SharePoint Portal Satisfies a Group of Lawyers

Published: May 10, 2006

by Alex Woodie

A Virginia law firm is getting good returns on their implementation of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft reported last week. Hunton & Williams, a legal firm with 900 lawyers spread across 17 offices on three continents, says it now has better access to documents and information related to its cases, and better inter-office collaboration, compared to its previous portal, which was built on a Plumtree platform.

The SharePoint implementation utilizes Handshake Software's Handshake Relationship Toolkit (HSR) to deliver consolidated information, such as "matter-centric" and "client-centric" views, from the firm's line-of-business systems, Microsoft says. While the firm's Plumtree portal also delivered a Web-based interface for accessing data stored in various systems, it did not provide an aggregate view of the date, and didn't make it easy to transfer documents or share them with clients, which appear to be the main advantage of the new SharePoint portal.

"Attorneys and support staff in all our offices can now access the information they need, when they need it," says Jamie Booth, director of information technology at Hunton & Williams.