The Situation

Gide Loyrette Nouel is the only international law firm to have originated in France – a shining exception in a sector dominated by Anglo-American companies. It’s been international from the very beginning: Pierre Gide, who established the firm in 1920, was the first French lawyer to be registered to practice as a barrister in the UK.

Today the firm has 700 lawyers, 110 partners drawn from 50 nationalities and 24 offices in 19 countries. They offer a full range of civil and commercial services, and their long-established team-based approach helps them excel in complex international scenarios. A 40-strong team spanning Paris, Warsaw and Kiev, for example, is responsible for all legal aspects of the Euro 2012 football competition.

No-compromise networking

Networking and telecommunications are key resources for this international law firm. Like any other business, they are always keen to drive out cost, but most importantly, they need to be able to rely on their communications infrastructure wherever in the world they do business.

The legal professional tends to be conservative and rightly risk-averse. The international law teams at Gide Loyrette Nouel depend heavily on secure, good quality voice communications, on e-mail and on document attachments.
Just over two and a half years ago, they were nearing the end of a telecommunications contract with their incumbent supplier. KPN International approached them with an offer to benchmark potential providers as an aid to making the best choice.

The Asia Europe service

KPN International showed itself to be on a par with the incumbent with regard to cost. Unlike the incumbent, however, KPN International was able to provide full coverage in Vietnam thanks to its strategic partnership with SingTel. This was important for Gide Loyrette Nouel who have strong business interests in South East Asia.

Network and Telecommunications Manager, Jean-Charles Sanquer, explains: ‘We initially contracted KPN International to provide MPLS services starting with two locations in Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. All opportunities for further business were conditional on achieving the desired quality of service in Vietnam over an initial six month period.’

Having satisfied Jean-Charles Sanquer and his team, KPN International went on to deliver additional networking services in Asia for three China offices in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong-Kong, and in the Gide Loyrette Nouel Paris HQ.

The KPN International MPLS solution now provides better network performance across Asia than the previous IP Sec connection. This ensures that the Gide Loyrette Nouel Asian backbone is secure and stable and delivers high-availability for all their regional business. 

Working the way your clients work

The ability to work the way its clients work is a founding principle for KPN International and this is particularly evident with Gide Loyrette Nouel.

As the firm continues to expand its international business, it needs an easily replicable model for IT and telecommunications. This allows the Paris team to set-up new law offices around the world quickly and cost-effectively, but without the burden of local micro-management.

With this cluster model, local operations are able to take full responsibility for their infrastructure while at the same time allowing the core team complete visibility of operations. This visibility is important in terms of compliance, overall management and controlled system evolution. 

The firm uses KPN International services today in Paris and Asia, but as network practice is reviewed further, KPN International hopes to bring the same benefits to the company’s growing operations in Eastern Europe and across Africa and the Middle East. It seeks also to be directly involved in the review and roadmap for network and IT evolution.

The way Gide Loyrette Nouel uses technology is already changing. They use video conferencing effectively in their education and training activity, for example, and are also evaluating the adoption of collaboration software across the enterprise.

They are not, however, interested in big bang change, as KPN International Account Director Frédéric Godde explains: ‘Our relationship is focused. We avoid fuss and work hard to achieve incremental transition. This suits the client’s standardized ‘cluster’ strategy and their preference for low-impact evolution.’

The relationship

Before joining Gide Loyrette Nouel two years ago, Jean-Charles Sanquer was selling networking services. ‘With this background,’ he reflects, ‘I appreciate not being given a traditional hard sell. I value entente and I appreciate suppliers who take the effort to get to know us - and in this, KPN International excels’.

Jean-Charles Sanquer also appreciates the regularity and clarity of communications: ‘Weekly reports give me a clear view of everything that is happening, and this is essential.  If anything is less than satisfactory, I want to know about it and KPN have got this just right with their clear weekly reports.’

The technical support provided out of The Netherlands is also a clear winner, helping Gide Loyrette Nouel keep on track with today’s technologies and sustain a clear vision of what’s coming down the line.