Johnson Winter & Slattery
iManage Work Implementation Case Study
Johnson Winter & Slattery (JWS) is a leading independent Australian law firm with a reputation for helping clients with their business activities, disputes and most challenging transactions. The firm — which has offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney — includes 62 partners supported by over 200 lawyers, business development, finance, HR and IT professionals.
Established in 1993, the firm’s lawyers and teams are ranked regularly as leaders in their field by major local and global directories including Chambers, Best Lawyers and the Asia Pacific Legal 500.
“The flexibility that we demanded from OIA and their unflappableness was one of the key factors of our success,” said Forgione. “Throughout the project we changed timelines and expectations upon OIA as needs arose, and not only did OIA accept these changes, they met the new requirements in each case. They are now one of our most valued suppliers.”
Challenge
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To ensure employees have the proper tools to efficiently carry out their work, JWS regularly evaluates its IT systems to see where there is room for improvement. The firm’s existing DMS, which exhibited problematic behaviour, soon became a top contender for replacement.
“To put it simply, our existing system no longer met our practice requirements,” explained Ross Forgione, Chief Information Officer JWS. “There were functionality and usability problems as well as speed and performance issues. As a result, user adoption of the system was very low.”
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Solution
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To remedy the situation, Forgione conducted a firm-wide survey asking what features were most important in a new DMS and placed this data into a results traceability matrix. During the RFP process, this information was used to whittle down an initial list of ten vendors to just three. Ultimately, iManage emerged as the clear winner.
JWS worked with iManage partner OIA to purchase and implement a series of iManage solutions. “The flexibility that we demanded from OIA and their unflappableness was one of the key factors of our success,” said Forgione. “Throughout the project we changed timelines and expectations upon OIA as needs arose, and not only did OIA accept these changes, they met the new requirements in each case. They are now one of our most valued suppliers.”