Microsoft Office System Customer Solution Case Study Collaboration Solution Helps Law Firm Bolster Relationships, Streamline Processes Overview Country or Region: United States Industry: Professional Services Customer Profile Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP, a leading law firm in the south-central United States, provides legal services in 20 practice areas. Based in Louisville, Kentucky, the firm has 500 employees. Business Situation Reliance on e-mail to coordinate and share information and legal documents became increasingly inefficient. The firm needed to improve communication and collaboration with clients and employees. Solution Wyatt implemented Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 with Leverent netagility Legal solution so that it could centrally access, manage, and interact with its existing information, people, and resources. Benefits Build better relationships Track and coordinate events more easily Save significant time on tasks Find and post information faster Manage documents more efficiently Now someone can easily get a bird s eye view of what s happening in the firm or office, what kind of training is being offered, whether a practice group is meeting, and more. Julie Hensley, Chief Information Officer, Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP The Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP law firm needed to improve information sharing and make processes more efficient. The firm used e-mail to schedule appointments, share information, and exchange legal documents for review; however, effective communication and time management were difficult. Wyatt sought a single, secure Web-based collaboration solution that would integrate with existing document management and accounting systems. With help from Leverent Consulting, Wyatt implemented Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and the netagility Legal solution from Leverent. Now attorneys, paralegals, and clients stay informed through a single, user-friendly portal that is updated daily. The solution has helped the firm strengthen its relationships with clients. And users find and share information more easily, coordinate schedules better, save time on tasks, and manage documents more efficiently.
Situation Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP is a prominent law firm with 500 employees, including 200 attorneys, in six offices in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana. The firm prides itself on providing resources, experience, and service to address a range of legal matters. example, an administrator was tasked with keeping the firm up-to-date on new accounts each day. The person would print a report from the internal accounting system at the end of the day, rekey the data into an e-mail message, and send it to the firm the next morning as the Daily Bulletin. It really gave us a lot of opportunity and flexibility to decide on our priorities as a firm what to present and how. It was a challenge, but it was a great challenge, because it was positive. Julie Hensley, Chief Information Officer, Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP The firm has long viewed technology as a core tool to support the success of its attorneys and clients. But despite investments in quality technology, including Microsoft Office XP Professional and the DOCS Open 3.95 Hummingbird document management system, communication in the firm remained inefficient, and processes were difficult to manage. Julie Hensley, Chief Information Officer at Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, says, We had a great need to be able to share information easily with clients and co-counsel. We were handling document reviews and trying to schedule meetings on e-mail and it was impossible to manage. For example, when an attorney needed to have a document reviewed, he or she would send it to several people, each of whom would save a copy to his or her own system. Later, the attorney would receive many documents and have to compile and compare them. This process was time-consuming and not very user friendly. Wyatt also had a problem keeping people informed about firmwide news, meetings, and events. There was no single, convenient place for attorneys or clients to go for a bird s eye view of what was happening in the firm or within a case. To keep abreast of the many different types of meetings the firm has, attorneys had to sort through various personal calendars and public folders. Similarly, clients relied on e-mail or phone calls to stay informed. Wyatt was also seeing a lot of redundant work being done to share information. For Wyatt needed a solution that would help the firm to share its existing information easily and efficiently, and to organize and streamline its business processes. Solution While the law firm looked at some proprietary legal solutions, says Hensley, We didn t want our clients to have to learn legal-specific tools. The firm felt that the World Wide Web and the simplicity of Web browser technology has made it possible for computer users to access and input information with minimal technical training. The firm s vision was that the interface of the Web browser has, in effect, become the simple desktop that was originally envisioned for the major operating systems like Windows and Apple. Everyone who can order a book on a Web site can find and input information on a Web browser page, says Hensley. The screen image presented to the user is a simple, logical array of links to information itself. The user doesn t care about, and isn t confronted with, icons or other controls merely used to run programs, she adds. While evaluating collaboration solutions, Wyatt wanted to make sure that users got a true desktop, with direct access to the documents, calendar items, discussions, comments, contact information, and other data the firm uses to get work done. After researching many products, in November 2004, Wyatt decided to use Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. In addition to integrating well with the firm s existing Microsoft Office products, the
We can post updates to an extranet easily, spend 15 minutes showing clients how to navigate and log on, and, at leisure, clients can see what s happening with their case. Julie Hensley, Chief Information Officer, Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP solution integrates disparate systems, applications, and databases through a familiar, easy to use, Web-based access point. Users can easily create and manage team-oriented Web sites intranets and extranets that help people find, use, and share information more effectively. Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, which is part of the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system, is used to create the portal sites. Once the solution was chosen, Wyatt sought consulting help to design and build intranet and extranet templates. It also needed help customizing the solution to work seamlessly with its existing applications. Wyatt chose Microsoft Certified Solution Partner Leverent Consulting and its netagility Legal solution. Leverent, based in Lisle, Illinois, is a company experienced in building intranets and extranets, and customizing Microsoft technologies for many industries. Wyatt and Leverent began designing the requirements for the intranet and extranet solution in January 2005. Within just a few weeks, Leverent had built portal page prototypes on virtual PCs. With clients in the legal industry, it is critical to be able to demonstrate prototypes quickly, says Dave Collom, Practice Director for Enterprise Content Management and Portals at Leverent. The flexible SharePoint Portal Server environment, which lets us drag Web Parts on a page and model how things will look, is key. The Leverent netagility Legal solution includes protocol handlers for the law firm s DOCS Open Hummingbird document management system and integration with the Thompson Elite accounting system. The protocol handlers let authorized parties access the information in the applications, from the SharePoint Portal Server portal pages. For example, authorized users can search for accounting information or documents from intranet or extranet pages. They can also publish Hummingbird documents to the extranet, which can be viewed by clients and approved parties. Another protocol handler from Leverent enables the calendar in SharePoint Portal Server to integrate seamlessly with the law firm s complex internal calendaring system. This gives people a clear overview of scheduled events from portal pages. The firm retained the technologies and infrastructure it used previous to the solution, with the addition of three server computers running SharePoint Portal Server. The firm s 2 million legal documents remain in their preexisting Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database. As a whole, the project went very smoothly and on budget. Hensley says that all of the challenges that came with the implementation were positive. It really gave us a lot of opportunity and flexibility to decide on our priorities as a firm what to present and how. It was a challenge, but it was a great challenge, because it was positive. The Wyatt intranet, known as InsideWyatt, went live in May 2005. The Wyatt extranet, or WyattNet, went live in November 2005. Currently, Wyatt has about 10 clients who are actively using extranet sites daily; the firm s goal is to have 50 to 100 by the end of 2006. As to be expected with rolling out new technology, many people are still becoming acquainted with the extranets, says Hensley. For those that are using it in some big litigation cases, it has been very successful, she says. Wyatt plans to upgrade to Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 for even better integration with the solution.
You want only one document out there, with a clear version history and that s what this gives us. Julie Hensley, Chief Information Officer, Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP Benefits With SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Leverent netagility Legal, Wyatt and its clients have a central location for accessing important information. Users are now able to build better relationships, track and coordinate events more easily, save significant time on tasks, find and post information faster, and manage documents more efficiently. Build Better Relationships The intranet and extranet have greatly facilitated open communication and relationship-building at Wyatt. The ability to build client extranets in minutes, and update them in seconds, has made clients more informed and empowered. Hensley says, We can post updates to an extranet easily, spend 15 minutes showing clients how to navigate and log on, and, at leisure, clients can see what s happening with their case. Previously, clients needed to wait for an e-mail message. As long as we are proactively getting things out there, clients will know to use the site to check on things, to see if a document s done, or find out the status of something. We re hoping it continues to build that relationship, she says. The intranet has also provided an excellent way to keep abreast of what s happening among colleagues. Says Hensley, The very first thing you see when you go to InsideWyatt is news about the firm. Lots of times you don t know what s going on with your neighbor, be it a lawyer or whoever, because you re so busy in your own world. We have a whole section that talks about wins, things that are happening, if an attorney gets published or receives an award. Right there, people are more in tune with what s going on within the firm itself. Track and Coordinate Events More Easily The calendar in SharePoint Portal Server, with some customization by Leverent, has given Wyatt the confidence of knowing what s happening, when, and with whom on the firm, office, or case level. Previously, people had to try to coordinate various personal calendars and search through different public folders, which was laborious. Julie Hensley says, Now someone can easily get a bird s eye view of what s happening in the firm or office, what kind of training is being offered, whether a practice group is meeting, and more. Wyatt employees can easily schedule meetings according to type: firm, office, practice group, training, and more. Hensley adds, People can see that these three depositions are taking place, this order has to be filed by this date, we need responses back on this day they know what s happening. When the firm upgrades to Exchange Server 2003, it anticipates even greater transparency between e-mail and SharePoint Portal Server calendars. Save Significant Time on Tasks Many processes that previously took a long time to complete are now finished much faster or happen automatically. For example, keeping the firm up-to-date on new accounts each day occurs 90 percent faster. Wyatt no longer needs to rekey accounting data and send it in an e-mail message every day. Now, SharePoint Portal Server automatically pulls the new account data from the Elite accounting system and populates InsideWyatt. The process is not only more efficient, but it s also more accurate. Attorneys are now spending much less time checking on conflicts of representation. Previously, an attorney needed to search a 25,000 page PDF file and send e-mail messages to the entire firm to find out whether there was a conflict of representation with the party seeking counsel. There could be a significant delay before the attorney found an answer. Now, Wyatt uses a convenient Client Matter Lookup function, a piece customized by
Leverent that works through the SharePoint Portal Server. With the click of a button, from the InsideWyatt interface, attorneys can easily search the most current account or client matter data within Elite. The quick and easy process of creating a client extranet is an invaluable tool for Wyatt. The basic templates are standardized for a typical Wyatt client, but flexible enough for personalization. The creation process involves simply speaking to clients about the site basics contacts, documents, calendaring, discussion board and getting feedback on any customization. The site can be created very quickly. Hensley says, Paralegals can set up extranets on their own. It can take an hour or so. The main thing is getting the user and security set up. Wyatt sees paralegals as crucial to helping the firm move forward with new technologies. Hensley hopes paralegals will eventually manage their own extranet sites. She says, As cases come in and paralegals are assigned, the paralegals have the power, initiative, and ability to say, Listen, I don t want to have to send out these documents 1,000 times. Let s just post them out here and give them access to it. That is where I see our successes coming from, from the paralegal side. Find and Post Information Faster Attorneys can now perform powerful searches for documents stored in Hummingbird DOCS Open from InsideWyatt. In the DOCS Open document management system, documents are indexed and organized into specific libraries. Previously, there was the ability to search for documents by document number and profile, client matter number, and more. But, the person needed to know which library the document was in. Attorneys had to do research, and it was a slow process. Now, using a component written by Leverent, people can perform full text searches on the 2 million documents in DOCS Open right from InsideWyatt. Hensley says I can go to a search menu InsideWyatt and look for construction law, or a statute, and it will crawl all of our documents and give us a hit list of which documents contain that information. Similarly, as a person works in a document and then saves it to the document management system, he or she can click a button and specify Publish to Extranet. The Leverent DOCS Open protocol handler posts the document to the extranet, and the document never leaves the document management system. Manage Documents More Efficiently The ability to post and retrieve documents for review from the central SharePoint Portal Server interface, yet keep them in the DOCS Open system, has been invaluable to Wyatt. Previously, says Hensley, An attorney with an agreement for five people to look at would have to e-mail it to five people, who would send back five different versions. Attorneys would have to compile and compare them, check dates, when it was stored, etc. There was no way to really manage the process. Says Hensley, Now, attorneys check documents out of DOCS Open from the central SharePoint site. Only one document can be out at a time, it is automatically versioned, and it never leaves the document management system so attorneys are confident they know the latest version. She adds, With document management, that is the key. You want only one document out there, with a clear version history and that s what this gives us.
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