Legal Rapport Case Study - Blocks Solicitors

Background

Blocks Solicitors have been serving both commercial and private clients in East Anglia for over 125 years. 'Quite simply, we provide excellent legal advice and services, coordinated where necessary by lead partners, in order to meet your legal needs at a reasonable cost. We pride ourselves on being a firm of high calibre lawyers, which includes two litigators with rights of audience in the higher courts and a notary public' - Ben French, Senior Partner.

Blocks Solicitors comply with recognised accreditation standards including those of Lexcel and Investors In People.

The Business Requirements

In late 2006, Blocks Solicitors set about addressing certain business challenges to further improve client service and satisfaction. Through a tender process, Blocks charterised the need to standardise the telephone functionality for users seamlessly across all three sites to facilitate closer collaboration and better communication; to standardise and centralise the management of the solution to provide consistent management information; to establish a network that provides that functionality to users wherever they are located, and to provide for business continuity. Certain staff members work in various locations; certain remain in one location, others work flexible hours, and others still work off site some of the time. It was important that all staff members could be located as and when required. Core functionality such as voicemail - including voicemail to email, and conference calling were also identified as requirements. In addition, Blocks wanted a supplier who could provide all their networking requirements - ISDN and broadband - in a cost effective manner, and who could maintain the whole infrastructure to ensure continuity of service. It was also important that the supplier had a track record of working within the legal sector, and understood both current and future likely needs. This includes integration of the telephone solution with the practice management system, and the Microsoft environment.

Addressing the business challenges

Ben French commented: 'We are committed to providing levels of customer service that exceed the expectations of our clients. The solution that we now have works for us in a variety of ways to support us in delivering that responsive service. All Staff, regardless of location are a part of our system - just as if they were in our head office; we have a number of twinned desktop to wireless phones that have reception anywhere on any of our sites, so we can be sure to be available to respond to clients; we can have our mobile phones ring at the same time as our desk phones so we can choose to take calls even when we are off site, and if it happens that we do miss a call, the caller can leave a voicemail and the system will send us an email to notify us of it. 'Whilst it is hard to quantify many of the benefits of the solution we have selected and deployed, it has addressed all of the business requirements we had, and a few more besides. Our staff are working and communicating efficiently; Clients can get through to the person they want, when they want, and we take valuable management information from the system that helps improve our business. We continue to work with Legal Rapport to develop the service further, but we have realised the objectives of the review process that we started in 2006'.

IT Manager Rob Aitchison added, 'This is now a solution that has bedded in, and it has helped our business in many ways. We save around £1,000 per month in network services; we save around £3,000 per year in system maintenance; we have a proven solution for business continuity, and we have a responsive support service and pro-active account management. 'The functionality we have is infinitely programmable. Fee earners can forward voicemails or recorded conversations to their secretaries for typing; we can click to dial from the database, and we know who's calling before we answer the call. It all helps to ensure we are responsive to client needs. 'We are happy to recommend both the solution, and Legal Rapport as the solution provider'.