Quill comes top in Punch Robson’s “all-in-one” solution search

With a history of providing legal services to the North East region dating back to 1877, Punch Robson supports private and commercial clients, both locally and nationally, from their 3 Northern sites.

The challenge:

As a multi-site practice with a team of 20 fee earners operating between offices as well as remotely, transportation of paper-based matter files to the appropriate place of work was proving problematic.

Chris Caley, IT Manager at Punch Robson, explains how their “fee earners regularly travel between sites, previously lugging around piles of paperwork in suitcases on wheels which was a logistical nightmare and physically exhausting”.

In addition to concerns regarding their archaic paper system, there were worries about IT security. As the sole person responsible for all technical matters within the firm, Chris planned his annual holiday with a combination of excitement and apprehension.

“Unlike most people, I couldn’t fully relax on holiday because I worried about things going wrong in my absence”, adds Chris. “What if someone forgot the back-up tape? What if our servers failed? What if downtime was caused through IT-related issues? The constant flow of negative scenarios running through my head prevented me from enjoying the whole holiday experience”.

Punch Robson had been unhappy with their incumbent software for a number of years so Chris grasped the opportunity to search for a solution which best suits their flexible working patterns, centrally stores all their documents and accounts data electronically, with IT security and technical support.

The solution:

“I wanted to make working life easier for our fee earners and for me”, continues Chris. “I was looking for an ‘all-in-one’ system with outsourced IT set up and management. Quill came top on functionality and price. We installed the Interactive hosted system with integrated document management at Easter-time 2013”.

Provided on a cloud platform, Interactive legal accounting and case management software allows secure online access from any location.

“We’re all using Interactive for legal accounting and matter management”, states Chris. “Furthermore, our litigation department are using the full document management facilities and it’ll be introduced into other practice areas over time. Now, as long as our staff can get on the internet, they can log in to Quill and locate or store any documentation or other information associated with their matters. Dragging around heavy piles of paper is a thing of the past”.

The future:

Hosted by the Quill data centre servers, the responsibility for business continuity, data protection, IT support, software and hardware maintenance is handed over too.

“The technical side of things is also looked after by Quill, which is a weight off my mind”, concludes Chris. “Even when we’ve suffered from server failure, we’ve only temporarily lost access to our emails. Everything else is securely stored by Quill, so has been unaffected by internal IT disruption. Not only is my day-to-day work easier, I can go on holiday calm in the knowledge that our matter files and financial data are in safe hands”.