The Law Society

The Law Society was undergoing a cross-organisational transformation programme which accelerated their move to a digital workplace; the digital solution had to assure staff that collaborative software was secure; the new programme was introduced at a time of Covid lockdown disruption and over the financial year-end; a proportion of the in-house IT department staff were relatively new to the organisation; timelines were tight and ‘change fatigue’ was a constant concern.

For many years, the Law Society and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) – respectively the professional body and regulatory arm of the Law Society Group – had operated shared services, including IT. The need to create two autonomous organisations would have a major effect on the operations for both, requiring each to deliver major transformation programmes to provide their own discrete IT capabilities and architectures. The Law Society Council, recognising the vital importance of this requirement, invested in new IT programmes for both organisational arms of the Group.

“The IT programme tackled the fundamental infrastructure and application issues we had faced over time with the shared service. We took the opportunity to streamline our applications by removing duplication and multiple versions while upgrading and standardising on Microsoft 365 and Windows 10 software.”

These initial improvements started in 2017, well ahead of the first Covid 19 lockdown period, and the fire in our offices just the month before this, enabling Society staff to continue to work effectively from home when these incidents struck.

“The aims of the original IT programme received a major revision with the appointment of a new CEO who was committed to transforming the way in which the overall business operated,” says Jane Deal.

Digital Workplace was designed to enable everyone in the Law Society to work together more effectively through collaboration and information sharing while improving security and compliance and getting the most out of Microsoft Office 365 tools.

Staff had to be able to find information easily and trust it to be true. They needed to be confident that the document they were using was the latest and only version, securely stored, and shared only with those who needed it. People required access to information and the ability to view and edit documents on whichever device they were using, wherever they were working.

The core plan for this phase of Digital Workplace was to migrate documents and content from multiple locations to one single, secure location in Microsoft SharePoint. Microsoft 365 applications would be installed, properly supported, and kept up to date. To achieve success, staff would need to recognise the benefits of the new ways of working and how the new tools can help them be more productive.

Digital Workplace was an ambitious programme. Jane Deal’s team recognised they needed a partner with deep experience and expertise to help them deliver against several major challenges.

Above all, the programme’s objectives represented a substantial change in ways of working for the organisation. Achieving them meant getting senior stakeholders across technology, governance, operations, and business to agree on comprehensive design and delivery details.

There were internal resourcing challenges, too. As a newly created team within the IT function, programme staff were working together for the first time. Also, staff in all departments were in the midst of business priorities and multiple Shaping our Future change programmes. There were concerns that change fatigue would jeopardise progress on Digital Workplace.

Finally, Digital Workplace was on a tight timeline. The programme needed to move the entire organisation across to the new platform in a relatively short window to avoid a protracted period of time during which some parts of the Society had transitioned to new efficient ways of working and others had not.

Dave Glanville, Head of Solutions, had attended the 2019 Charity IT Leaders conference where he met CPS, a multi-award-winning Microsoft Gold Partner. When the Law Society began looking for Digital Workplace support, CPS was shortlisted. After a stringent tender process, CPS was asked to review and implement the business case strategy.

The first task for CPS was to analyse and validate the business plan for Digital Workplace. That involved deep discussions between CPS and the internal team, sharing alternative technical solutions and exploring the business consequences. As a result of this intense review process, design of the programme was improved, and original plans were rewritten.

“This design phase was critical for us,” says Dave Glanville. “As is the case with many organisations, we need to ensure we are compliant when sharing information both inside and outside the organisation. We needed a design that would maximise collaboration and flexibility that is secure by default. CPS was able to help us get over that challenge and, based on our strategy, create a design path to meet our specific requirements.”

Nikhil Kaimal, a consultant on the programme, was impressed by the way CPS responded to the timeline challenges from the start, but also importantly, how the whole team worked sensitively with the Law Society. “They had a very narrow window in which to design and deliver Digital Workplace,” says Nikhil Kaimal. “Quite simply, if the CPS team had been unable to work to the Society’s timings, the programme would have failed. Schedules were particularly demanding because there were a large number of diverse business units covering different specialist functions, needs and responsibilities. The CPS team’s patience and experience was crucial in working with those stakeholders and getting their support.”

Sarah Hall, Senior Change Manager for Digital Workplace, is responsible for making sure end-users adopt the digital solutions in plan. Her objectives were potentially compromised by a series of issues: a new Digital Workplace programme team, competing projects, Covid absences, staff working from home during lockdown, and the fact that implementation of the programme coincided with the end of the financial year. Close collaboration with CPS was key to enabling smooth adoption of the programme.

“Digital Workplace is a major change for people,” Sarah Hall says. “We worked well as a team with CPS to define an adoption process with consistent messages. Because we were clear about who was leading on which task, we could optimise our resources and swap people seamlessly into different roles. Together we created a very efficient adoption ‘machine’ that ensured the majority of end-users were moving easily to the new solution, and we could focus our time on the exceptions that needed extra help. Our relationship was strongly based on trust and real bonding between us.”

The adoption process showcased Microsoft 365 tools and leveraged CPS capabilities as a Microsoft Gold Partner. Teams, for example, was an invaluable tool for enabling groups of information stewards and ‘Digital Heroes’ to collaborate and support each other and to ‘show and tell’ the potential for digital working.