Packet™ Magazine Archives, Fourth Quarter 1998 Litigation Firm Steers Aggressive Course toward Internetworking The legal profession has become much more competitive in recent years, causing firms such as Keesal, Young & Logan (KY&L) in Long Beach, California, to adopt innovative business practices to maintain its edge. Approaching its 30th year, KY&L recently turned to network technology to enhance its effectiveness and profitability in practicing maritime, securities, and labor law on the west coast of the USA and the Pacific Rim. In the process, the 125-person firm has made a major commitment to telecommuting. "Today, law firms advertise and compete, so we have to think like businesses and focus on margins and ways of being more effective and efficient," says Chris Hagmann, Director of Technology for KY&L. "In MIS, the focus is on making people more powerful and effective by connecting them to the resources they need to do their work, which is why telecommuting emerged as a priority," notes Hagmann. Soon after joining the law firm last year, Hagmann envisioned how going from a small LAN environment connected through a small fiber switch and a shared hub to a robust WAN architecture could deliver big productivity benefits. Today, the law firm's Long Beach headquarters also has robust network connections to satellite offices in San Francisco, Seattle, Anchorage, and Hong Kong. Telecommuting Enhances Quality of Life "We started by looking at workflow; getting to know how attorneys work and bill for their time," says Bob Murphy of Orange Coast Datacomm, the value-added reseller (VAR) on the project. "A big part of the efficiency of each attorney was based on having access to company resources from home or on the road, at all times." Cisco Systems and Orange Coast Datacomm helped KY&L implement a LAN infrastructure based on the Cisco Catalyst® 5000 switch and a WAN solution that incorporates ISDN and Frame Relay for connecting satellite offices and telecommuting. In the office, a dedicated T1 Internet connection gives the lawyers fast Web connections to research or access information for their clients. From their homes, many lawyers use a Cisco 776 ISDN router or an analog modem to dial into the Cisco AS5200 universal access server in the main office for their Internet connection. "People used to have to drive to work any time they needed to send or access information," says Mike Odenheimer, Cisco Manager of Technical Channel Marketing for Small/Medium Business. "Now, telecommuting offers them the option of working from home and adjusting their own schedules," notes Odenheimer. This improves the quality and quantity of their work and contributes directly to KY&L's bottom line. All-Cisco Infrastructure A Catalyst 5000 provides 10-Mbps Ethernet to each floor of the Long Beach headquarters via Cisco Catalyst 1900 switches. A Cisco 3640 router supports traffic from the satellite offices' Frame Relay network, providing e-mail and access to central office resources. US offices go through a domestic Internet service provider (ISP) for Internet access; the Hong Kong office uses a local ISP. The company's Internet connection goes through a Cisco 2524 router with an integrated T1 data service unit (DSU) and is secured by Cisco's PIX™ Firewall and CiscoSecure software, which provide the authentication and security for dialup users.
Remote access connections from Cisco enable KY&L's attorneys to dial into the firm's secure network from their homes.
	Hagmann can manage the network from his home via a Cisco 776 router, which lets him take control of any computer on the network to run diagnostics, recover documents, or shut it down. When computers crash or display "the blue screen of death" because of kernel corruption or an operating system obstruction, Hagmann can fix problems remotely for users in all of the firm's offices. Telecommuting Promotes Collaboration Telecommuting and networked computing at KY&L has grown to include collaboration with other firms. "We're working on a case with another law firm that has a large amount of case-related documents and pictures that were all on a server," says Hagmann. "With our new network infrastructure, we were able to collaborate on the development of these documents for presentation through an ISDN line between our two offices." One port on the AS5200 universal access server allows outbound traffic directed at the other firm's server. Less expensive than a dedicated line, the firm uses a dialup program over TCP/IP from three desktops in Long Beach, giving lawyers secure access to the external server. "Cisco has become our one-stop shop for internetworking gear," says Hagmann. "I don't have to worry about what the industry is doing next year; Cisco is worrying about that already." Table of Contents Posted: Thu Feb 4 17:09:31 PST 1999 Copyright © 1998 Cisco Systems, Inc.