Case Study Laux Lawyers AG
Laux Lawyers AG is a law firm based in Zurich and Basel, specializing in IT Law. The company was founded in 2011 by Christian Laux and has since then expanded in terms of the number of attorneys-at-law as well as the expertise and experience acquired. As attorneys-at-law, they want to drive digitization in the industries they advise in, but also in their own company. Laux Lawyers AG operates at the interfaces between IT and sourcing, sales, company management and law, bringing their expertise to the table. If need be, the attorneys-at-law apply a very technical analysis. Because the response to an issue can be found in the technical setup itself, jumping to a mere legalistic approach is not even necessary. Laux Lawyers AG has decided to implement Microsoft 365 (M365) and to leverage the potential of the Microsoft Cloud. This decision has been motivated by the interest of adopting one of the best-in-class security solutions available for customers like law firms, thus bringing the protection of the clients’ information – one of the most prominent obligations of an attorney – to the next level.
The Vision
- Introduction of a simple and secure cloud solution to replace existing IT infrastructure
- Transparency towards the clients
- Transformation to a modern workplace
- Establishment of a collaboration portal for better information exchange with clients
- Compliance with regulations and guidelines at all times
Initial Situation
- Simple server infrastructure
- All employees worked with MacBooks
- Limited collaboration features
- External hosted mail server
- VPN connections for data access
M365 provides full control over the entire life cycle of our documents and data, which enables us to use the full potential of cloud-based collaboration while strengthening the protection of our client’s privileged information.
Marc Feldmann, Project Leader of
Laux Lawyers AG
The Transformation
The transformation to a modern workplace began with a series of workshops to define
the overall project goals and discuss the compliance requirements, risks, and the vision to collaborate with clients. During the workshops, all parties involved in the project (baseVISION AG, innobit, alphaTrust.ch, and Laux Lawyers AG) could bring in their specific know-how: Laux Lawyers AG knew about the legal aspects, baseVISION AG has in-depth experience with the technical aspects regarding security and could suggest to-the-point solutions to meet the established legal and compliance requirements, Innobit advised on how the customer interaction could be improved with Teams, while alphaTrust.ch designed the telephony solution. baseVISION AG used their security maturity model to map requirements against possible configurations and to create a roadmap for a secure and compliant endpoint and cloud configuration.
The cloud environment for Laux Lawyers AG was built with a greenfield approach in
the new Azure datacenter in Switzerland and West Europe. This was to permit a clean environment from the beginning. For compliance reasons, it is essential to know what is going on in an environment and to have Audit data available according to the required retention times. Microsoft 365 and Azure have many possibilities to configure them, but all the various sources have different configuration possibilities regarding storage location and retention.
baseVISION AG developed a data flow to collect the data from Azure AD, and from various Microsoft 365 services and connected the endpoints to one central Azure Log Analytics workspace and, for long-time retention, to Azure Storage.
When Microsoft released Azure Sentinel the flexibility of the new environment could immediately be showcased: Azure Sentinel was added “like that”, as an additional benefit to further enhance the security of Laux Lawyers AG. The already collected operational data (no client files) could be used for data correlation thus permitting an even stronger protection, by adding Security Information and Event Management.
Laux Lawyers AG has been using MacBooks and decided to switch to new Microsoft Surface devices to increase the level of integration. With this change, the use of Windows Autopilot could be used to streamline the setup of the new devices, supporting the strategic planning of the law firm. Rollout and harmonization of the IT configuration on the Microsoft Surface devices has been performed through Intune. This approach will support the law firm in its further growth.
The protection of Laux Lawyers AG’s client data in the cloud and on the endpoints is one of the highest goals of Laux Lawyers AG. The attorneys-at-law’s assessment identified a significant increase of security, which was decisive for the law firm to perform the switch: encryption possibilities, plus protection mechanisms to block attackers before they are able to access any data. The law firm has also closely analyzed all possibilities to shield against unauthorized access “from within” Microsoft, and thus was able to confirm that this setup can be used in compliance with applicable regulation.
Microsoft’s Trust Center is a great resource to define measures to meet compliance requirements. It has helped Laux Lawyers AG to opt for the Microsoft Cloud environment, instead of staying onpremise or moving to another cloud.
Thomas Kurth, Project Lead, baseVISION
Microsoft’s Trust Center is a great resource to define measures to meet compliance requirements. It has helped Laux Lawyers AG to opt for the Microsoft Cloud environment, instead of staying onpremise or moving to another cloud.
Thomas Kurth, Project Lead, baseVISION
The Microsoft Security Baseline is used to build the foundation, and Microsoft Defender ATP played a key role in shaping the solution according to the needs of the attorneys-at-law. MDATP is providing behavioral insights, recommendations, and vulnerability scanning. baseVISION AG could showcase the benefits of all measures after only a few days of additional configurations – all without impacting productivity. The newly implemented classification solution, built with the Microsoft Information Protection framework, adds the possibility to flag and monitor each file, regardless where stored, and allows adding various other protection mechanisms like the restriction to share client data over unsecured channels.
The vision of Laux Lawyers AG is to grow and increase customer satisfaction by providing improved collaboration for clients and, in the future, a self-service portal. This is a core component of the law firm’s strategy. Innobit played a key role in building a solution to permit such plans, based on Microsoft Teams. Already after a few days of the migration, Laux Lawyers AG began exploring newly available tools like PowerAutomate and Planner, empowering them to put modern approaches like agility and Kanban to their practice. alphaTrust.ch, experienced in providing telephony integrations in regulated environments for Microsoft Teams, helped to integrate into the public phone network – still one of the most important communication channels for Laux Lawyers AG.
We reviewed the conditions of Microsoft’s cloud solution against applicable professional laws and standards, finding that the solution design permits us to simultaneously strengthen the protection of our and our clients’ data and to use the major competitive advantage of cloud computing.
Christian Laux, Senior Advisor and
Founder of Laux Lawyers AG
The newly built solution brought the environment of Laux Lawyers AG to a new level. The simple file sharing solutions are past and new highly secure and collaborative tools help Laux Lawyers AG to provide first-class solutions to their clients. There was an additional side-effect even for the experienced Laux Lawyers: They were able to leapfrog their practical understanding of the Microsoft environment, and learn more about the Microsoft cloud every day. They confirmed this experience brings significant benefits to their own consulting services.
Most beneficial Microsoft technologies used
- Microsoft Teams
- Microsoft Cloud App Security
- Azure Sentinel
- Microsoft Information Protection
- Office 365 Customer Lockbox
- Microsoft Defender ATP
- Microsoft Intune
- Azure AD Premium
- Azure AD Conditional Access
- Windows 10 E5
- Office 365 Exchange Online
- Azure Infrastructure
Thanks to structured assessments, the requirements of Laux Lawyers AG in the area of secure internal and external cooperation were recorded early on, and the relevant parameters and processes were defined. The Self-Service Portal, permitting automated provision of new Microsoft Teams workspaces based on templates, not only simplifies the work and makes the cooperation efficient but also ensures consistency in the security settings.
Patrick Spieler, Collaboration Consultant,
Innobit
Thanks to structured assessments, the requirements of Laux Lawyers AG in the area of secure internal and external cooperation were recorded early on, and the relevant parameters and processes were defined. The Self-Service Portal, permitting automated provision of new Microsoft Teams workspaces based on templates, not only simplifies the work and makes the cooperation efficient but also ensures consistency in the security settings.
Patrick Spieler, Collaboration Consultant,
Innobit
Summary
Thanks to the Microsoft Cloud Solution M365, Laux Lawyers AG was able to introduce a new highly secure yet simple end-to-end solution. With this, they could optimize the collaboration with their clients. To ensure security, the team could rely on standard and built-in methods available both in the Microsoft cloud and on the endpoint devices. This tremendously added to an easy-to-implement and yet secure approach to protect the client data, and to maintain compliance. With the cloud solution now implemented, Laux Lawyers AG can fulfill their vision while complying with all guidelines and regulations.
If you have any legal questions regarding the implementation of your cloud migration strategy, especially in areas with elevated security and compliance requirements, LAUX LAWYERS AG is happy to assist you. Contact LAUX LAWYERS AG here.