Leveraging technology to compete in a changing

legal marketHow the Jackson Lees Group uses technology to navigate

a changing legal sector and deliver more value to their clients

Table of Contents

An evolving market and business model

Leveraging the cloud

Differentiating with technology

Working with a trusted cloud partner

How important is technology for enabling law firms to differentiate themselves and stay ahead of the competition?

What’s the next step in the transformation journey for Jackson Lees?

What recommendations would you give to other firms starting on their journey to transforming their IT?

Cloud in the legal sectorMore and more law firms are getting comfortable with the idea of putting their central IT systems into the public cloud, with many firms embracing Office 365 for email and communications. Regulatory pressures to drive more resilience are encouraging firms to look at more efficient approaches to their operations, and public cloud delivered through a carefully managed service is a no-brainer for many organisations in the legal sector.

Our hybrid approach to marrying public cloud solutions with our own in-house private cloud is delivering results for customers in the legal sector. We’ve recently been working with a firm who has used our service to deliver IT to its users in Australia and the UK, using Citrix and HPE technology with Microsoft Azure public cloud services for around the clock availability and support.

Nigel Redwood, CEO of Nasstar PLC

As more services have become deregulated across the legal industry, allowing alternative business providers to enter the market with business models designed for scale, prices for legal services have come down across the industry. Law firms are now competing not only with each other but with new providers who are offering legal services at lower costs.

This has pushed many law firms across the country to look for ways to differentiate themselves and leverage technology to help them to compete more effectively.

We spoke to Joanna Kingston-Davies, COO of the Jackson Lees Group, a £12M+ turnover business with six offices across the North West and a headcount of over 260 people, formed following the acquisition of Lees Solicitors LLP by Jackson Canter Limited, about her views on the changes occurring in the industry and how technology can be leveraged to really impact on a firm’s operations.

As a £6m turnover business, Lees was looking for a way to better compete in the market, and joining forces with Jackson Canter would enable the combined businesses to achieve the scale and buying power to compete with larger, newer market entrants.

An evolving market and business modelIntroduction

We have already seen how larger businesses are buying up high street opticians and pharmacies, and bringing them under one global brand, so we recognised we had to move fast and change how our businesses operated to compete in this new world.

Joanna Kingston-Davies, COO of Jackson Lees Group

Technology in the legal sectorThe main focus now for many law firms is cybersecurity and how they can put in place as much protection as possible to mitigate the risk of a cyber-attack.

Cybercriminals recognise that law firms hold valuable information that could be lucrative in the hands of a cybercriminal, and with GDPR penalties coming into play in May 2018, firms will need to ensure that they have steps in place to protect data and manage situations accordingly in the event of an attack. We’re certainly seeing more clients increasing their investments in cybersecurity technology. Nigel Redwood, CEO of Nasstar PLC

Leveraging the cloud

Lees was already working with Nasstar to deliver hosted desktop services across the business before the acquisition occurred. The original decision back in 2012 to move Lees’ in-house IT to a hosted desktop environment was made after conducting an in-depth analysis into how to improve operations and develop a more robust IT environment from which to deliver client services.

Kingston-Davies was heavily involved in the initial strategic technology direction for the move to hosted IT services.

“We conducted an end-to-end cost-benefit analysis across all aspects of the new hosted platform, from the impact on resiliency, through to the access to knowledge and IT

experts that working with an outside specialist provider would bring to us,” she says.

The scalable nature of the platform put in place by Nasstar meant that, following the acquisition, both businesses could benefit from the digital transformation steps already put in place by the Lees IT team to move systems from on-premise IT to cloud-delivered desktops.

The reason for transitioning the entire business over to the Nasstar hosted desktop platform centred on a few key areas:

The platform was robust in design and delivery, offering high levels of business continuity

Nasstar’s relationship with industry-leading vendors such as HPE and Microsoft meant that Jackson Lees could get access to the expertise they needed on-demand

Chapter 1

The hosted desktop solution enabled lawyers to work from anywhere using mobile devices

The new solution brought about confidence within the management and IT team that technology systems and applications across the business were operating safely and securely

The ability to deliver a 24/7 support desk; a capability that Jackson Lees wouldn’t be able to service in-house due to resources

Enabling cashflow certainty: purchases moved from a capex to opex model which flexed up or down depending on the number of users or services consumed.

Kingston-Davies says: “With our previous on-premise solution, changes in headcount didn’t necessarily reduce operational costs as our IT assets were fixed. Now, we can more accurately predict headcount changes and the financial impact that these changes will have on the business.”

And the impact isn’t just about better aligning business operations back to IT costs. It’s also about leveraging technology to provide a better service to customers and attract talented staff to the firm.

“Over my career of 18 years, the biggest technological change to impact the legal sector, in my opinion, was the move to portable and mobile devices. The ability to engage with clients outside of the 9-5 workday has changed how lawyers operate and improved the service and responsiveness we can offer to clients. It has also meant that the firms that do embrace mobile working are able to attract and retain high-calibre talent, who now expect agility and flexibility when engaging with IT systems and work devices.”

The pressure from other organisations delivering 24/7 services to customers also meant that Jackson Lees needed a provider who could deliver an around-the-clock IT service – something that wouldn’t be possible in-house due to the scale of IT resources required to staff a 24/7 operation. With Nasstar, their 24/7 support help-desk provides this without the cost or risk of delivering a similar service on-premise – meaning Jackson Lees can offer the same service availability as much larger competitors in the market.

These IT resources and capabilities played a central role in Jackson Canter and Lees Solicitors joining forces. In the run-up to the acquisition of Lees by Jackson Canter, the IT service delivery model that Lees had in place was one of the drivers for making Lees stand out from the crowd as an attractive acquisition target.

Following the acquisition, all of Jackson Canter’s offices moved over to the Nasstar hosted desktop service, delivered within a phased project framework to ensure minimal disruption to business operations. The acquisition took the combined business to a total of over 260 employees – all working on the Nasstar desktop platform and benefiting from the scale of the combined companies.

“Moving over to a hosted desktop environment can be difficult because we wanted to ensure that all staff had a great user experience when logging on and using their hosted desktop for the first time. Thankfully, because of the prior planning and careful delivery on Nasstar’s side, our staff left their desktops on the Friday and logged on to the new hosted systems on Monday without noticing the difference.” says Kingston-Davies.

The new hosted service means it is now easier for the Group Finance Director to better predict costs; IT costs can be linked to the number of employees, while consultancy service costs are transparent and built into the project plan upfront.

Because of Nasstar’s scale and relationships with technology vendors, they were also able to source much more cost-effective MPLS lines for the next phase of the migration, compared with the pricing that the two entities would be able to negotiate as a single organisation.

Differentiating with technologyChapter 2

Innovation in the legal sectorWe’re seeing firms making more investments to use technology to deliver innovation across client services; rather than focusing on back-end IT, more investment is now being directed at technology which can accelerate frontline services. This has turned how IT is perceived on its head within law firms, and tech is now seen as an enabler for delivering client innovation.

In terms of artificial intelligence, there is a lot of hype in the industry and we’re yet to see where it can be applied for maximum impact, it’s more likely it will be integrated piecemeal into practice management systems rather than sparking an AI revolution over the next 12 months.

Nigel Redwood, CEO of Nasstar PLC

Jackson Lees looked at a number of different criteria for selecting a partner for their hosted IT environment, and a key requirement was having access to a local resource which could act as an extension to their IT team.

For us, the value-add that a technology partner like Nasstar can bring to us is the ability to pass on the knowledge and insights they see happening across the tech industry in order to point us in the right direction of the next big thing.

We can consume their professional services rather than build our own R&D team in-house – it’s much more flexible.”

Nasstar’s Annual Stakeholder Forum also provides an opportunity for customers to discuss and hear from the Nasstar team about technology trends, such as chatbots and cybersecurity, and how these will impact organisations’ IT environments in the future.

“With Nasstar, we feel better equipped to face what’s ahead.”

Working with a trusted cloud partnerChapter 3

Working with Nasstar is like having a virtual CTO on our board. It’s not just the hosting and IT services that you’re getting, it’s much more than that.

Joanna Kingston-Davies, COO of Jackson Lees Group

GDPRThe topic of GDPR comes up in almost every conversation I have with technology leaders in the legal sector. There’s a lot of hype in the industry and supposed experts, but this can become overwhelming for many organisations. What we’re saying to our customers is to think about the next achievable step towards achieving increased data protection and GDPR compliance. Break it down into a simple next step, rather than trying to tackle GDPR compliance all at once.

For many firms, they will already have been adhering to many areas of the GDPR regulation as every UK law firm is already heavily regulated and used to following stringent compliance processes. For those already complying with existing data protection policies, it will likely be a small change to become GDPR compliant.

Nigel Redwood, CEO of Nasstar PLC

Technology plays a critical role in the day to day operations of most law firms, and many firms are starting to leverage innovative, new technologies to deliver tasks at all levels; from engaging with clients to filing documents.

Technology and innovation within Jackson Lees represent an opportunity to make processes more efficient, so resources are freed up for lawyers to spend extra time with clients.

“The importance of technology in our business can’t be underestimated,” comments Kingston-Davies. “If a process can take 5 clicks instead of 10 clicks, it means we can focus more of our time and energy on our clients. There are still a lot of processes in the legal sector that can be automated to make practices more lean and effective, and AI and robotics technologies are only at the start of what they can do to make the legal sector more efficient.”

However, Jackson Lees has a different motivator compared to many other organisations when it comes to automating their processes.

“We don’t see increasing the level of automation across our business as a way to reduce headcount. Instead, we want to leverage automation technology to increase the amount of time our lawyers can spend with clients. There are a number of legal processes that can be automated, such as conveyancing, however, automation in certain areas will mean that legal services requiring focused client-facing time with our lawyers will have access to more resources because of the tech changes we have made to other parts of our business.”

Jackson Lees see automation and AI technologies as being an enabler to delivering more value-add services to their clients; making a positive difference to society by leveraging technology to do more.

How important is technology for enabling law firms to differentiate themselves and stay ahead of the competition?

Chapter 4

Next on Jackson Lees’ IT agenda is to look at how unified communications technology can help them to engage more effectively with their clients, replacing traditional desktop phones with more flexible communications technology that falls in line with the rest of the business’ mobility and cloud strategies.

What’s the next step in the transformation journey for Jackson Lees?

Chapter 5

The ability to engage with clients outside of the 9-5 workday has changed how lawyers operate and improved the service and responsiveness we can offer to clients. It has also meant that the firms that do embrace mobile working are able to attract and retain high-calibre talent, who now expect agility and flexibility when engaging with IT systems and work devices.

Joanna Kingston-Davies, COO of Jackson Lees Group

We also asked Joanna Kingston-Davies about what recommendations she would give to other firms starting their cloud and technology transformation journey.

Here’s what she said:

Do a cost/benefit analysis and a general SWOT analysis to make sure you are entering into the project with clear facts and desired business outcomes.

Choose a technology partner that fits your IT and business needs. Jackson Lees is a business built on relationships so it was important that we selected an IT services provider who understood that, and recognised our need to provide high levels of service to our customers at all times. Not only that, we chose Nasstar because they were a good cultural fit; committed to paying the living wage and aligned with our own business ethics.

Be confident that whoever you choose to come along with you on your digital transformation journey is able to act like an extension of your team, representing you and your company’s reputation in the way that you would want your employees to do so.

Find out more about how Nasstar helps organisations operating across the legal sector: http://www.nasstar.com/legal

What recommendations would you give to other firms starting on their journey to transforming their IT?

Chapter 6

HPE and NasstarNasstar is one of the UK’s leading managed IT service providers. We deliver bespoke clouds, professional services, managed IT and a range of technical products to organisations operating within four strategic industry sectors - with a particular focus on the recruitment and legal sectors.

Powered by HPE enterprise technology, across HPE servers, HPE 3PAR and more.

We specialise in building bespoke cloud hosted services, tailor-made to suit your specific industry. When it comes to designing public/private/hybrid clouds, we deliver trust & experience.

For more information, visit nasstar.com