Richards Butler goes on-message

City firm Richards Butler is claiming to be the first law firm in Europe to install a tailor-made unified messaging (UM) system for its lawyers and legal support staff.It enables fee-earners to retrieve e-mail, faxes and voice-mail from a single application; all message types arrive as e-mail.

The system, jointly developed by UK-based Techland Group (for fax message handling), US company Avaya Communication (for voice-mail) and Microsoft (for e-mail), also allows users remote access to messages in any format from anywhere with access to a modem.The new system has been deployed across all 420 PC-using staff at the firm's London office.

Its main innovation is the integration of fax messages, which can be read directly from the user's PC.Richards Butler's chief executive Chris Shulton said his firm was 'impressed' with the integration ability of the different companies' software.

Techland customised the messaging system to Richards Butler's requirements.

'Since faxes are now legal documents, this was particularly important to us,' he added.

Other features include a common address book and directory for all contacts, and an archiving and costing module, which automatically logs and costs fax traffic.

Rowland Byass