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TECH SUPPORT turbulent times Belt tightening in IT departments are feeling the pressure of firm-wide pushes to cut costs. BY GERRY BLACKWELL hanks to the global economic implosion, law firm IT man- agers are hearing the word no for the first time in recent his- tory. No, you can't spend as much money. No, you can't introduce this new technology. No. "There is no doubt law firms are noticing the downturn," says John Esvelt, director of risk management at Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP in Toronto. "It's reflected both in the volume of work, and in the kind of work." Volume is down. Fraser Milner is seeing more insolvency and debt-related matters, more litigation — over debt-related matters — and a dearth of mergers and acquisitions work, he says. Whitelaw Twining Law Corp., a 25-lawyer Vancouver firm, is seeing a slightly different effect, says IT manager Richard Giroux. The number of cases is up, but profitability is down. "They're smaller cases but there are more of them," says Giroux. "That increases overhead per case, so you have to do more work with less money." All of which puts pressure on IT operations. "Like most organizations, our group is being asked to do more attention from vendors when procuring technology or renegotiating contracts, and it makes better use of IT department resources. Fraser Milner has seen an almost 10-per-cent reduction in IT head count through attrition with no reduction in service levels. And the benefits keep coming. Each time a contract comes up for renewal, the firm reaps more savings. "The tim- ing obviously couldn't be bet- ter given the downturn," says Esvelt. While a shared-services approach would make sense for other multi-office firms, the savings are more long term, and there is some capital invest- with less," says FMC's chief technology officer Scott Saundry. Smart IT managers are finding ways to cope, though. Indeed, Esvelt says many in the industry now acknowledge a silver lining to the downturn — it forces firms to pursue long-deferred initiatives for making IT management more efficient. "We don't have any choice now," he says. Fraser Milner, under Saundry's leader- ship, had already begun an initiative 18 months ago, gradually switching to a shared-services approach, with central- ized procurement and management of IT across all seven of the firm's offices. In the past, each office managed its own IT. The shared-services approach means the firm gets better discounts and more www. ment required at the outset, Saundry and Esvelt caution. But now is still an excel- lent time to start, both agree. The decision to go the shared-services route may have blunted the impact of the downturn on FMC, but did not elim- inate it. Project spending is down and Saundry's operations budget is flat. The downturn "has forced law firms to pri- oritize much better, to look at which pro- jects really are essential, which support strategic plans," says Saundry. "There are some [capital projects] you want to con- tinue to focus on, but you definitely have to be much more selective." Fraser Milner has scaled back plans to replace older desktops and laptops, even though, as Saundry points out, this is mag.com APRIL 2009 21 ENRICO VARRASSO