Law Firm Protects Revenue & Assures DMS and UC&C Performance

Customer Profile

This global law firm employs more than 2,000 attorneys across a dozen offices throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, in support of their diverse clientele. Their areas of expertise include mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property, corporate governance, cybersecurity, and employment / labor, which have made them a firm of choice for many global enterprise businesses.

Seamless operation around the world for all their clients has been their strategy and expectation. This includes swift access to client information and a secure repository of legal briefs and court filings. Unified communications is also extremely important for this legal practice, as it is with any global firm. During the COVID-19 pandemic, video conferencing with their clients became the primary method of “meeting” with their clients, as face-to-face consultations were not an option. Like so many other businesses over the last year, the reliable, high-quality data center and enterprise network services became essential for this firm.

The Challenge

The law firm depends on their Document Management Service (DMS) for all their client information, case files, client briefs, court filings, etc. It is in constant use, and responsiveness is expected when researching employment or regulatory requirements maintained by their clients, discussing strategies, processing filings, and making background inquiries, recording updates, and/or doing research. Attorneys and staff depend on seamless, unencumbered access to the DMS to do their jobs and service their clients. Delays and outages impact their ability to work with clients, and by extension, log billable hours. The fact is, when the DMS has problems, it affects the firm’s bottom line – revenue.

The IT team at the law firm also was concerned about reports of slowness with accessing information in the data center from remote locations over their virtual desktop interface (VDI) application, Citrix. This had similar implications to issues with DMS, in that it would prevent remote staff and lawyers from accessing their client information.

Their ability to maintain quality communications, regardless of the platform in use - voice or video conferencing - was also a high priority for the IT staff. With staff and clients all working from home globally, communications became a strategic priority to business continuity.

Solution in Action

The IT organization at the law firm was familiar with NETSCOUT®, based on the security team’s use of Arbor Cloud® for cybersecurity protection. When it came time to replace an outdated and siloed network management tool that had been end-of-lifed, they turned to NETSCOUT for a more sophisticated, comprehensive application service assurance solution. The nGeniusONE solution offered both cost and feature advantages that the previous tool vendor lacked, including the following. 

• nGeniusONE delivered real-time packet monitoring and in-depth analysis of not just their data applications, including their critical DMS application, but also their voice, video, and Citrix services, as well. 
• Of particular value to this organization, and really any law firm, was the ability for the InfiniStreamNG appliances to support optional encrypted drives, providing an extra layer of protection for their extremely confidential customers’ data. 
• The InfiniStreamNG (ISNG) and nGenius 7000 series Packet Flow Switches were offered as commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software options that provided cost-efficiencies

The implementation design of the NETSCOUT solution for the firm included. 

• NETSCOUT 9800 series ISNG COTS appliances were implemented in the core of the law firm’s data center to monitor their DMS, Citrix, voice, and video applications, among many others. 
• The nGenius Packet Flow Operating System for 7000 Series Packet Brokers was also deployed in the data center and feeds network packets from 10 GB links downstream to the ISNG appliances, as well as the firm’s Intrusion Detection System (IDS). 

The Results

Reducing the Mean-Time-to-Resolve (MTTR) issues impacting their lawyers using the DMS application was a major benefit to the firm. When billable hours are at risk, accelerating Mean-Time-To-Knowledge (MTTK) and MTTR have very real monetary value. Reducing an outage or avoiding downtime by a quarter hour, multiplied by the hourly rate for all impacted attorneys, can have a six- or even seven-figure impact on the firm’s revenue that day. 

When it comes to this firm’s clients, an impeccable customer experience is the goal. There is a direct effect on their reputation and the business if the experience is not of the highest professional level expected, especially with voice and video, now the primary method of conferring with clients. With the nGeniusONE solution monitoring their data center for voice, video, and data applications, the IT team can proactively detect and address issues as they arise to minimize or even avoid disruption. 

The overall solution from NETSCOUT provided an initial lower capital investment due to the software models offered. Also, as a result of vendor consolidation and reduced complexity with a single provider for network / application performance management and packet broker technologies, it offered lower annualized maintenance costs. 

Collaboration between NetOps, SecOps, and Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) teams has increased, and that will aid in their day-to-day operations, security, and long-term planning. The lawyers, paralegals, and local staff are also experiencing improvements in productivity and user experience with the resolution of the slow DMS application, intermittent Citrix issues, and poor-quality UC&C.