Laux Lawyers AG is a law firm specializing in IT law, based in Zurich and Basel. The company was founded in 2011 by Christian Laux and has since expanded both in terms of the number of lawyers and the skills and experience acquired. As a law firm, the company aims to drive digitalization in the industries they advise, as well as within their own company. Laux Lawyers AG operates at the intersections of IT and sourcing, sales, corporate governance, and law, bringing their expertise to bear. In addition to legal investigations, the lawyers also conduct technical analyses. Since the solution to a problem can be found in the technical setup itself, a purely legal approach is not even necessary. Laux Lawyers AG has decided to implement Microsoft 365 (M365) to leverage the potential of the Microsoft Cloud. This decision was made for several reasons. On one hand, the firm wants to have one of the best security solutions to ensure the protection of clients – one of a lawyer’s most important duties. On the other hand, the firm wants to improve collaboration with clients, which is possible with the tools of Office 365 (O365).
The Vision
- Introduction of a simple and secure cloud solution to replace the existing IT infrastructure
- Transparency towards clients
- Transformation to a modern workplace
- Setup of a client portal for better information exchange with clients
- Compliance with regulations and policies
Initial Situation
- Simple server infrastructure
- All employees worked with MacBooks
- Limited collaboration features
- Externally hosted mail server
- VPN connections for data access
«M365 gibt uns die volle Kontrolle über den gesamten Lebenszyklus unserer Dokumente und Daten. So können wir das Potenzial der Cloud-basierten Zusammenarbeit voll ausschöpfen und gleichzeitig die vertraulichen Informationen unserer Kunden besser schützen.»
The Transformation
The transition to a modern workplace began with a series of workshops,
in which the general goals of the project were defined and compliance requirements, risks, and the vision for collaboration with clients were discussed. In the workshops, all parties involved in the project (baseVISION AG, innobit, alphaTrust.ch, and Laux Lawyers AG) were able to contribute their specific expertise: Laux Lawyers AG was familiar with the legal aspects, baseVISION AG has extensive experience with technical security aspects and could propose precise solutions to meet the legal and compliance requirements. Innobit advised on improving customer interaction with Teams, while alphaTrust.ch designed the telephony solution. baseVISION AG used its Security Maturity Model to match requirements with possible configurations and create a roadmap for secure and compliant endpoint and cloud configuration.
The cloud environment for Laux Lawyers AG was built with the Greenfield approach
in the new cloud data centers in Switzerland and Western Europe. This was intended to enable a clean environment from the start. For compliance reasons, it is essential to know what is happening in an environment and to have audit data that complies with the prescribed retention periods. Microsoft 365 and Azure offer many configuration options, but the various sources have different configuration options regarding location and retention.
baseVISION AG developed a data flow that collects data from Azure AD and various Microsoft 365 services and connects the endpoints with a central Azure Log Analytics Workspace and for long-term storage with Azure Storage.
When Microsoft Azure Sentinel was released, the flexibility of the new environment immediately became apparent: Azure Sentinel was added with little effort to further enhance the security of Laux Lawyers AG. The already collected operational data (no client data) could be used for data correlation, enabling even better protection by adding security information and event management.
Laux Lawyers AG previously used MacBooks. As part of the project, the firm decided to switch to new Microsoft Surface devices to increase the level of integration. This transition allowed the use of Windows Autopilot to streamline the setup of the new devices and support the strategic planning of Laux Lawyers AG. The rollout and harmonization of the IT configuration on the Microsoft Surface devices were carried out via Intune. This approach will be of great benefit to the law firm as it continues to grow.
Protecting the client data of Laux Lawyers AG in the cloud and on endpoints is one of the most fundamental goals of Laux Lawyers AG. According to the lawyers’ assessment, the cloud offers a significant increase in security, which was crucial for the firm’s transition: encryption options and protection mechanisms that block attackers before they can access data. The law firm also thoroughly analyzed all options for protection against unauthorized access “within” Microsoft and was able to confirm that this setup can be used in compliance with applicable regulations.
«Das Microsoft Trust Center ist eine hervorragende Ressource für die Definition von Massnahmen zur Erfüllung von Compliance-Anforderungen. Es hat der Laux Lawyer AG geholfen, sich für die Microsoft Cloud-Umgebung zu entscheiden, anstatt On-Premise zu bleiben oder in eine andere Cloud zu wechseln.»
The Microsoft Security Baseline served as the foundation, and Microsoft Defender ATP played a key role in designing the solution according to the needs of the lawyers. MDATP provides behavioral information, recommendations, and vulnerability analyses. baseVISION AG was able to demonstrate the benefits of all measures with additional configurations within just a few days – all without impairing productivity. The newly implemented classification solution, based on the Microsoft Information Protection Framework, offers the ability to tag and monitor every file regardless of its location. In addition, various other protection mechanisms can be added, such as restricting the sharing of client data over insecure channels.
The vision of Laux Lawyers AG is healthy growth and customer satisfaction through improved collaboration with clients. This is to be enabled in the future through a self-service portal. This is a central component of the firm’s strategy. Innobit was instrumental in developing a solution that enables such plans based on Microsoft Teams. Just a few days after the migration, Laux Lawyers AG began to engage with the newly available tools such as PowerAutomate and Planner. This allowed modern approaches such as agility and Kanban to be put into practice. alphaTrust.ch, with experience in providing telephony integrations in regulated environments for Microsoft Teams, assisted with integration into the public telephone network, which remains one of the most important communication channels for Laux Lawyers AG.
«Wir haben die Bedingungen der Cloud-Lösung von Microsoft im Hinblick auf die geltenden berufsrechtlichen Vorschriften und Normen geprüft und sind zu dem Schluss gekommen, dass die Konzeption der Lösung es uns ermöglicht, gleichzeitig den Schutz unserer Daten und der Daten unserer Kunden zu verstärken und den grossen Wettbewerbsvorteil des Cloud Computing zu nutzen.»
The newly built solution took the environment of Laux Lawyers AG to a new level. Simple file-sharing solutions are a thing of the past, and new highly secure and collaborative tools help Laux Lawyers AG offer first-class solutions to their clients. Even for the experienced lawyers of Laux Lawyers AG, there was an additional side effect: they were able to leverage their practical knowledge in the Microsoft environment and learned more about the Microsoft Cloud every day. They confirmed that this experience offers significant advantages for their own consulting services.
«Durch strukturierte Assessments wurden die Anforderungen der Laux Lawyers AG im Bereich der sicheren internen und externen Zusammenarbeit frühzeitig erfasst und die entsprechenden Parameter und Prozesse definiert. Das Self-Service-Portal, das die automatisierte Bereitstellung neuer Microsoft Teams-Arbeitsbereiche auf Basis von Vorlagen ermöglicht, vereinfacht nicht nur die Arbeit und macht die Zusammenarbeit effizienter, sondern sorgt auch für konsistente Sicherheitseinstellungen.»
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. This allowed the firm to optimize collaboration with its clients. To ensure security, the team was able to rely on standard and integrated methods available both in the Microsoft Cloud and on the endpoints. This significantly contributed to an easy-to-implement yet secure approach to protecting client data and maintaining compliance. With the now implemented cloud solution, Laux Lawyers AG can fulfill its vision while complying with all policies and regulations.
If you have legal questions regarding the implementation of your cloud migration strategy, especially in areas with increased security and compliance requirements, LAUX LAWYERS AG is at your disposal. Contact LAUX LAWYERS AG here.
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