Micro-Tech U.S.A. Mentors Law Firm

Every company makes unique demands on its technology and therefore makes unique demands in terms of support. Cascino Vaughan Law Offices has chosen Micro-Tech U.S.A. to provide support for projects large and small, as well as provide ongoing consultation in a mentoring capacity.

Cascino Vaughan Law Offices specializes in “toxic tort,” representing individuals against corporate defendants in asbestos and other hazardous material liability cases. Typical cases involve hundreds of clients — each with his or her own medical records — against multiple defendants each represented by a firm or settlement company. The documentation demands of filing suits, providing evidentiary support and submitting copies of everything to the defense teams are beyond the demands of many other businesses.

Without technology assets that work, Cascino Vaughan Law Offices would be unable to serve its clients. Yet like many businesses, the firm’s IT resources have grown gradually through the years, resulting in a mixed bag of resources.

“We’ve been automating these processes for the last 10 to 15 years, so we have systems that are kind of cobbled together,” said Susan Dwyer, systems manager for the firm.

The nature of the firm’s resources means that all systems require upgrades regularly and major improvements occasionally. In the past two years, Dwyer’s technology partner in these efforts has been Micro-Tech U.S.A.

“What Micro-Tech U.S.A. provides is the systems engineering that we don’t have the expertise to do — and they do it very well,” Dwyer said. “I really don’t have the time to sit down and do the engineering we need to do in order to make sure we have the right products for the right price and that they will work with the existing systems.”

One of the major projects Micro-Tech U.S.A. tackled with Dwyer was relocation to a new building, a project that allowed a re-engineering of the firm’s network almost from scratch. Micro-Tech U.S.A. designed the network topography for maximum speed and worked with the building’s wiring contractor to lay optical fiber between the building’s two floors. Every server and all the networking equipment were upgraded to take advantage of the new connectivity. Applications and protocols were standardized to make the network easier to manage, although the network is still a mix of Novell and Microsoft NT operating systems.

“Every wire has a known starting and ending point now, which is thing of beauty,” Dwyer said.

Micro-Tech U.S.A. also handled the migration from Novell GroupWise to a Microsoft Exchange messaging environment.

“GroupWise just wasn’t giving us the functionality in the real world,” Dwyer said. “We were using three or four applications without any compatibility among them. You couldn’t address a letter without having a secretary do it for you.”

The migration went without a hitch, Dwyer said, as all GroupWise messages were converted to Outlook within a single day. With standardized applications, the firm is now able to share documents internally and with other firms. Micro-Tech U.S.A. also planned and implemented other systems, including a firewall for network security, a virus protection program and a Veritas data storage system.

For Dwyer, one of the biggest benefits of her relationship with Micro-Tech U.S.A. has been a computer imaging process. Micro-Tech U.S.A. has an image on disk of the operating system, applications and system preferences that any Cascino Vaughan desktop system should have. If a new desktop is purchased or needs to be repaired, Micro-Tech U.S.A. can have it up and running quickly.

“It used to take us half a day to get a computer on somebody’s desk. Now it takes perhaps 10 minutes. We set the pointers to the correct drives, do some directory changes and — bingo — the computer is ready with no further work on our part,” Dwyer said “That is a tremendous time advantage.”

Micro-Tech U.S.A.’s expert staff has also come to the rescue on small but important projects. For example, when a legacy application that facilitates the printing of medical records went down, Micro-Tech U.S.A.’s Al Gillani was able to repair the quirky Visual Basic application without having to scrap it entirely, saving the firm time and money. Dwyer said this mentoring type of relationship has been very beneficial.

“Micro-Tech U.S.A. is a shop that can accomplish any task I can think of as far as networks and desktop computing is concerned,” Dwyer said. “A lot of managers are worried about putting all their eggs in one basket. In this case I’m very happy to have one basket.”