Nabarro Nathanson
Company: IntegraCustomer: Nabarro NathansonSubmitted by: BluegrassNabarro Nathanson, one of the UK’s top five commercial law firms, offers a broad range of legal services to clients in many areas including commercial property, finance, energy and IT. The firm has more than 100 partners and approximately 350 other lawyers working in offices in London, Reading and Sheffield, as well as Brussels where it has a specialist EU and competition law unit.With a number of industry-sector based groups working across multiple sites, the benefits of a universally accessible ‘live’ information source, an Intranet, for the group were clear. The firm was also seeing a growing trend within the legal profession towards practices offering on-line services beyond a basic corporate web site, such as client subscriber Extranets giving expert advice and law analysis.Following a detailed research and evaluation process Nabarro Nathanson’s Intranet Project Team took the decision to outsource the design and implementation of the firm’s Intranet.
The selected suppliers were Integra, tasked with the development and back-end integration and Flag Communications Ltd, responsible for design and information architecture. Flag had previously worked with Nabarro Nathanson devising its new corporate branding so the design agency was able to bring a clear and instant understanding of how to convey the same look and feel to the Intranet.The Intranet is now fully operational and has set a new standard in the legal profession. Entry to the basic Intranet is integrated with Nabarro Nathanson’s existing NT logins making easy access, via a single login, for all employees.”Integra worked very closely with the key end users and did an excellent job of understanding our “know-how” documents and the requirements lawyers have.” – Richard Elson, IT Development Manager at Nabarro NathansonSpecific areas of the site have restricted access requiring further authentication to ensure client confidentiality regarding highly sensitive information.
The Intranet’s applications are impressive. For example, with the outcome of a given legal case often creating a new precedent, Nabarro Nathanson’s intranet enables it to instantly publish extensions or amendments to existing statutes for immediate use by lawyers dealing in related cases. The search facility also includes lawyers’ directory allowing teams on individual cases to view skill sets and contact relevant lawyers within the firm’s worldwide network of affiliated practices.This single accessible view of up-to-date company knowledge and skills base, is achieved through customised integration with Nabarro Nathanson’s existing document management, human resources and PC telephony software, delivering the right information to the right person with a minimum of mouse clicks.This new Intranet solution, part of an ongoing initiative by Nabarro Nathanson to take its core business processes on-line, significantly reduces levels of paperwork whilst also improving shared access to published legal knowledge. In addition it provides on-line access to client specific transaction manuals and a wealth of information sources through links to major client Websites, and a confidential directory of links to on-line legal reference sites and subscription services.
Technical data:
The intranet functionality was built by Integra using ASP, Java 2 and Javascript running Microsoft IIS4 Web server on Microsoft SQL 7 together with static pages written in HTML using Frontpage 2000.
