Hayes Solicitors

The IT Department At Hayes Solicitors In Dublin Was Already Aware Of The Benefits Of Moving To A Cloud Computing Model, It Was Just A Question Of Finding A Vendor That Could Provide A Service With All The Features They Required, In A Cost Effective Manner. 

Context

Hayes is a progressive and professional mid-size law firm operating in Dublin, Ireland. It was established in 1840, making it one of the longest standing firms in Ireland, and provides a comprehensive range of legal services to corporate, public and private clients on the international and domestic stage. In addition to its focus on exceptional customer service, the depth and breadth of Hayes’ experience and sector knowledge has proved key to its success. Hayes values the strong relationships it has earned with clients and strives to provide an efficient and friendly service. It has unrivalled employee loyalty and this consistency assists Hayes in delivering that service. Hayes currently has 40 solicitors and an additional support staff of approximately 40. Being a progressive firm, Hayes understands the importance of investment in IT and its potential to cut down time and costs, increase productivity and enhance the quality of service to clients.

Challenge

As is typical for its sector, most of Hayes’ clients use email as the primary form of communication, and run paperless operations. “Our current and prospective clients expect us to have a good email system in place, with good security, DR and Business Continuity”, explained Hayes IT Manager, Audrey Whelan. “So all in all, we have a pretty heavy email focus and consequently our email system has become a high priority system for Hayes’ IT department,” Whelan continued.

In December 2006, Hayes merged with Fawsitt Solicitors, a move that coincided with a steep growth in natural expansion internally. This ‘double’ increase in headcount meant managing the company’s email system became time consuming and the margin for error increased. In addition, there was no archiving solution in place at that time, and so eDiscovery requests were laborious and often unsatisfactory.

Whelan recalls: ‘I remember one particular eDiscovery request which involved having to go to a backup of the mail system and restore a mailbox used a couple of years prior to the request. It was a challenge retrieving the information required to fulfil the request. Every user is different: some are wonderful at house-keeping their mailboxes, but with the increase in email traffic due to our growth, that job was becoming more difficult for even the best house-keepers. PST files can become too big and numerous to deal with efficiently.” 

In terms of security, Hayes was using a different service provider for email anti-virus and spam protection but the management and flexibility of this service was very limited.

So, just over 3 years ago, the firm took the decision to review Hayes’ email environment.

Solution

We looked at several solutions from several vendors, including a new solution from our previous email provider. With each solution, we examined all features and costs, but in the end Mimecast was the clear winner.

Explains Whelan: “Mimecast offered everything we were looking for in one package: business continuity, a consolidated archiving solution, spam protection, email anti-virus protection and easy email track and trace functionality. It basically ticked more boxes than its competitors, for a lot less money, so it became a straightforward decision to make! “The set up was extremely easy. The support staff at Mimecast are fantastic and they guided us through each step of the integration. They are always quick to resolve any queries we have – it’s exactly what you want from a service. The whole process was pain free.

Whelan continued: “For Hayes, it was the next logical step in our IT program. We could see that cloud computing would become the expected standardfor businesses, and with cloud we knew we would be able to focus our efforts entirely on helping our solicitors provide a top notch service without getting bogged down in the day to day running of our email. “Being able

to manage all of our archived email centrally is a massive time and money saver. eDiscovery requests with Mimecast now take literally seconds or minutes instead of weeks as all the information is in one location. “We have much more control over our spam filter now, which eliminates any previous concerns with false positives. The ten year retention policy is invaluable for archive searching of deleted emails and, in addition, we can now send emails from our domain, even if our Exchange server went down or our internet access was disrupted – there is absolutely no loss in continuity! “Mimecast does what it’s supposed to do and the staff are brilliant. It’s one area that I can relax about now. I know our email is being managed in the best possible way,” concluded Whelan.

Having Mimecast manage Hayes’ email means Whelan’s team is now free to focus on development rather than housekeeping. As well as developing the company intranet, the team has been able to develop a SQL reporting structure which enables the solicitors keep a thorough check on all aspects of each case they are working on – a clear benefit for Hayes’ customers. In addition, the team is free to spend time training the entire Hayes’ staff on all aspects of the IT system, including holding Mimecast workshops.

Says Whelan: “We train all of our staff on the Mimecast user interface. We love the faster more concise searching and email tracking. The admin interface, used by the IT staff, is so easy to use, it saves hours every week managing email management requests.

Mimecast offer a quick, clean, safe, professional, cost-effective solution to an otherwise nightmare of a problem.”