By Mark Feldman, Strategic Relationship Manager, SureSkills
When Leman Solicitors LLP set itself a goal of going paperless, there were no half measures. All of the firm’s 70 staff are encouraged to use multiple monitors on their desks to review and mark up electronic documents instead of hard copies. There are tightly restricted quotas on the number of pages everyone can print. Its office is free of files and folders by design.
That makes the firm an outlier in a sector that still relies heavily on paper documents. Since Leman was founded in 2007, it has aimed to be Ireland's most innovative law firm. It was the first Irish legal firm to go fully paperless, and it offers clients online access to their files. To make these bold aims work, the firm invests heavily in technology, explains Karl Manweiler, Managing Director of LexTech, Leman’s legal technology sister company.
“We’ve always realised that investing in IT as a strategic business resource would increase the firm’s productivity and efficiency. We have embraced technology where it has added value, and the fact that all of our data is online makes it easy to work remotely,” he says. “The technology needs to work, so having a service provider that’s dependable, accessible and efficient is essential,” Manweiler adds.
In 2021, Leman went to market for a new long-term technology service provider.
“We were looking for a service provider who could proactively advise us on making our user experience better, be that through hardware or software. We were also looking to work with a provider that was responsive to user issues, and that was something that was key with SureSkills,” says Manweiler.
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Since SureSkills took over managing Leman’s laptops and IT systems, there has been a 40% decrease in the number of customer support issues. “There’s been very little in the way of ‘noise’ around our IT and that’s a sign the relationship is working well,” Manweiler says.
In winning the contract, SureSkills also needed to support Leman’s strategy to use cloud computing throughout the business. Security is essential since legal work by its nature involves confidential client information, and the firm is certified to the ISO27001 information security standard.
“We’re very conscious of security but also of the benefits of cloud technology and the agility that delivers, which is the ability to work anywhere from any device securely without necessarily requiring software to be installed on those devices. With the right security model in place and the right cloud technology, that’s possible,” says Manweiler.
In the past number of years, SureSkills has built a portfolio of clients in the legal sector, and this was another factor that guided Leman’s decision to select the company. “They understand the IT systems in place across the sector, how the business works and how important it is that the systems are up and stable,” Manweiler says.
Leman plans to keep investing in IT where it can deliver a clear benefit. Last year, it installed Microsoft Teams for all staff devices, so that calls now go to staff’s mobiles or laptops instead of to desktop phones.
Looking ahead, Leman is interested in understanding how the firm might look at improving its processes using technologies like artificial intelligence, or robotic process automation. “Any kind of repetitive task that can be automated, there’s a win. We’re always keen on implementing technology that adds value, that doesn’t create distraction in the business and there’s an immediate impact for users,” Manweiler concludes.
