Loosely speaking, our IT department can be broken down into Operations, Development and Service. Operations is crucial to ensuring everything here runs smoothly and effectively, on a worldwide scale – from applications to hardware. Development is closely aligned to the overall business strategy, so much of the work here involves consulting, application development, solutions and change, and learning. Service, meanwhile, is responsible for the relationships between the business and IT.
Most of our people are based in the UK: around 100 work in our offices in Colchester, and there are a further 40 to 50 in London. Crucially, we work from a centralised computing model, globally, and all of our data is held in four data centres. That means that much of the radical, innovative developments occur here in the UK. We always look for a consistent solution, however: one that works in every country in which we operate.
Essentially, we help lawyers and business services professionals deliver to clients. But clients also rely more directly on our skills. We’ve won awards for what we do – not just in the legal sector, but right across all industries. We were the first law firm to employ SAP globally, and the first to employ documentum as a content management solution. We’re not afraid to invest in new technology, and we’re certainly not averse to bucking trends.
The emphasis here is on collaboration: by working together, we can share skills, knowledge and experience – and create something that will not only change the firm, but push forward our profession as a whole. You will also get to see your impact: many of our people enjoy watching people all over the firm use the technology we develop, and get the opportunity to see just how much the business changes and improves as a result.
For that reason, a lot of what we look for in our people comes down to personality. We are global, and so we need people who have the appropriate level of impact, presence, leadership and credibility. People who are at home with the technical side of things, and more than comfortable with meeting clients, lawyers, or partners, and working together to expand what we do. We want people who will continue to stretch us. And that’s why we consistently look outside of the legal sector for our talent.