Legal Firm Boosts Competitive Advantage, Productivity, by Sharing Best Practices

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To boost its competitive advantage, legal firm Brock & Scott wanted to improve collaboration among its attorneys in 17 offices across seven states in the southeastern United States. It adopted Microsoft Office 365 so attorneys can use the flexible, cloud-based business productivity platform to share best practices, improve customer service, and increase productivity in the office and in the courthouse. Client communications are managed efficiently in online team sites, which reduces the risk of noncompliance.

Founded in 1998, Brock & Scott quickly established a reputation for its expertise in serving some of the largest banks in the United States. Today, the firm’s clients expect consistent legal service and operational efficiency across the southeastern United States, where Brock & Scott has 17 offices. “Extensive regional coverage is one way we differentiate our services,” says Steven White, Chief Information Officer at Brock & Scott. “However, enhancing common business processes and audit and compliance standards across seven states has been a challenge.”

Initially, Brock & Scott operated as semi-independent law practices, but a new corporate culture is emerging that emphasizes the efficiencies of common best practices in addressing the financial industry’s increasingly complex regulatory environment. “From a compliance perspective, we had confidence in how we handled our ‘matter,’ or case documents,” says White. “But for nonmatter documents, we needed more efficient platform to help us work better as ‘one firm’ for our clients in every state. One way we reached this goal was by choosing Microsoft Office 365.”

Improved Management of Client Communications

Today, Brock & Scott manages the many alerts, directives, and process change email notices that it receives from clients more efficiently. That’s because the Client Communication team now collects and stores the emails and attachments in Microsoft OneDrive for Business, the online storage and collaboration component of Office 365.

“Our communication team tags clients’ communications by name so they are easily searchable within a document library on our new intranet built on Microsoft SharePoint Online,” says White. “The Client Services team sends links in Outlook alerts to attorneys and staff who can quickly locate details of client directives. Now it’s easier for Brock & Scott to ensure that everyone is aware of any new business processes we must adopt to remain compliant with evolving client policies and procedures.”

Enhanced Compliance and Security

Brock & Scott quickly locates information for audit and compliance purposes using multimailbox search in Microsoft Exchange Online and contextual search across online collaboration sites. It is also significantly reducing the risk of noncompliance thanks to new eDiscovery and archiving capabilities. “Before Office 365, an affordable and complete archiving eDiscovery solution eluded us,” says Steve Henley, Chief Technology Officer. “Now we have control over journaling, retention policies, and legal hold capabilities that we configure to meet our needs.”

Brock & Scott audit teams complete their practice reviews faster because they no longer have to reenter data collected in the field when they get back to the office. Before they leave the office, they just sync the documents stored in the cloud, or on a team site. When they next connect to the Internet, any updates are automatically synced to the cloud where the latest version of the document is available to anyone in the firm who has permission to view it.

Security is an ever growing concern, and Office 365 meets or exceeds all of Brock & Scott’s security obligations. “Choosing Office 365 allowed us to eliminate multiple vendor security products. Having the ability to manage security and compliance from a common platform within one interface is far superior to maintaining multiple vendor products,” says Henley. “Legal and financial businesses require physical security with data centers that are monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week, logical security with strict escalation processes, data security with encryption at rest, SSL/TLS transit, threat management, and security monitoring to be in the game.”

The firm is also benefitting from improved data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities, thanks to Office 365. “DLP has always been a challenge to implement and manage,” says Henley. “The DLP tools within Office 365 allowed us to improve DLP and further tighten controls. In addition, the antimalware and antispam polices in Office 365 do an excellent job of eliminating unwanted email. Much like the DLP solution, this was also difficult to manage before our implementation.”

Fast Access to Latest Version of Office, Delivered Across All Devices

Brock & Scott is using Office 365 ProPlus—a user-based service that allows the firm’s employees to access the latest Office applications on up to five PCs, tablets, or mobile devices. Eastridge Technology, a Microsoft partner with Gold competencies, assisted Brock & Scott in its deployment planning and rollout of Office 365 ProPlus to approximately 935 employees and contractors in offices and in the field. Today, these employees work productively anywhere with up-to-date Office files that are synced between all devices.

“Our employees are productive wherever they choose to work because with Office 365 ProPlus, we deliver Office applications to PCs in their offices and to their mobile devices for processing title documents at the courthouse,” says Henley. Even if employees don’t have their own devices with them, their files are still available for review and light editing using Microsoft Office Online, which only requires a browser.

Brock & Scott also achieved a rapid migration thanks to the deployment flexibility inherent in Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus. “Everyone has now switched to using only the Office 365 ProPlus version, which keeps all employees current and consistent with Office updates,” says Henley.

Better Business Intelligence

Partners at Brock & Scott benefit from self-service access to business statistics created using Power BI for Office 365, a business intelligence solution that combines the data visualization capabilities in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software with cloud-based collaboration capabilities. “We update business metric dashboards on our intranet every night, and partners can monitor their case loads and billing activities on different devices, including their iPads,” says White.

Common Platform to Share Best Practices, Build the Business

Today, Brock & Scott is enhancing its competitive advantage by offering a high standard of consistent client service, from anywhere. With all its employees and contractors using the same communication and collaboration platform, it’s easier for them to share best practices and to standardize on business processes that apply to all clients. “Sharing desktops during a Skype for Business Online video conference or adding a hyperlink to a document in an IM conversation is revolutionary for Brock & Scott,” says Henley. “Our move to Office 365 has fostered the culture change we need to standardize on best practices and boost service.”

The firm’s clients are eager to get to “first legal action” more quickly, thereby recovering their assets faster. “Now we’re seeing teams from one state conduct video conferences with teams in another state to show how they got to first legal action in 30 days instead of the more usual 60 to 90 days,” says Henley. “In so many ways like this, we’re using Office 365 to help boost our competitive advantage and build our business.”

Microsoft Office 365
The new Office provides anywhere access to your familiar Office applications—plus email, calendar, video conferencing, and your most current documents—on almost any device, from PCs to smartphones to tablets.

For more information about Microsoft Office 365, go to:
www.office365.com

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about Eastridge Technology services, visit the website at:
www.eastridge.net

For more information about Brock & Scott services, visit the website at:
www.brockandscott.com