Chicago-based law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP is a world leader in bankruptcy, labor, and corporate finance law. To stay ahead of their clients’ needs, Sonnenschein’s lawyers require real-time access to confidential corporate information—email, calendars, contacts, and the firm’s massive legal library—wherever they go.
Their solution? Apple® iPhone™ 3G. “iPhone is the first wireless device that really addresses the things we need from a business perspective,” says Sonnenschein CIO Andrew Jurczyk.
By communicating directly with Microsoft Exchange Server, iPhone 3G gives Sonnenschein secure, enterprise-grade access to essential business information, including push email, calendar, and contacts. iPhone enables the firm to keep its 1,700 legal professionals constantly connected—and productive—from boardroom to courtroom.
Minimal Investment, Big Returns
One of the biggest benefits of iPhone is its ease of deployment and administration, Jurczyk says. “We were able to support a large number of devices at launch, without any significant investment. The infrastructure was there, the expertise was there. It was a tremendous ROI.”
The only challenge during rollout was high demand among the lawyers for iPhone 3G, he adds. The IT team set up an activation system to distribute iPhones as quickly as possible while streamlining front-end support.
“When we hand the lawyers an iPhone, it already has all their contacts and calendar information,” says Jurczyk. “So they are productive as soon as we put iPhones in their hands.”
Secure and Confidential
Sonnenschein lawyers deal with highly confidential information, so the enterprise-grade networking capabilities of iPhone are essential.
“Out of the box, we found that iPhone meets our enterprise security needs,” says Mike Barnas, Director of Application Services. “We were able to extend the security features ourselves within iPhone. We enforced alphanumeric pass-code authentication, and we can remote-wipe the device, which is critical.” The IT team also uses digital certificates to authenticate iPhone users against its corporate network, creating a highly secure VPN connection.
Through SharePoint on the firm’s server and the Safari browser on iPhone, lawyers can access and search text in Sonnenschein’s legal library of more than six million documents.
“Lawyers can search our intellectual capital on an iPhone anywhere in the world,” says Jurczyk. “They can even pull up and read a library document on iPhone. We’ve never been able to do that on any other wireless device.”
Integrity of Documents
For Sonnenschein, perhaps the most important function of iPhone is how it easily retrieves—and correctly displays—corporate email and attachments. iPhone delivers the best email experience of any mobile device used at Sonnenschein.
“What differentiates iPhone from other devices is that it maintains the full fidelity of email and attachments,” Jurczyk notes. “Word documents, PowerPoints, Excel spreadsheets, and PDFs are viewable, readable, and formatted correctly. It’s invaluable for our business.”
The Future of Mobile
iPhone 3G has quickly become a must-have business tool at Sonnenschein. The firm plans to expand on its iPhone investment by developing custom time-tracking and on-demand training applications, Barnas says. “What I see next for iPhone is the ability to provide rich multimedia information at your fingertips. You don’t see that with any other device.”
iPhone has transformed mobile communications, Jurczyk agrees: “When I think about the features of iPhone, and what it allows us to do in our business, it’s obvious that iPhone is truly a game-changing device in the mobile world.”
