Minster Law was dissatisfied with the scalability and cost-efficiencies of their private cloud service.
The firm migrated its infrastructure in full, including a key business application, to Microsoft Azure.
This migration resulted in a 300% boost in employee productivity on some tasks, a 20% reduction in costs, and an enhanced experience for both staff and customers.
“Performance has improved astronomically with Azure.”
Ash Spencer, Head of IT and Security, Minster Law
Minster Law is a specialist law firm based in Wakefield in Yorkshire. The firm was operating its own on-premises data centre from its York office until 2018, when company restructuring meant the closure of that location. Initially, Minster Law transitioned to a private cloud service in a local colocation data centre. However, while this alleviated some of the infrastructure management tasks, the company didn’t see the cost savings or scalability benefits it sought.
Chris Clay-Whittaker, Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Minster Law, explains, “Although we didn’t have the headache of tin or having to replace kit every four years, there was no scaling there. We were paying the same whether we used ten or fifty percent of capacity.”
With a significant footprint already in Microsoft Azure, where Minster Law’s customer and client portals were hosted, leveraging Azure Web Apps, the IT team realised it needed to migrate the whole estate into Azure to achieve the true scalability and cost-efficiency promise of cloud.
The key drivers for the move to Azure were the scalability the Minster Law team knew Azure could deliver and the subsequent cost efficiencies. The advanced tooling and access to leading-edge technologies, including security services such as Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Defender for Endpoint, were another big incentive.
Chris Clay-Whittaker explains, “Being in Microsoft Azure opens up so many doors to different capabilities. In Azure, we get our hands on new technology as it comes out.”
The small team leant into the support available from Microsoft, working closely with the Microsoft Fast Track team to ensure a smooth transition. However, a key line of business system – the crucial internal case management system – was holding back a full migration to Azure.
“The vendor was adamant the application would not work in Azure,” recalls Ash Spencer, Head of IT and Security at Minster Law. “But we were convinced we could make it work with our set up.”
The performance of the case management application was not fully benefiting the business teams and the Minster Law IT team. By switching to hosting it in Azure, they could address existing challenges for case handlers while creating efficiencies for the business.
Ebony Tate, Assistant Fee Earner at Minster Law, explains how frustrating the system performance was: “It was really slow. I used to be able to go downstairs, make a cup of tea, come back up, place my cup on my desk, and it would still be loading.”
The performance issues were more pronounced for larger, more complex, and high-value cases, which created additional challenges for the team working on them. This added pressure for the staff involved.
“We tended to think, while the cases were loading: What can I do in that time? We were having to think on our feet constantly because every minute matters,” explains Ebony Tate. “The delays meant that the daily targets I had were not achievable. Every day, it would require working evenings and starting very, very early. It got to a point that people were thinking, ‘How are we supposed to meet our metrics?’ It was like wading through treacle – and it was very stressful.”
With the goal of improving the employee experience and, as a result, improving the client experience at the forefront of its thinking, the Minster Law team worked closely with Microsoft, its partner and the application vendor to conduct extensive testing, running scenarios across their entire landscape, to create a migration plan for the case management application.
“We collaborated with our Microsoft team to convince our vendor it could work,” explains Ash Spencer. “We had tested the case management application in Azure, with our colleague base using the application via Azure Virtual Desktop. We just needed confirmation from the vendor that they would continue to support the application. Once they confirmed to us that they would, we were very confident it was the right decision for us”.
“Going down the Azure Virtual Desktop route has been brilliant,” confirms Chris Clay-Whitaker. “There has been a huge performance improvement going to the new setup.”
The migration to Azure and Azure Virtual Desktop has ensured that daily case management tasks are now much more efficient.
“Performance has improved astronomically with Azure,” Ash Spencer advises. “Now, you just click through documents and they load instantly. It’s a huge improvement,” adds Chris Clay-Whitaker.
For the case management team, the daily frustrations have been greatly lifted.
“I don’t feel down anymore because I can achieve the required targets much better. They feel realistic,” confirms Ebony Tate.
The improved performance has not only benefited the Minster Law team but also significantly improved client service. Ebony Tate emphasises, “This is in the client’s best interest, not just ours. We’re serving our clients better now because we can access information more quickly.”
“Being in Microsoft Azure opens up so many doors to different capabilities. In Azure, we get our hands on new technology as it comes out.”
Chris Clay-Whittaker, Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, Minster Law
“I used to complain about the old system a lot,” says Lorna Barron, Assistant Fee Earner at Minister Law. “So, it wasn’t just the time wasted waiting for the system to respond, it was all the time we were complaining about it as well!”
Following the move, calls to the service desk regarding the case management application reduced by over 40 percent – taking pressure off the IT team as well as the call handlers.
Ebony Tate reports, “We got the tools to do our job, fulfil our role, and serve our clients in the way that we need to.” Lorna Barron agrees, “It’s a lot less stressful.”
Because the case management system is so fundamental to the way the firm works, the improved system performance has directly impacted morale and employee retention. Employee experience is especially important for Minster Law.
Ash Spencer explains, “Within the local market here in West Yorkshire, for our high calibre of professional people, it can be difficult to recruit talent. The resource pool is finite, so it’s even more important for us to hold on to people with the experience and expertise of Lorna and Ebony.”
Another significant benefit has been the enhanced data governance.
Because staff lacked trust in the system performance before, they would often save files to their local desktops. “No matter how many notices went out asking us not to save files locally, we all did it,” says Ebony Tate, “because we didn’t trust the system not to crash whilst we were making changes to a file. We saved everything to the desktop because we were so worried about losing it.”
The migration to Azure Virtual Desktop and its seamless integration with OneDrive changed this dynamic.
“Now, I place way more trust in the system than I did before,” Ebony Tate continues. “I can’t remember the last time I saved something to my desktop.”
Chris Clay-Whittaker confirms, “Now we upload all files to OneDrive instead of saving them to the computers. It reduces risk and saves space. Moving all our desktop and documents folders directly to OneDrive means there’s no panic about losing files. It’s brilliant.”
“Of course, this has significant data governance advantages,” he adds. “We can respond much faster and more confidently to requests for information and we know we can fully meet our responsibilities under GDPR.”
Security has also been enhanced as a result of the migration to Azure. Minster Law has leant into Azure as a comprehensive cloud security platform, deploying Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Defender for Endpoints.
These tools have replaced several third-party products, delivering a more seamless, comprehensive solution while bringing overall security costs down. Chris Clay-Whittaker explains, “With the switch, we were able to deliver considerable cost savings to the business and we have a much clearer overview of our security posture than before.”
During the transition and for those few systems left on-premises, Minster Law uses Azure Arc. This ensures that its comprehensive security stance covers its full technology stack across on-premises and Azure.
Chris Clay-Whitaker adds, “We’re now looking at Microsoft Security Copilot to see what additional advantages it can deliver.”
With the Azure cloud management tools, Minster Law has gained extra visibility of line of business IT costs.
Ash Spencer says, “I can absolutely quantify the costs for everyone, for every new project. It enables us to forecast what’s coming down the line and what things are going to be like at the end of the month. We can be a lot more strategic with our investments than we could be before. Everybody wins in that.”
Not only does Minster Law have a better oversight of IT spend, the team has also worked hard to reduce the overall cost of cloud hosting.
Ash Spencer explains, “The reserved instances and the scaling plans in Azure Virtual Desktop have worked really well. Altogether, we have saved around 20 percent on our previous costs. Since we’ve finetuned everything, we’ve saved approximately 28 to 30 percent over the last year.”
These savings have given the Minster Law team the opportunity to explore new technologies that they might not have had the chance to before.
Ash Spencer explains, “I used some of the cost savings to implement a social engineering tool to educate people on real-time AI-based phishing and social engineering. That’s one absolute cast-iron benefit of the savings our migration to Azure has delivered.”
300% boost in employee productivity on some tasks
The success of the team’s migration of the key line of business system has been so transformative for the business, the team at Minster Law is eager to share its experience with other firms in the legal industry.
“Since we moved to Azure, we’ve been in contact with two or three other law firms that have since moved their environment to Azure based on our recommendation,” says Chris Clay-Whittaker. “We’ve had chats with them during their migration and it’s gone well for them too.”
Ash Spencer emphasises, “We’re absolutely giving them the benefit of our experience.”
Now the infrastructure is in Microsoft Azure, the team is keen to explore the new opportunities open to them, especially around AI.
“Azure opens the door to so many new technologies,” says Chris Clay-Whitaker. “For example, we are looking at how we can leverage Azure OpenAI with our unstructured legacy file data and for automating redaction activities.”
“We’ve seen Microsoft Security Copilot, which is absolutely brilliant,” Ash Spencer adds. “There are definitely benefits we can gain from. For example, if we can make everyone more efficient with AI tools doing a lot of the heavy lifting, it can be a gamechanger.”
By leveraging AI tools, Minster Law can foster talent retention and skills building. In a highly specialised area, providing employees with cutting-edge technology and opportunities for continuous learning will significantly boost job satisfaction, professional growth and desire to innovate.
The team is already becoming more excited about the technologies, such as how it might use Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline data security, including for compliance, with Purview, around security, tagging, and retention periods.
“We’re continually adding new services on. This is an ever-evolving process for us,” says Ash Spencer. “We’re very excited about where we can go next.”
“We got the tools to do our job, fulfil our role, and serve our clients in the way that we need to.”
Ebony Tate, Assistant Fee Earner, Minster Law
Follow Microsoft