Enabling the Modern Lawyer – Global Cisco UC and LAN deployment

Who are Bird & Bird

Bird & Bird are an international law firm with 28 offices worldwide. They have 1200 lawyers based in Europe, Middle East and APAC. The three key things that set them apart are: Deep industry knowledge, Excellence in client service and International reach.

Why Cisilion?

Karen Jacks, IT Director at Bird & Bird

“We really love working with Cisilion. They understand the way the law firm works, they understand the way infrastructure and unified collaboration works."

Snapshot

Bird & Bird’s IT Director Karen Jacks had an IT vision, where she wanted to enable the modern lawyer, where they could work in a very mobile, agile and collaborative way. She wanted their lawyers to be able to work on a global basis, on any device, from anywhere. This was achieved after Cisilion deployed Cisco Jabber, LAN and Wireless at their new London HQ as well as Cisco UC at their global offices in EMEA and APAC. Cisilion also manage all of the IT deployments on a global  24/7 basis. They now have the entire firm, globally, on one single platform – fully enabling the lawyers of the 21st century.

Challenges

Bird & Bird were facing multiple challenges due to their dated UC technology, which included:

  • No global collaboration platform
  • Old PBX systems and disjointed VC experience
  • Manual directory
  • Staying competitive and giving their lawyers the best tools for working

How did Cisilion help

  • Innovation Centre visit to see products in action
  • Model office creation, where all users could see the technology in action
  • User adoption services
  • Understanding of user personas from outset
  • Full lifecycle management

Solution

Cisilion deployed an end to end Cisco solution, consisting of Cisco Jabber, LAN and wireless.

The partnership has consisted of multiple phases:

Phase 1 – deployment of Cisco Jabber, LAN and Wireless at their new London HQ

Phase 2 – Asia PAC rollout

Phase 3 – Rollout for rest of EMEA offices

In addition to this, Cisilion support Bird & Bird with a fully global managed services offering.

Phase 4 will be Webex and Spark, solutions Bird & Bird are currently trialling. 

Benefits & numbers

There are a number of ways Bird & Bird have helped its lawyers through the adoption of these technologies:

  • Already huge benefit of much less complex state
  • Managed to rationalise all PBX systems into a single platform
  • Reduction in call costs
  • Reduction in maintenance costs from legacy PBX systems