Cisco Aironet 1130 AG Series

Founded in 1903 and headquartered in Toronto, McMillan Binch, LLP provides a wide range of legal services to corporate and financial services clients in Canada, the U.S., and abroad. The company's extensive international experience has made it a leader in several key areas of practice, including mergers and acquisitions, financial services, and specialized corporate law.

In a service business where knowledge and experience are crucial, McMillan Binch, LLP depends on information technology to foster collaboration and communication among partners. Providing convenient access to the firm's rich array of networked resources, such as case histories, matter files, meeting notes, billing information, and court documents, is difficult, because partners are highly mobile. Lawyers routinely spend up to half of their time away from their desks in meetings both offsite and onsite. Providing ubiquitous network access in this dynamic environment is one of the top priorities for the firm's IT department.

"There's certainly a requirement for mobile access within the firm, and the need also extends out past that," explains Chris Duncan, Director of IT at McMillan Binch, LLP. "The need for mobility at home, at other firms, cafes, or on the Toronto area's GO Train, is becoming more necessary. Clients are demanding it, and our employees want to have a better quality of life than they've had in the past. A mobile solution gives them the flexibility to make their time outside the office more productive."

McMillan Binch, LLP needed a solution that would provide 150 lawyers mobile access to its network resources. The solution would have to support more than e-mail or messaging, delivering complete access to documents and records on the network. To safeguard the firm's sensitive client and firm information, the solution would have to offer an extremely high level of security. And it would have to be versatile and scalable to support voice and other applications as needs evolved.

McMillan Binch, LLP evaluated products from several vendors before choosing a comprehensive mobility solution featuring IBM notebooks with Intel processors and wireless technology, connected to a Cisco Systems network infrastructure. When deployed together, Cisco, IBM, and Intel products and technologies complement one another as they extend network resources to mobile users smoothly and securely. As the firm's primary mobile computing platform, IBM ThinkPad notebooks with Intel Centrino mobile technology provided an ideal mix of performance and portability.

"IBM ThinkPad notebooks with Intel Centrino mobile technology are a standard that we like, and that we've adhered to," says Duncan. "There are features in these notebooks that lawyers love, such as extended battery life, reduced weight, and built-in security. We find them fantastic to use, especially compared to other vendors' notebooks."

IBM ThinkPad T40s are the most widely-used models at McMillan Binch, LLP. Designed specifically for high-performance mobile applications, IBM ThinkPad T40s include integrated 802.11b/g Wi-Fi® wireless technology to support untethered connectivity anywhere in the firm, anytime-whether a partner is in a conference room, a colleague's office, or a reception area.

"Integrated wireless connectivity was a key requirement," says Duncan. "We especially like the IBM ThinkPads with Intel Centrino mobile technology because they support new wireless technologies. And because the card is integrated, it uses the IBM ThinkPad's built-in monitor antenna-we don't have a cumbersome antenna sticking out of the side."

"Our people weren't especially concerned about processor speed, but they worried about having to carry their notebook from meeting to meeting and location to location, so low weight was a top priority," explains Duncan. "Battery life was also a top priority. If I'm going on a five-hour flight, I want my notebook to have at least a five-hour battery."

IBM ThinkVantage™ Technologies, built into the IBM ThinkPads, also provided numerous benefits for the firm's lawyers and network administrators. For example, IBM Rescue and Recovery™ with Rapid Restore™ pre-loaded on the notebooks provides one-button recovery to restore previously saved data, applications, and operating systems.

"If a machine completely fails, and someone calls our support desk at 2:00 in the morning, we can reboot it, hit a few function keys, and restore it to its last saved state," explains Duncan. "These types of features are necessities for our organization, saving our lawyers and network administrators time."

IBM ThinkPad notebooks also feature the IBM Embedded Security Subsystem (ESS), which helps safeguard sensitive legal assets and intellectual property. ESS lets users lock data on the disc to protect it from unauthorized users.

"The IBM notebooks gave us the ability to secure the documents more than you can on any other machine, and encrypt the data," says Duncan. "This is important for lawyers, because machines can be lost or stolen, and that data has to be protected."

To tap the maximum potential from its IBM notebooks, McMillan Binch, LLP deployed a comprehensive Cisco network infrastructure. Cisco Aironet® 1200 Series Access Points on each floor provide secure, manageable wireless connectivity throughout the firm. Cisco Aironet 1200 Series Access Points feature a modular design for maximum flexibility.

"We chose the Cisco solution because their access points were upgradeable," says Duncan. "We can start with 802.11b technology, and if we decide to migrate an area of the office to 802.11g wireless technology, we can simply slide a new card into the access point."

Cisco Aironet Access Points also include the Cisco Wireless Security Suite, which provides enterprise-class protection for the firm's sensitive legal data as it crosses the wireless network. For example, Cisco Aironet products support a variety of 802.1X authentication and encryption technologies, including Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP) and Cisco LEAP.

"Security is a huge issue with wireless technology," explains Duncan. "Cisco was the only vendor that was using LEAP and PEAP technology to secure the wireless environment. We found it very successful, not only because it provided the high level of security we needed, but because it was quite easy to use."

McMillan Binch, LLP selected IBM ThinkPad notebooks that were Cisco compatible and had been rigorously tested to verify they would work with Cisco Aironet products. The Cisco Compatible Extensions Program for wireless LAN devices gives the IBM ThinkPads additional compatibility with key security features and other innovations available with Cisco wireless LAN products.

When the firm recently moved to a new location, Duncan saw an opportunity to further improve attorneys' information access, productivity, and responsiveness to clients by implementing an IP Communications solution. The firm implemented IP telephony, running its voice and data traffic over a single, easy-to-manage infrastructure. The Cisco IP Communications solution enables partners to take advantage of a variety of advanced phone applications. For example, the Cisco Unity Unified Communications solution lets lawyers listen to e-mail over the telephone, or check voice messages from their IBM ThinkPads.

"Cisco Unity gives us the ability to retrieve messages from any location, and to do much more with those messages," says Duncan. "In the past, I had to transcribe a voice message if I wanted to file it. With Cisco Unity, I can save the voice message file directly into our client or matter file, or e-mail the message to a colleague or client."

The McMillan Binch, LLP mobility solution has enabled lawyers at the firm to collaborate more effectively and communicate more easily. Many clients use e-mail as a primary means of communication, so instant access to e-mail from anywhere in the building lets partners respond quickly to urgent communication-whether they're in a conference or at lunch. This in turn translates to superior client service.

The Cisco, IBM, and Intel mobility solution is also enhancing productivity by giving lawyers real-time access to information outside their offices. With wireless access, a lawyer can call up client records, notes, or other resources while meeting in a conference room, instead of having to return to his or her office to access the network.

To further boost client satisfaction, McMillan Binch, LLP has begun offering secure wireless Internet access to visitors throughout its facilities.

"Many clients and business partners come in with their notebooks and they simply want access to their e-mail," says Duncan. "Or they'll want to collaborate with us on a document. Now we're giving them that ability. In the past, we would have to provide them access from one of our computers-this way they're using their own machine and accessing their system the way that they normally would. We simply give them a visitor login and authenticate them to the visitor subnet on our Cisco network."

The Cisco IP Communications solution has enabled McMillan Binch, LLP to make its phone system a valuable information resource as well. For example, the firm is using Extended Markup Language (XML) applications to connect Cisco IP Phones to network resources like its customer relationship management (CRM) system-a capability that wasn't available before.

"I can be in a meeting room, or using any phone in the firm, and access our CRM database, which has about 60,000 contacts in it," explains Duncan. "I no longer have to go to a PC; I can get that information from any phone's LCD screen, which is very convenient."

Because the Cisco IP Communications solution consolidates the firm's voice and data networks onto a single infrastructure, McMillan Binch, LLP no longer has to pay to maintain two separate networks. Duncan reports that eliminating the PBX has saved the firm $50,000 a year Canadian in administrative costs.

McMillan Binch, LLP was among the first law firms in Canada to implement a wireless mobility solution, and the firm is actively seeking ways to enhance its solution to give its partners even more communication options. For example, the firm is adding Cisco virtual private network (VPN) technology to its network infrastructure, which will let lawyers securely connect to the office network for voice and data applications when they're working from home or on the road.

"We've had notebooks and wireless connectivity for some time, but now we're looking at different ways we can expand the solution," says Duncan. "For example, we're providing support for soft phones using the VPN. Now lawyers are able to take their phones home with them on their IBM ThinkPads."

Duncan is also considering adding Cisco wireless IP Phones to the McMillan Binch, LLP wireless network, which would give partners the freedom to roam the building while keeping their phones with them at all times. Duncan anticipates that the innovation will continue, as McMillan Binch, LLP discovers new ways to enhance its business processes with its versatile IBM, Cisco, and Intel mobility solution.

"Our partners are more productive using the mobile solution, without a doubt," says Duncan. "There are a whole lot of happy campers here, and the technology from Cisco, IBM, and Intel is fantastic-now we're focusing on ways we can best take advantage of it."

For more information about the wireless mobility solution offered by IBM, Intel, and Cisco, visit:

Intel Centrino Mobile Technology: http://intel.com/products/centrino/index.htm