes defense teams not based on the location of the client or its office, but on the specific domain expertise of its attorneys, paralegals, researchers and support staff. Lawyers in Minneapolis, for example, can be working on a case with colleagues in Richmond, Detroit and other locations.

On top of this, taking depositions, interviewing witnesses and experts and, of course, conducting trials take staff all over the world, significantly complicating Bowman and Brooke's day-to-day operations.

"In terms of delivering the best attributes of IP telephony, we were convinced that this was clearly the best path forward for the firm."

"The concept of providing a new set of communications tools to ensure that our firm's associates remain connected was gaining momentum among the partners," recalls Michael Cammack, Bowman and Brooke's chief information officer. "Plus, we found ourselves moving our headquarters to a new location in Minneapolis. This combination of expansion, along with a change in business dynamics, reinforced our need to find a partner that could provide a solution that was powerful, scalable, flexible, secure, non-disruptive and, certainly, cost-effective.

"We knew what we wanted. It was just a question of identifying the right partner that understood–and could deliver–what we were looking for."

According to Cammack, Bowman and Brooke had three primary technology objectives. "From the outset, we looked for a solution that provided robust IP trunking capabilities that would help the firm reduce long-distance toll charges," he says. "We also wanted a system that would allow our IT staff to administer all moves, adds and changes, so we did not have to rely on outside technicians and pricey service calls.

"The third consideration was to use a platform that had the potential to integrate what we perceived as the next generation of powerful business applications, like conferencing, collaboration and presence capabilities. Of all the vendors we looked at, only Mitel, with their partner, Convergent Solutions Group, was able to meet all of these requirements."

FORKLIFT UPGRADE NOT NECESSARY

"One of their prerequisites was to preserve as much of their existing infrastructure as possible, such as cabling and phones," offers Doug Splinter, chief technology officer for Convergent. "Other vendors required Bowman and Brooke to rip out their infrastructure, which is not only expensive, but is disruptive to the customer's daily routine."

To help Bowman and Brooke get the most out of voice-over-IP technology, Convergent suggested a comprehensive solution, based on the Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP), a system that can scale from 10 to 65,000 users. Convergent also recommended that Bowman and Brooke integrate several Mitel IP-powered applications to enhance the firm's business processes.

Among these were the Mitel Teleworker solution to extend the ICP's features to remote users, and the Mitel Mobile Extension application, which simultaneously routes calls made to the office to wherever the user happens to be, including remote office, home office, mobile or wireless devices.

"Seamless communication is crucial to our firm's success," explains Cammack. "Our attorneys need to be in constant contact with other associates, the support staff and, of course, clients, regardless of where these people are. We were convinced that the tools that Mitel offered would not only improve productivity but would also reduce operational costs."

To round out the solution and further improve communication between remote locations and mobile workers, Convergent recommended that Bowman and Brooke deploy Microsoft's Live Communications Server (LCS) 2005, which, via Mitel's Live Business Gateway, was integrated with the Mitel 3300 ICP system.

"We believed that the combination of Mitel technology and Microsoft would give Bowman and Brooke a number of features that would translate into practical business benefits," recalls Splinter. "In terms of delivering the best attributes of IP telephony, such as streamlining communication with remote employees, but also leveraging the cost-efficiencies of converging voice and data communications into Bowman and Brooke's infrastructure, we were convinced that this was clearly the best path forward for the firm."

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

According to Cammack, there were other criteria that needed to be addressed before the solution could go live.

"As one might expect, our firm is typically engaged in very sensitive and quite proprietary matters," he notes. "Network security, and the communication process as a whole, can never be compromised. We needed to be comfortable that both the Mitel and Microsoft technology would be completely secure.

"Redundancy was equally important," he adds. "With offices in the Midwest, Southwest and California, our firm could be prone to outages due to weather and other natural occurrences. We needed to ensure that communications would remain live even though an office or the wide area network might be impacted."

The 3300 ICP delivers high reliability and performance through both hardware redundancy and software resiliency. In addition, its distributed architecture allows administrators to manage the system remotely through an intuitive Web interface.

Among the IP-powered applications that Bowman and Brooke rely on is Mitel's Teleworker solution, which enables users to make secure and encrypted IP phone calls from their home office, remote office or other location by extending the features and functionality of an office telephone over a broadband connection. As a result, team members remain in contact with colleagues, customers and suppliers, regardless of geography.

"We have many people within the firm, from virtually every department, that regularly use the Teleworker solution," relates Cammack. "It ensures that our staff can utilize our core PBX features and services, although they may be off premises. We even have some of our senior partners regularly use the application from home, our remote offices and when on the road."

Another IP application that Bowman and Brooke routinely uses is Mitel Mobile Extension, a simple-to-use application for single-number and PBX feature access in both the enterprise and mobile networks. Through the application, calls can be routed transparently to the user's cellular phone, ensuring that important calls are handled promptly and efficiently. The application also delivers a number of important PBX functions, such as call transfer and call on hold.

"Our entire organization relies on mobile partners and associates to remain in touch and productive wherever they may be," says Cammack. "Mitel Mobile Extension has been a tremendous resource for staff members to ensure that clients, subject-matter experts and staff have the ability to reach them virtually anywhere, just by dialing their office extension."

COLLABORATION TOOLS ADDED

The firm then opted to integrate Microsoft's suite of collaboration and rich media solutions to further enhance communications. At first, Bowman and Brooke rolled out Microsoft Office LCS 2005, primarily as a resource for its IT department.

"We found LCS 2005 to be very effective for our department," says Cammack. "The presence-management capability enables the staff to see our availability in real time, and contact us via e-mail, voice or instant message should a problem arise. The application gives us the ability to perform a number of tasks remotely, like share documents and conduct training sessions via Web conference."

Last year, Bowman and Brooke chose to integrate Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 into its network. With Mitel Live Business Gateway, Bowman and Brooke has improved access to presence information, collaboration and conferencing tools, plus hooks directly into Microsoft Office products for greater productivity and efficiency either within Bowman and Brooke offices or with partners or suppliers.

Cammack describes how the application helps improve his own interactions with colleagues and associates. "Like many typical office workers, I may get a message from a member of staff or a partner asking for assistance in resolving a problem. Using traditional technology, they'd have to send me an e-mail or leave a voice message and then wait for a response. Now, we can seamlessly escalate our collaborative efforts to real-time communications through a number of tools.

"Office Communications Server 2007's presence-management capabilities enable our staff and associates to instantly see my status and determine whether I, or another available staff member, can best be reached via instant messaging, e-mail or voice communications, so our ability to respond to a situation improves. And when it's appropriate, we have the ability to escalate our interactions in more depth.

"We can instantly launch an audio or Web conference call if we need to include another party in our conversation," he continues. "And, we can share documents, such as Word files, Excel spreadsheets and other materials in real time. And all of this can be accomplished through a single portal on the desktop that works together with the user's Mitel phone."

According to Cammack, the investment Bowman and Brooke has made in its Mitel and Microsoft communications technology has proven to be a sound business decision.

"We're estimating the combination of IP trunking, productivity and mobility applications have paid for themselves in under a year," he says. "From the perspective of reduced travel expenditures, lower overnight delivery expenses, the savings in toll charges and improved efficiency in IT, the savings are obvious and significant, and can be quantified in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"But even more impressive," he concludes "are the productivity and efficiency gains we're making across the board. Bowman and Brooke has evolved to become a more responsive customer service-oriented organization. Our staff and partners notice it. You can't put a price tag on this type of operational improvement."

About Mitel

As CEO of Mitel, Don Smith is responsible for advancing Mitel's leadership in the IP communications market, devising and executing forward-thinking business strategies and corporate policies, and overseeing Mitel's global operations. In 1996, he founded and was president and CEO of Cambrian Systems Corp. Nortel Networks acquired Cambrian in 1998 and Smith became Nortel's vice president and general manager of OPTera Solutions. He was named CEO of Mitel is 2001. Smith is an engineering graduate of Imperial College, London, UK.

Mitel provides customer service and support in more than 90 countries via a network of 100 offices and 1,500 partners. Mitel solutions are designed to satisfy the needs of all types and sizes of businesses, with solutions that can enhance employee productivity, improve customer service, reduce costs and generate new revenue streams.

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