Law Firm Finds Confidence in Their IT with Boxtop

McTeague Higbee is a law firm based in Maine that employs about 20 people. Since the late 90s, the 42-year-old firm had a full-time staff person devoted to IT, who built the in-house servers and handled troubleshooting of all user issues.  The firm also contracted with a consulting company for specialized or advanced work. Requiring an upgrade of their infrastructure and user support, McTeague Higbee turned to Tabush Group in the fall of 2017 for all of their IT needs, ultimately moving their IT to the cloud with Boxtop.

Challenge

As McTeague Higbee’s IT employee prepared to transition out of the firm, the partners began to weigh the benefits and costs of a full-time hire, plus the cost of equipment, hardware, and software upgrades. In addition, Maine can have harsh weather and the firm previously experienced issues with weather and power outages. If that weren’t enough, McTeague Higbee’s equipment was also aging out and the firm was considering when and what to replace and upgrade.

McTeague Higbee had several requirements when considering their next IT move. The firm’s attorneys spend a lot of time on the road so portability and accessibility were key needs that were not being fully met under their in-house system. Security is also very important to protect legal documents. In addition, the firm had older versions of software that were in need of upgrades; however, their IT environment was not well suited for such upgrades. And lastly, the firm experienced a lot of unpredictable upkeep expenses for their on-premise environment.

Benjamin Grant, Partner at McTeague Higbee, initially heard about Tabush Group when Darragh Fitzpatrick, Partner and EVP, presented a webinar about the cloud through the Worker’s Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG).  Shortly after, Ben met Darragh at a WILG conference and they began discussions about McTeague Higbee’s IT challenges and needs.

During McTeague Higbee’s due diligence, Ben was fortunate enough to meet with another WILG member and a Boxtop client, Mack Babcock. During their meeting, Mack demonstrated how user-friendly Boxtop is by logging in on his laptop and later an iPad, and always having access to his desktop, files, and apps.

Approach

McTeague Higbee ultimately decided to move to the cloud and eliminate their unknown expenses, along with the triage and support that went into having their own functional IT system.  Tabush Group not only eliminated all of McTeague Higbee’s on-premise infrastructure, but they also upgraded software at the same time, coordinating directly with the software company, running interference to work out potential issues so that the firm could focus on their business of law instead of their IT. According to Ben, “it was impressive that Tabush’s top-notch tech team was able to manage both things at the same time.”

Results

Tabush Group worked very closely with McTeague Higbee to plan both the transition to the cloud along with the software upgrades to ensure there was no downtime or loss of productivity for the firm.  Tabush Group was onsite for the cutover and Ben describes it as a “seamless, painless cutover.”

Since the implementation of Boxtop, McTeague Higbee finds it to be much more flexible for attorneys to take work outside the office and have everything available in a much more usable way than before. With the loss of the firm’s sole IT employee, McTeague Higbee needed support and Tabush Group filled that role with the ability to remote into an employee’s computer in an instant. Overall, Ben says he’s “much more confident that we’re not going to run into problems. And when we do, I’m confident there are professionals who will fix them. I don’t have to worry about IT and I can do what I’m here to do, which is work for my clients. I don’t have to be a part-time IT manager.”