Law Firm Plans for Contingencies with Indispensible BlackBerry Smartphones

Industry: Professional Services /Legal

Region: Americas

Company Size: Large Enterprise - 500 employees

Email Environment: Microsoft® Exchange

BlackBerry Alliance Member Solution: WIC Messenger by Wallace Wireless

Challenge

The team at Goodmans LLP relies heavily on their BlackBerry® smartphones for communications internally and with clients. The company wanted to ensure that it had a back up method for communications and an up to date contact list in place in the event of a power outage or email service disruption.

Solution

Goodmans LLP decided that PIN-to-PIN communication was the best way to help keep communications flowing when email servers went down. They deployed WIC Messenger by Wallace Wireless to automatically push an up-to-date list of PIN numbers to each BlackBerry smartphone so users could easily contact each other.

Goodmans LLP’s Results

• Back up communications and contact lists in place to keep communications flowing, in certain circumstances if there are technology disruptions• Effortless for IT group to maintain, easy for users to learn• Group communications ability helpful during emergencies to mass communicate

Goodmans LLP is a Canadian law firm with more than 200 lawyers on staff.

Success On BlackBerry

Goodmans LLP

BlackBerry Case Study - Professional Services /Legal

2 | Success On BlackBerry | Law Firm Plans for Contingencies with Indispensible BlackBerry Smartphones

Goodmans LLP is a law firm that recognizes how important it is to be accessible, no matter the role in the company. That’s why the firm began providing BlackBerry smartphones to all lawyers and key personnel.

“We look at BlackBerry smartphones as strategic tools for doing business,” says Dick Jensen, Director, Technology. “Even our mailroom runners have them, because how else are you going to get in touch with someone who’s never sitting down? In our firm, BlackBerry smartphones are not seen as frills for executives.”

Given this dependence on communications, Goodmans wanted to put a continuity of operations plan in place. They decided to use PIN-to-PIN communications, which allows two users to communicate between BlackBerry smartphones using the device’s PIN numbers, even if an email server or the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server is temporarily not working.

But the firm realized that this method of communication would only be effective if they could maintain an up-to-date contact list that:

• would automatically push updates to users without any manual effort • did not require the commitment of its IT team to manage the list • enabled group communications

The BlackBerry Solution Makes a Winning Case

Goodmans chose the BlackBerry solution as the platform it wanted to roll out to the firm for a number of reasons. The obvious one was meeting their clients’ needs. “Our clients have important demands,” says Jensen. “They want immediate answers and our lawyers can’t do that without their BlackBerry smartphones. At one time the most important piece of technology was their desk phones – now it’s their BlackBerry smartphones.”

In addition to relying on email, calendar, contact lists and access to documents through their devices, the company’s lawyers also take advantage of Wi-Fi® services. When they travel, they often access Wi-Fi® services on their Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry smartphones to keep roaming charges to a minimum and lower costs for the firm.

From an IT perspective, Jensen is able to take advantage of the ease and security functionality of managing devices on the BlackBerry® Enterprise Solution. “It’s nice that I only need one person who knows the BlackBerry solution inside and out to support our users,” says Jensen. “If I had multiple platforms, I would need more people to keep them up and running.”

The Situation: BlackBerry Smartphones are No Frill for this Busy Law Firm

Easy Solution to Managing Contact Lists

When Goodmans decided to use PIN-to-PIN communications as their back up communications plan, they realized there needed to be an easy way to ensure that PIN numbers were kept up to date. At first, they tried creating their own method, but found it was complicated for users and required significant support from an IT perspective.

The solution? WIC Messenger by Wallace Wireless. It’s an application for the BlackBerry smartphone that integrates with and aggregates contact information from multiple back-end systems. Goodmans used WIC Messenger to connect to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server in order to obtain the most up-to-date PIN numbers, and to push this information to end-user’s BlackBerry smartphones. This information was kept up-to-date without any action by end-users or intervention by IT, which made PIN-to-PIN communication significantly more convenient for the firm.

In the event of an email communications disruption, the solution is designed so users can look up a contact name and begin communicating with them quickly and easily using PIN messaging. “We did not want to be in a situation where someone had changed devices and a PIN communication went to the wrong person,” says Jensen. “We wanted a solution that was built to automatically and accurately provide updates to our important contact lists.”

Application Type: Continuity of Operations

BlackBerry Alliance Member Solution: WIC Messenger by Wallace Wireless

• An up-to-date corporate address book is provided by the WIC Messenger application on the BlackBerry smartphone• Updates to the contact list – and specifically PIN numbers – are pushed from the WIC Messenger server to BlackBerry smartphones on a regular basis• If a new user is added or a device is exchanged between people, the application detects this information and pushes the updated PIN numbers out to all users, ensuring that everyone has the most up-to- date contact list• Contacts from multiple sources, such as Microsoft® Exchange, IBM® Lotus Notes®, Novell® GroupWise®, Microsoft® SQL Server®, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and Active Directory can be aggregated as part of the application• Groups can be set up within the application to assist with rapidly communicating with a team en mass, rather than individually

How It Works.

3 | Success On BlackBerry | Law Firm Plans for Contingencies with Indispensible BlackBerry Smartphones

So Business Keeps Running

Goodmans has not experienced a communications failure when they needed to rely on their continuity of operations plan. But they have used it when they take their email servers offline for maintenance, so lawyers can communicate by PIN.

“You can’t create a back up plan without a reliable way to manage the contacts on the list,” says Jensen. “Now we know if a PIN number has changed, we have a way to update that information in the background.”

And since this is a firm that depends heavily on their BlackBerry smartphones, they believe they have a back up plan in place for both planned and unplanned disruptions.

In Case of an Emergency

Another feature of WIC Messenger is the ability to create group contact lists. Goodmans uses this feature for their Incident Command Team – people assigned throughout the building to manage emergencies, such as fires and the evacuation of employees.

The Incident Command Team can send out a group PIN message, instead of sending individual ones, to communicate with each other. “I needed the ability to talk to a group quickly when there is an urgent situation,” says Jensen.

Jensen also uses a product from Wallace Wireless called WIC Responder, which allows him to store and keep the most up-to-date documents such as emergency policies and procedures on his BlackBerry smartphone. He used to have hard copies of these documents. Now he can look up information from his BlackBerry smartphone.

“On my BlackBerry smartphone, I have documents that are crucial to the firm, such as contact lists, procedures for shutting down key servers and so on,” he says. “If I cannot get into my servers, I have this information at hand in an accessible format.”

Summary of Goodman’s Results

• Back up communications and contact lists to keep communications flowing, in certain circumstances if there are technology disruptions• Virtually effortless for IT group to maintain, easy for end-users to learn• Group communications ability helpful during emergencies to mass communicate

For additional BlackBerry customer success stories,

visit www.blackberry.com/go/success

Results unique to Goodmans LLP and may not be typical. This material, including all material incorporated by reference herein or made available by hyperlink, is provided or made accessible “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” and without condition, endorsement, guarantee, representation or warranty of any kind by Research In Motion Limited and its affiliated companies (“RIM”) and RIM assumes no responsibility for any typographical, technical, or other inaccuracies, errors or omissions in this material and shall not be liable for any type of damages related to this material or its use, or performance, or non-performance of any software, hardware, service, or any references to third-party sources of information, hardware or software, products or services including components and content such as content protected by copyright and/or third-party web sites (collectively the “Third Party Products and Services”). When you subscribe to Third Party Products and Services you accept that: 1.It is your sole responsibility to: (a) ensure that your airtime service provider will support all features; (b) identify and acquire all required intellectual property licences prior to installation or use and to comply with the terms of such licences; 2.RIM makes no representation, warranty or guarantee

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“Using PIN-to-PIN communications on BlackBerry smartphones is like an insurance policy our people rely on.”

~ Dick Jensen, Director, Technology, Goodmans LLP

“For the most part, we’ve standardized on the BlackBerry smartphone because of the security and manageability.”

~ Dick Jensen, Director, Technology, Goodmans LLP