Converging voice, video and data traffic on a single, integrated communications network can yield major benefits for law firms. Many international companies, including several large global law firms, have already made the leap to a converged network, primarily to save money. In some cases, the immediate cost savings can be significant for voice or video, depending on the volume of inter-office calling and whatever percentage of traffic is international. But convergence also has other important benefits:

* It simplifies network management and administration by eliminating a separate overlay network for voice or video.
* It optimizes bandwidth for better performance: when voice usage is low, the bandwidth is available for data applications to use dynamically.
* It allows you to connect smaller sites that previously could not have been cost-justified.
* It’s easier to deploy new integrated IP applications, which can boost employee productivity.
* It provides better Quality of Service (QoS) than the local telco in developing countries.

Choosing the Right Technology
One of the first decisions a law firm’s network manager must make is to select the right technology platform for the integration of voice and data. Convergence can take place over Frame Relay, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM) or Internet Protocol (IP). Network managers must keep in mind that for many multinational companies, IP using Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) to build a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is considered the technology of the future. They will find several solid reasons for selecting an MPLS-based IP VPN:

* IP provides the benefits of any-to-any connectivity. With an IP VPN, any site can connect to any other site on the network (fully meshed topology).
* New sites can easily be added to the network, as opposed to point-to-point connections required by other protocols. While hub-and-spoke Frame Relay or ATM network topologies may suffice for data applications, voice and video require site-to-site connectivity for QoS.
* IP is emerging as the global standard for internetworking.

But perhaps the most compelling reason is that most future applications are going to be written for IP. Law firms that IP-enable their communications networks will benefit from the new productivity-enabling applications, such as unified messaging, presence, instant messaging and collaboration.

The Promise of IP Telephony
The IP network can also extend to accommodate technology, such as Local Area Network (LAN) telephony or IP Telephony, and bring convergence down to the desktop. IP Telephony differs from Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) telephony in that traditional TDM PBXs require physical wiring between the phone and the PBX with physical limitations. With IP Telephony, the phone and the IP PBX can be anywhere, taking advantage of a distributed network architecture and the routing that logical IP provides.

One benefit of IP Telephony is that call processing can be set up at a central location and serve small offices from that central site. This is ideal for law firms with many small offices, because all that is needed at the remote site is the LAN infrastructure, IP phones and a voice gateway to the network. This significantly reduces equipment costs and simplifies management.

If your lawyers are at client sites or not in the office every day, you can take advantage of “hoteling.” Rather than dedicate offices or desktops to individual users, several users can share the same office on a rotational basis. IP Telephony enables end users to enter their user names and passwords, and the phone becomes their own with their line appearances, speed dial numbers and end-user profile. All calls ring to wherever the end user signs on, which can reduce real estate costs.

Law firms need to be able to accurately bill back their clients for time and a variety of other costs associated with managing their legal affairs. IP call management systems can help by tracking the number of calls, call length and number called by lawyer and by client.

With IP, the law firm can be assured it can grow its network to include video applications and technology that today cannot be envisioned. If travel is a problem or an unnecessary expense, attorneys can easily set up depositions over videoconference via an IP-enabled network. The major challenges a network manager must consider before integrating voice and data on a single network include:

* Whether to handle the migration in-house or to hire a service provider for the conversion
* Whether the existing LAN or WAN can handle the additional traffic or if a network upgrade is required
* How to address concerns of quality, reliability and security on the integrated network
* Assessing the cultural impacts of the conversion—asking how the integrated network will change the way people will work or what additional training will be required
* Law firms with sufficient IT capabilities may want to handle the conversion themselves, but they can find service providers in the marketplace who will handle the integration on a turnkey basis. Some vendors can provide service globally. Only a few can offer quality assurances on a worldwide basis, however.

Quality of Service Assurance
As with any new technological leap, law firms should have concerns about the quality of calls on an IP network. They will find that Voice over IP signaling and QoS technologies have matured. The quickest way to determine a particular service provider’s dedication to quality is to ask whether the vendor provides assured QoS levels and whether it offers a service level agreement (SLA) to back up its quality assurances. Data SLAs to cover round-trip delay, packet loss and jitter are essential to voice QoS; but you also need to consider voice-specific SLAs, such as call completion rates, post dial delay or Mean Opinion Score to measure voice quality on a call-by-call basis.

International law firms contemplating an IP solution for the integration of voice and data should select a private virtual private network (VPN), rather than using the public Internet. The VPN or managed network is more reliable and far more secure for voice and confidential legal data than the public Internet. The security solution for an international law firm must address such security issues as denial of service attacks or electronic eavesdropping.

Law firms should also find out about the VPN vendor’s Class of Service. The classes of service allow IP packets to be addressed according to the predetermined priority of their class. Voice should always receive the highest priority. Video follows close behind. By having CoS management, law firms can even prioritize their data applications giving high priority to mission critical applications and lower priority to FTP or Web browsing. It’s entirely up to the customer.

Preparing for Change
Among the cultural changes that must be taken into consideration when contemplating integration of voice and data are:

* How will such a change affect the day-to-day work life of employees?
* Can the firm accomplish the change with its existing voice and IT staffs?
* Will the firm merge departments or keep them separate? The impact of such a technological change can have enormous human resources implications. Once a firm decides to embark on a migration to convergence, it should consider minimizing the changes with which employees will have to cope. But the bottom line is that the change brings with it tangible benefits for all users.

The benefits of migrating to convergence and IP Telephony include:

* Cost savings on capital and operating expenses. Convergence reduces customer premise equipment and network expenses by eliminating separate access circuits for voice.
* Increased productivity and mobility for end users. Using IP Telephony applications, such as unified messaging, employees can manage voicemail, e-mail and fax messages through a familiar Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes inbox. Lawyers can listen to e-mail from any phone or forward a voicemail to another e-mail address. Centralized message storage provides a critical record of casework.
* Reduced staff. By using centralized, Web-based network administration and operations on a converged IP infrastructure, a law firm can improve network staff productivity by 10 or more percent by combining voice and data help desks, network administration or operations.
* Return on investment. Depending on the type of site, a new or greenfield site, small offices or offices where the PBX has either reached capacity or end of life, will yield a return on investment in a relatively short period of time (nine to 18 months).
* Business flexibility. Implementing or changing IP Telephony sites is much simpler than the dual data and voice LAN world.

Law firms might consider converting to full convergence, including IP Telephony, whenever they locate an office to a new site or plan a major renovation of an existing office. In this manner, the conversion of an entire law firm can be accomplished through a gradual migration, replacing legacy circuit-switched PBXs with IP PBX server software, which runs on standard PC operating systems and hardware.

No doubt about it, voice, video and data convergence is here to stay, and more and more law firms are adopting it to save money, improve network management and administration and improve communication.

About our author . . .

Michael Burrell is Senior Manager of Convergence Services at Equant. He is responsible for the service development and lifecycle management of Equant’s convergence services, including IP Telephony, Voice for IP VPN, and Voice over Frame Relay for LAN Access. Michael can be reached at michael.burrell@equant.com or by phone at 678.346.3784.