A change in business dynamics: law firm finds a powerful, scalable, flexible, secure, non-disruptive and cost-effective communications solution

Communications News, March, 2008

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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.

"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."