Reimer & Braunstein LLP

Securely Deliver Large Documents to Clients & Business Partners

Riemer & Braunstein LLP, an 81-year old Boston-based law firm specializing in banking and finance, real estate, litigation, bankruptcy, corporations, and trusts, faced a communications conundrum. According to Bruce Bial, the Firm Administrator and IT Director at Riemer & Braunstein, large deals, often involving multiple law firms and other stakeholders, require Riemer & Braunstein to compile and distribute voluminous documentation and financial information, all of which must be encrypted to ensure security. 

The Challenge

“Situations arise in which several parties must have information now,” Bial said. “Especially in that kind of situation, computer users intuitively want to send the information via email as the easiest and most immediate way to satisfy the request.”  

Bial added, “we wanted to find a way to help our internal constituents – 100 attorneys, paralegals, support staff, and hundreds of clients – use a familiar, well-understood ‘old’ technology like email to send documents of all sizes securely and quickly without going through any training.”  

Bial and his team put considerable time and effort into assisting with high-priority situations, breaking documents into smaller files to be emailed separately. This might occur ten or fifteen times per day, often involving multiple large documents and attachments. Between multiple copies of sent emails and “bounce backs,” which often took 24 hours to return, a considerable amount of time was wasted and users were extremely frustrated. Senders didn’t know if their email was received, and recipients, often failing to realize they were receiving an email, would miss the documents.  

“We had to go into Exchange to find out the size of a document we knew had been sent and then ask a recipient how large a document his network could accommodate before the system rejected it,” Bial noted. “This put an onus on the attorney sending the information. We knew there had to be a better way.”  

Solution

In looking for a solution, the high cost of many client-server approaches and the time needed to train attorneys and support staff to learn a new and complex system struck Bial as excessive. With four offices in three states, and a very small internal IT staff, the firm had to ensure that any solution it implemented did not require IT involvement on an ongoing basis and would be easy to implement and train. After considering several alternatives, Bial decided to trial Biscom Secure File Transfer (SFT).  

“After reviewing many solutions, I realized that Biscom offered everything R&B needed – the ability for users to send emails of any size to external recipients, with no IT involvement, and minimal setup and training time. From an IT perspective, the solution took a heavy burden off of the firm’s Exchange and SAN systems and was affordable,” said Bial. He found SFT so easy to implement and use that he purchased it within a week; the product sold itself.  

Result

Having satisfied his evaluation criteria, Bial got a solution that required zero retraining, no change of the familiar user interface, and delivered seamless integration within his Citrix environment. Perhaps, most importantly, Biscom SFT solved the issues surrounding email, FTP, and courier services, by providing a simple way for people to encrypt and deliver critical files quickly and easily while maintaining a secure and trackable electronic document package.  

“We took a 1980s technology, i.e. email, and found a 21st century way to use it,” Bial said. After a smooth Biscom SFT installation, Bial found Biscom’s service and support impressive as well.  

“In fact, Biscom’s service, support, and ease of installation impressed us so much that we also purchased new fax servers from Biscom’s fax division,” he said. With solutions like this in place, we feel that as we grow, Biscom will grow with us and help Riemer & Braunstein grow.”

company

Riemer & Braunstein LLP

INDUSTRY 

Legal

HEADQUARTERS

Boston, MA

website
challenges
  • Sending large documents quickly and securely to multiple recipients 
  • File sharing with email causes security and deliverability issues
  • File size limitations result in IT team assisting with large sending mission-critical documents
solution
  • Biscom Secure File Transfer 
  • Biscom Fax Server
results
  • Ability to easily send files of any size via an Outlook add-in
  • Significant time and cost savings  
  • Released heavy burden off the firm’s Exchange and SAN systems  
  • Increased response time to clients’ requests of critical documents  
  • Fast implementation – R&B was up and running in minutes  

quote

Our attorneys and clients are most comfortable with e-mail, and the Biscom Outlook plug-in automates the process. The attorney never has to worry that his document will bounce back.

Bruce Bial

IT Director, Riemer and Braunstein LLP

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