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Posted: Mon, July 18, 2005
Profile: Hugh JamesHugh James is one of the UK's leading law firms, experiencing growth and success since it was established in 1960. The company is highly placed in the table of the top 100 law firms in the UK, and has 47 partners and over 500 staff working out of three offices. In addition to providing the full range of legal services Hugh James has a national reputation in several areas of work including ICT and ECommerce. To meet the needs of the practice, the IT department at Welsh law firm Hugh James has experienced significant growth over recent years. IT manager Jon Howells explains to Sali Earls how the busy department works, and what they do to keep themselves lean and innovative. With the fast moving technological changes that have taken place over the last ten years, the typewriters that not so long ago adorned every desk have been replaced by PCs. All modern companies have their own local area network which is interconnected via the wide area network to provide central resources and management for all users. At Hugh James the IT department has grown considerably in the last five years. Responding to the changes of the industry, a team of 2 has now grown to a team of 14 and there are now four different areas of work within the IT department alone.
LAN's and WAN's, Internet Connectivity, Backups, Firewalls and Security products, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam and Server application upgrades are all the responsibility of the Server Team.
Our Development Team handles all of our own development needs internally. The Project Administrator role has been one that has matured to handle all the projects that we implement and to bridge the language barrier that differentiates developers and solicitors speak. An essential continuation in our development is the Case Management System. We now have several successful Solcase built systems which gives us the tools to tailor the system to suit our needs at all levels. This means we can handle thousands of cases each month in each of these systems.
The future of Hugh James is that of continued growth and technological development to meet the ever changing needs of us and our clients. The department will continue to offer improved resources and effective solutions to both Hugh James and our clients. The department lives by the strapline, 'you will never be able to offer your business too much information and support.' Find out more about Hugh James at www.hughjames.info. |
The Support team, who are the faces of the IT department for most
staff in Hugh James, consists of 4 members of staff across its network of offices throughout South Wales. The Support Team run a helpdesk software which records all incoming emails from the firms
550 active computers and assigns each email to a specific member of the team. It is then that team member's responsibility to
respond quickly and provide a solution to the problem effectively. 
Citrix Metaframe Server is one of the vital products that keeps
Hugh James at the top of its field. It has allowed us to centralise our databases and offers access to certain databases that would
have otherwise been impossible. With Citrix Nfuse we can offer secure access from outside of the office to our network via the internet. Using certificates, password application management, we are
able to control access and offer a practical and beneficial service to everyone within the firm. This coupled with Blackberry devices given to key members of staff for remote access to calendar and
email on the move, enable our users access to their systems 24/7.
The other compact team in the department is the training team.
This works closely with other departments within Hugh James to offer bespoke training sessions on applications to our staff. We
have also completed an online training product which allows us to write training courses and publish them on our intranet for users to complete. The courses can be timed and graded and we have the
ability for staff to be assigned certain courses to make sure they are constantly up-to-date on new information and practices.|
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