Stone Forest IT is featured in Digital Life, 29th July 08

Headline: Virus made law firm rethink IT

Outsourcing your IT functions to the right person can make the difference between night and day.

Previously, Infinitus Law hired a freelance IT consultant. It now engages Stone Forest IT (SFIT), an IT services provider known for its experience in managing IT for law firms.

“Everyone knew the shortcomings of using a one-man consultancy as our IT needs had grown,” said Bernie Neo, 43, the firm's director and also the man in charge of its IT matters.

It was a virus, however, that nudged the firm to decisively change its course to managed services.

In July last year, a virus marked about 30 to 50 e-mail from Infinitus Law as spam. Among the addressees were condominium buyers who were waiting to receive notices to make payment to a property developer.

Fortunately, staff of the law firm called the buyers to check whether they had received the e-mail. If the buyers had missed the notices, they would have had to fork out the interest for late payments.

When the anomaly was discovered, staff of the firm scrambled to fax or resend the e-mail messages of the payment notices to the buyers. Even after the problem was solved five hours later, the e-mail was still not delivered to some clients after two days.

“We worked with 1-Net (Infinitus Laws e-mail host), which found that our e-mail messages were blocked by our recipients' networks,” said Bernie. The firm was acting on behalf of the property developer.

“After that incident, our management decided we needed a long-term solution,” said Bernie, a corporate lawyer.

Up until then, the reliance on the freelance IT consultant had involved temporary workarounds but the problems weren't resolved, Bernie said.

Online downtimes, though infrequent, lasted between one and 12 hours. During those periods, urgent client instructions sent via e-mail were not received.

Meanwhile, staff numbers had grown from about 30 in 2001 to the current 50. With the expansion came a rise in IT-related queries. Also, e-filing of the many legal documents — a government requirement — led to a bigger demand for reliable online access.

Now, SFIT ensures that online traffic on Infinitus Law's network moves smoothly. It gets quotations on applications that the law firm needs, ensures that its Sophos Endpoint anti-virus software is working and liaises with SingNet to resolve Internet connectivity problems.

The IT services provider also provides round-the-clock helpdesk support. “(The helpdesk consultants) can hook onto our desktop computers and need not come to our office,” said Bernie.

SFIT's engineers go to the law firm once a fortnight and will send an engineer around within an hour if needed.

Software updates on all computers are sent via a server at the firm's premises and are no longer uploaded to the PCs one at a time.

In the last nine months, the firm spent about $15,000 on the latest Microsoft Office and anti-virus software, along with more memory space for five to six desktop computers.

Working with SFIT comes at a higher price. Bernie revealed that his firm pays SFIT the same amount as it did the previous consultant — $1,500 a month. However, his firm also buys a 10-hour package (for $1,200) for ad hoc visits made by SFIT's engineers.

The good news is that Bernie can now focus more on his legal work.

“In the past, 10 per cent of my time was taken up by IT issues. Now it's dropped to 5 per cent. It should get lower in the future,” he said.

Copyright © Lai Ee Na. All rights reserved.
This article first appeared in the 29 July 2008 issue of Digital Life.