Lewis Silkin, a successful commercial law firm, based in London, UK, pride themselves on being "people people": as committed and professional as any good law firm, but perhaps rather better at communicating expert knowledge in plain English; more adept at the inter-personal skills that make relationships work, and go on working. They genuinely want to give the best service to their clients, but also want the Lawyers to have a life outside the office, and time to live it. To achieve this aim they invest in high quality communication technology.

Lewis Silkin’s IT team provides an essential component in the firm's successful working formula. As a result of Jan Durant and her team's directional nous, the firm enjoys an envied reputation as an early adopter of new and sophisticated legal technologies.

THE CHALLENGE
When the firm began looking at communication technology they wanted something that would interface well their Mitel® PBX, but would not tie them into it. The provision of expansion opportunities within the solution was also an important factor.

Jan Durant, Head of IT at Lewis Silkin, comments “We needed a solution that extended our Client communication options and assisted Partners with sharing communication with colleagues on a given case. It was also important that the solution offered a simple upgrade path to full Unified Communications so our remote workers had complete flexibility; it also needed to complement the Citrix remote working solution, which was already in situ. Our fee earners’ mobility was increasing and we needed to support this. We discussed our requirement with Avanquest, the team fully understood our specifications and recommended CallXpress, developed by AVST.”

Lewis Silkin have 250 users, based across three locations, two in London and one in Oxford. In the Legal profession, as in any business with an on-going client relationship, maintaining control and ensuring all communications are managed efficiently is key. Client service is paramount and lawyers must be able to minimise time spent on 'admin' and maximise time spent on core legal advice skills. With approximately 5,000 voice mails and 200,000 e-mails arriving at the practice every month, effective communication was a challenge. Choosing the right technology, that provided the flexibility to receive and send messages in what form was most convenient according to the demands of the particular user, was an important step.

Jan continues, “We wanted to deploy Unified Messaging technology without requiring in depth custom integration, multiple points of vendor contact and a mixture of data, telephony and wireless expertise. Avanquest has an exceptional track record for the supply, implementation and support of award-winning server-based software solutions, that deliver tangible benefits to the bottom line and dramatically improve the transaction-experience for internal and external users of the corporate interaction network. Lewis Silkin have therefore worked with them over the years to improve and maintain an exceptional communication infrastructure within the Practice.”

THE SOLUTION
Lewis Silkin proceeded to implement CallXpress. The Avanquest Analysts installed CallXpress with 8 ports and VBPC integration to a Mitel SX2000.

Jan Durant, comments, “ One of the reasons we chose CallXpress was because it is independent and works with almost all traditional and IP telephone systems and is therefore future proof.”

Initially Lewis Silkin had GroupWise® 5.5 but as the Firm moved forward they migrated from GroupWise 5.5 to Microsoft® Exchange® 2000 and at this point they worked with Avanquest to enhance their CallXpress system with full unified communication which added value to their voice, e-mail and fax investments.

Fee earners are now able to be immediately notified and access voice, fax and e-mail messages from their Outlook inbox from any location, particularly useful for home and mobile working. This improves reactiveness to Clients, leading to enhanced customer retention and satisfaction and worklife balance to Lawyers.

Jan continues, “Our fee earners’ mobility has been greatly enhanced with the introduction of CallXpress. Unified communication is a great asset to the Practice as the users have far more options and flexibility for all message retrieval and action, by either utilising Blackberry devices, mobiles or Internet access they can handle business issues promptly and efficiently with no geographic ties. E-mail access allows fee earners to use their mobile phones, or any other telephone, to read their e-mails - they can reply to clients' e-mails immediately with a voice mail, or they can choose to forward the e-mail to a colleague to deal with and add a voice introduction, and finally if they need to see a copy of the e-mail they can press a button and get it delivered to any fax machine in the world including attachments. I also believe we save lots of time when at our desks in the office, not having to dial in to pick up voice mails”.

CallXpress has allowed Lewis Silkin to have a single point of administration and directory addressing mechanism for their messaging infrastructure, reducing the admin burden and enhancing return on investment. The users now save a massive amount of time which was previously spent at the start or end of the day catching up on e-mails, time which they can now put to better use, they can work anywhere and access messages at any time of day, and most importantly they can deliver a faster, more responsive service to their clients. The system also provides the option that all messages can be put in one message inbox to maintain up-to-date knowledge across a large team working on a case. In addition, the data storage aspects of the system allow for storage and archiving of sensitive communication over voice mail, removing the need for all such communication to be in written format.

“I am delighted with our rollout of CallXpress and we are now on 7.5 of the solution, we think the whole solution, and in particular the voice engine, is excellent. We now have true mixed media messaging, allowing our users to reply to a voice mail with an e-mail, reply to e-mail with a voice mail, or reply to a fax via e-mail. CallXpress provides the flexibility to respond to messages in the easiest or most preferred communication mode. The users have had no complaints and are very enthusiastic. The Avanquest Team fully understand the products and our requirements and have provided a good service from sales through to installation and support”, concludes Jan.

The benefits of UM can be realised across the board for all organisations, especially those with a highly mobile workforce. But verticals such as the Legal and Finance sectors can gain significant benefit.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (“AVST”) is a leader in the unified communications (“UC”) marketplace uniquely combining the strengths of its world-class messaging platform, CallXpress®, with its speech-enabled call management module, Seneca™, to create a powerful, next-generation unified communications solution. The Company’s products are designed to scale and support organizations of all sizes. For more information contact: www.avst.com or +1.949.699.2300.

Avanquest UK, an authorised AVST reseller and accredited AVST training centre, is based in Winchester, UK. It has been supplying, implementing and supporting leading-edge, best of breed, Corporate Solutions for almost twenty years. The company has an unparalleled track record in understanding a clients' business plan and providing solutions that accelerate and formalise internal processes. For more information see www.avanquest.co.uk or call 01962 835000.