(Source: MARKETWIRE)With more than 300 attorneys in 11 offices throughout North America, full-service law firm Lathrop & Gage is continuously seeking ways to better serve its clients and improve collaboration among offices. As part of these efforts, the firm recently installed Polycom (NASDAQ: PLCM) high-definition telepresence systems and Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD) wide area network (WAN) optimization solutions to improve inter-office collaboration, client meetings, and the conducting of remote depositions, resulting in dramatic improvement in the quality of client support and attorney productivity.

Lathrop & Gage is a prime example of the changes taking place in the workforce today. More and more companies are turning to visual communications (VC), including video conferencing and on-demand training videos. This shift to VC has resulted in increased bandwidth utilization. In lieu of expensive bandwidth upgrades, companies are turning to WAN optimization to reduce bandwidth utilization and accelerate traffic traveling between geographically dispersed offices. Firms such as Lathrop & Gage that are embracing new technologies are discovering opportunities to make targeted investments that produce a significant ROI and improve employee productivity.

"We're interested in serving our clients in the best manner possible, and telepresence is a phenomenal tool for extending our capabilities to do so," said Ben Weinberger, CIO at Lathrop & Gage. "Lathrop & Gage grew over the years through mergers and acquisitions, which has positioned us well to address the needs of our clients on a very local level, but at the same time, it has created communications challenges. We identified enhanced telepresence as one of the best ways to connect our geographically dispersed lawyers face-to-face and in real time. Also, adding WAN optimization has made collaboration more efficient and cost-effective."

Lathrop & Gage installed standards-based Polycom(R) HDX(TM) 9000 Series and Polycom HDX 7000 Series telepresence systems at each of its offices. Weinberger views Polycom telepresence solutions as key to improving collaboration. In fact, Lathrop & Gage hosts more than 300 meetings each month in its Kansas City conference center. More than a quarter of those involve high-definition video conferencing, and widespread user adoption has resulted in over 900 hours of video conferencing annually.

An added benefit of the telepresence solution is reduced travel and associated costs. Weinberger estimates the annual savings in reduced travel expenses more than pays for the cost of the Polycom solution. For example, by using telepresence to conduct a meeting with a New York client, a Kansas City attorney saves an average of $1,500 in travel expenses. Weinberger said that telepresence ultimately represents a savings of more than $30,000 annually for a single attorney.

Hosting 900 hours of video conferencing each year requires planning with regard to the IP network.