Internet Newsletter for Lawyers
March/April 2006, by Delia Venables

More on SharePoint - a case study from a small firm
by Laurence Kaye, Julian Baker and Alastair Morrison

Laurence Kaye Solicitors, www.laurencekaye.com, are specialists in technology, media, intellectual property and e-commerce law. Laurie wrote to me after reading Alastair Morrison's article on SharePoint in the January/February newsletter (see here) and noticing my appeal for volunteers.
If that address does not work for you, try the absolute web site address www.venables.co.uk/n0601sharepoint.htm.

He describes what he is doing from the lawyer’s point of view below and then Julian Baker, who manages the system for him, gives more of the technical background. There is also a further note from Alastair Morrison.

Laurence Kaye writes:

I have been using a secure SharePoint site for the last 6 months, very successfully.

The need for a collaboration tool arose when I was joined by my colleague Mailin Bala who works from a different location (I am based in Radlett, Herts, and she is based in Cheltenham). We needed something which would enable us to collaborate remotely with the possibility of “opening up” certain areas of our work on a secure basis to clients.

We first tried a product called Groove, www.groove.net, now owned by Microsoft, which is a “peer to peer” file sharing tool with the facility to synchronise files and documents. However, we realised that we needed something with a central server and preferably something which could be “hosted” so we would not have to provide the in-house support ourselves.

Although the product can (in theory) be used “out of the box”, we engaged Julian Baker of Legal Technology Solutions, www.legaltechnologysolutions.com, to configure the site. He was very helpful. We engaged Server World, www.serverworld.co.uk, to host the site. They back it up daily and we also get regular back-ups sent to us on DVD.

Although we use SharePoint on a hosted service basis, the only material on the hosted server is our firm's - there is no-one else's content. It is a secure site using SSL security and is maintained under user name and password control. On the server, we store client documents, know-how and other firm-related material. We also use it as a portal to access third party information sites. It is fully searchable and we will be able to use it to create sub-site sites for specific clients shortly.

The initial implementation costs (design and configuration of the SharePoint site, server set up fee, MS SQL software licence) was around £4,000 plus VAT. The ongoing costs, including rental of server, daily back up and so on is around £5,500 a year, plus VAT. I have the option to purchase the server at any time.

Sub-sites for clients

When we open up the site to clients, we will create specific sub-sites so that they can only access the content on that sub-site. Once they are created as users by the Site Administrator, all they will need to access the site will be a browser, a user name and a password.

Using “Web Parts” (see Alastair Morrison’s note below) SharePoint makes it easy for a small firm to build a powerful portal. For example, we have added Web Parts so that we can link from within our site to information sources such as Lawtel and legal news sites like the Lawyer.

Another Web Part we will use soon is a “survey feature”. We are about to start work on a client project which involves gathering information from 11 jurisdictions about contracts and commercial practice in a particular field of copyright law. We will create a separate sub-site with its own secure access, and use an online survey Web Part to gather the relevant data from clients and other advisers.

We find that SharePoint works very well as a document management system with features such as version control but it does not have an automatic document ID system.

Laurence Kaye’s website is at www.laurencekaye.com. Email laurie@laurencekaye.com.

Julian Baker, Legal Technology Systems, writes:

It may help to understand Laurie’s system if I describe again the two levels of SharePoint available:

Features of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)

WSS is included with Microsoft Server 2003, so any practice licensed to use this can exploit the WSS services. It provides document management features (e.g. document libraries, version control, check-in and check-out of documents, meta tagging and so on) along with web pages which allow you to set up pages where groups of authorised users can collaborate.

The collaboration can be document centric, e.g. where a group of people are working on the production of a particular document and need to share information regarding it, keep versions, access research material and hold discussions etc. It can also be project centric where the page is geared around the needs of a particular business project/function/client rather than a document, although documents can be made available here if required.

A number of default collaboration page templates are provided and others can be set up as required. New collaboration pages can be set up and deployed very quickly by non-technical users using pre-defined templates and web parts. Items can be added, removed and edited on the page using the simple in built editors. For more complex requirements, customisation can be undertaken in Microsoft Frontpage or similar tools and new web parts can be written using standard development tools and published standards.

WSS needs a database behind it and by default, it uses the MSDE engine. This is free and is also sound, safe and scalable for small to mid-sized deployments. Larger deployments will require Microsoft SQL Server which involves a non-trivial cost. Note that the MSDE engine does not support full-text indexing so any firm that wants to search the full text of documents within their document libraries will need to use the SQL Server database. This is what Laurie has done, i.e. he is using WSS with Microsoft SQL Server to provide full text indexing and searching.

Features of SharePoint Portal Server (SPS)

The SPS product is quite expensive (approx £4000 ex VAT for a five user licence) although it is fairly cost effective to add additional users thereafter. SPS is geared toward organisations that require a more formal and permanent structure to their collaboration solutions whilst WSS is essentially geared toward more ad-hoc collaboration.

SPS allows firms to build organisation and structure into their portal site. For example it supports a firm’s hierarchies so that departments, teams, specialisms and so on can be defined and managed hierarchically with collaboration pages being setup around them.

It also supports the implementation of organisation specific taxonomies so a law firm could add a legal and firm specific taxonomy to facilitate better document and knowledge categorisation etc.

SPS also offers more advanced page personalisation features for individual users as well as a single sign-on facility and enhanced scalability.

Note on Costs - and the virtues of hosting

For a firm that already has Windows Server 2003, the cost is essentially the time and effort involved in setting up and configuring WSS if SPS is not required. However, many smaller firms will not have Windows Server 2003 or will not want the hassle of having to maintain and manage servers. For firms such as these SharePoint is offered as a hosted service, accessed via the Internet. A few months ago, only a handful of firms offered hosted SharePoint services but these is now much more choice.

To explore whether SharePoint is a suitable solution for a firm, they can use one of the shared hosted platforms. This means that they are sharing the server with other users although their instance of SharePoint is specific to them and they can customise and play with it as required.

However, when it comes to actually putting client data and potentially sensitive documents on the system then I would strongly recommend that firms look at a hosted dedicated server rather than a shared server. Not only does this offer additional security and peace of mind but also offers more options in terms of being able to customise and adapt the software and integrate it with other applications etc.

A shared SharePoint solution can be found on the Internet costing from around £15/month upwards. With Laurie, we started with a shared solution (not using real data) and used this to explore the features of SharePoint and to prove the concept in terms of remote working and collaboration etc.

When Laurie was happy with the concept he then moved to a dedicated server. The annual cost he is paying sounds fairly high but this is for a fully managed and dedicated server. This means that he has his own server sitting in the rack at the hosting company which is being fully managed and looked after by them. Any operating system upgrades or security patches issued by Microsoft will be installed by them. They also provide a resilient infrastructure with high up-time guarantees etc and take the responsibility of making sure the server is always available etc. There is no way that a firm of Laurie’s size could maintain this sort of infrastructure themselves. In addition he has been using the Microsoft SQL Server option to provide full text indexing and searching facilities and he has a significantly upgraded backup facility which adds to the cost.

Larger firms with appropriate in-house IT expertise could of course manage their own servers in-house.

Further comments on SharePoint

SharePoint is a very powerful and flexible solution for document management and collaboration. There are some limitations on the document management side which mean that it does not provide quite the same level of facilities as the well known document managements systems but many firms do not need these features anyway.

SharePoint integrates very well with Microsoft Office. If you are using a SharePoint document library then opening and saving documents to it from Word is no different than doing it from your local C drive or a network location.

In addition Word will detect that you are using SharePoint and open up a collaboration pain which lets you hold discussions with other users, use virtual whiteboard facilities and collaborate on the production of the document in real time. Linking in with Microsoft Instant Messenger it will also show which other members of your team (or potentially a client or external party) are on-line (i.e. presence awareness) and with whom you can collaborate. Integration with Outlook is also fairly seamless when it comes to sharing calendars and contacts etc.

A number of law firms are starting to develop solutions with SharePoint or are at least exploring the possibilities. Many of the other traditional portal vendors are starting to release SharePoint based products and a number of legal product vendors are looking at or have released integrations with it.

The SharePoint product has been around for a few years but it is only with the latest version that it has really come of age. Some firms have put off the purchase of portal products from other vendors in the past because they have been waiting to see what Microsoft does with SharePoint. In my opinion it is now at the stage where it is a sufficiently featured and capable product that it deserves attention from firms looking for this type of product.

Julian Baker is an IT consultant. His site is at www.legaltechnologysolutions.com.
Email jbaker@legaltechnologysolutions.com.

Note on Web Parts from Alastair Morrison

Web Parts are modular, reusable, pre-built web page elements and components. They provide access to sites or applications in other places, and then display the results inside a web page, within SharePoint.

For example, Web Parts can list documents provided elsewhere, display part of a web page created in another site, show you the results of a survey in progress, connect to databases (whether Microsoft or others e.g. Siebel or SAP), work with calendars or provide news updates from specified sources.

The underlying idea is to make it easier for users to create web pages by simply incorporating modules (Web Parts) into them. Indeed, a user can assemble and arrange a complete web page out of pre-built Web Parts.

Using a tool such as FrontPage 2003, the user can simply drag and drop Web Parts into the web page they are creating from a Web Gallery of web parts which is made available through SharePoint and managed by the administrator of the SharePoint site.

Microsoft ships a Web Gallery as part of WSS (Windows Sharepoint Services, the part of SharePoint provided free with Windows Server 2003) and a more extensive one with SPS (SharePoint Portal Server, the main purchased product). Microsoft also enables you to download a wide selection of Web Parts from its “Web Part Gallery” (see www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/server/downloads/webparts) and it encourages third parties to develop and make additional ones available.

Alastair Morrison works in IT at Strathclyde University, Glasgow. He wrote the original article on SharePoint in the last issue of this newsletter, which you can find here or (full url) www.venables.co.uk/n0601sharepoint.htm.
Email alastair.morrison@strath.ac.uk.

Note from Delia: I would be very pleased to hear from users of other portals or collaboration products about their experiences, particularly users of simpler or cheaper ones than SharePoint. After all, SharePoint is not the only portal software in existence!

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