Costly Mistakes - The Need for Legal Technology Consulting
Case #1
A group of attorneys starting a new law practice sought the guidance of people they new - friends and other 'professionals'. Their objective was to save money as much as possible by not implementing a server in the first 6 to 9 months but instead using the built in function of peer-to-peer sharing of Windows XP. As such, all advice given instructed the new firm to purchase Windows XP Home edition.
In less than a year, as money flowed into the firm, a server was purchased. But to their surprise, the cost was more than just adding the server. It was upgrading the workstations to Windows XP Professional as the Home edition was not equipped to connect to a Windows Server. The added cost was still more than the purchase of the software (which would have been considerably less expensive at the time of the purchase of the new workstation), but also the cost for installation. With all said and done, this simple mistake cost the firm an extra $1500 for just 5 people. Had they sought Lan-Tech's counsel in the beginning, we would have advise them to choose Windows XP Professional from the start.
Case #2
A firm of approximately 40 users with an existing billing system (which was not going to be changed) was looking for a practice management software and a document management software in that order. The firm formed an internal IT committee consisting of three attorneys, one staff and the office manager and was also joined by their outside networking vendor.
The committee first focused its attention on practice management. Members of the committee began asking other firms what product they used then focused its attention on the three most common. This was mistake number one. Needs and objectives vary dramatically from one firm to another.
The committee held several meetings among themselves and with product representatives. In the end, a practice management which did not fully integrate with the billing software was selected based on the over all 'look' of the software and the perception of ease of use. This particular software is often select by small firms because the learning curve is small. But the same software is also abandon by many over time due to reasons such as performance as the data base size grows. This package is rarely found in firms of this size.
With the practice management selection behind them, the next focus was document management. The same process was repeated as in the practice management system. The committee looked at different solutions and was told incorrectly by a product representative, the other products could not meet their needs based on number of documents. Believing this to be true, a document management solution was selected requiring a new server costing an extra $7000+ more then the software. Also, this software did not integrate with the billing or practice management system.
In the end, the firm selected products which did not integrate leading to inefficiency in technology performance. The practice management product has become slow due to the inherent poor design and the inability to meet the data requirements of a firm of this size. With the document management solution, the firm paid more than three times as much for hardware and software and is not satisfied with the overall solution.
Lan-Tech would have recommended based on their current software and hardware and their goal of two additional products a different set of solutions which would have seamless integration between billing, practice management and document management all without the cost of the $7000 dedicated server to document management. Furthermore, the poor performance in the practice management would not have occurred.
In addition, Lan-Tech could have evaluated such needs in a relative short period of time, provided written analysis on the different options and why the recommend solution is the best while saving the many hours of lost billable time by the attorneys on the committee. The over all wasted cost to the firm is estimated to be $40,000+ because Lan-Tech had not been hired to advise at the start.
Case #3
A firm with less than 15 users needed to upgrade their server. Their goal was to have one new server capable of working as a file server and email server. The firm contracted with a IT person who does independent work on the side. The solution provided was a Windows 2003 server with Exchange Standard.
About 1 year later, the server crashed. Lan-Tech was called in on an emergency service call to resolve the problem as the original IT person could only get there after their full time job. What was discovered is a critical piece was missing in the setup and is responsible for properly performing backup of the Exchange Email. Without this piece, certain log files were not being removed resulting in the hard drive filling up. Once no more space was available, the server stopped functioning.
Another discovery was the users were using Exchange solely for internal email. The external email was downloaded by the individual workstations instead of having internet email delivered directly to the Exchange. This also resulted in viruses slipping through as the workstations were responsible for scanning for viruses instead of the server and anti-viruses at the workstations were not being updated by the users.
In addition, the firm could have saved $1500 in software cost by purchasing Windows Small Business Server 2003 which includes Windows and Exchange Server. This would have met the goals of the firm to have one server with both Windows Server and Exchange. It is also capable of supporting up to 75 users. As an added bonus, the remote access to the workstations would have been much easier for the attorneys.
In the end, due to the emergency service call to fix the immediate issue, correcting improper configuration, cleaning viruses which would not have made it through a better implementation of the network and the purchase of the server software more suitable for multiple server environments, the extra cost to the firm is over $4000.00.
All of this could have been avoided by initial consultation and implementation by Lan-Tech.
Want to see an example of a Lan-Tech success story? Yes.
Small firms should also look at our OfficeAudit Service.
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