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Carr, McClellan, Ingersoll, Thompson & Horn

Mid-Size Law Firm. Super-Size IT Challenges

Carr, McClellan, Ingersoll, Thompson & Horn is a six-decade old Bay Area law firm with over 30 attorneys. Carr McClellan is unusual both for being a friendly, accessible local firm and because their national caliber attorneys specialize in 11 distinct practice areas – unusual breadth for a small to mid-sized firm. Carr, McClellan requires IT integration complexity similar to firms 10 or 100 times larger.

The Problem:

Carr, McClellan stood at a crossroads. Their aging software and hardware systems needed a complete overhaul. Yet, every time the firm attempted to upgrade even a small portion of their word processing and data base systems, costly downtime would result.
  • The firm used over 100 unique legal software packages to support their 11 departments. Their IT design was so complicated and the software integration of the 100 packages so interconnected that if one thing was changed, something else would inevitably break.
  • Downtime cost is extremely high for law firms (a 30 attorney law firm in today's dollars can have a daily downtime cost of over $100,000). Consequently, the firm had avoided upgrading their aging system for as long as possible.
  • Finally, the old system began to show signs of breaking under the load. MPA Networks was brought on as a leading Bay Area IT service firm with legal systems experience and the knowledge and expertise to handle a complex technical and logistical conversion.

Solution and Benefits:

  • MPA's legal support practice has always been a cornerstone of MPA's service operation.
  • MPA Networks' experienced and knowledgeable team was able to successfully handle the conversion.
  • The Carr McClellan conversion project entailed 12 months of planning and execution, including the conversion of 1 million documents.
  • During the entire length of the project, firm downtime was kept to an absolute minimum.
  • The communication and management skills of the MPA team matched well with the primarily non-technical attorneys and support staff and the local flavor of the firm.