Schneider Page was founded in 1993, and was located in a traditional bricks and mortar premises in Staple Inn. However it was never intended to work just as a traditional firm. We set out to use technology as much as possible, without being at the “bleeding edge”. We never had support staff and since there was little really interesting office management software available at that time, we used off the shelf packages and we still do.

Moving from having a “proper” office to being virtual was really a matter of evolution and was not at all difficult to effect. What made us give up the London office was our increasing use of the internet and email and we found there was no point in paying a landlord for meeting room space.

We have evolved from using peer-to-peer networking to server based networking. Since we have worked on a server based system for years, and had remote access from home even when we had the “real” office, the move to becoming a virtual firm was not really all that noticeable.

If we were starting out now, we would almost certainly use a hosted Exchange service so that we would not have to operate and maintain a server ourselves. All our email is scanned on the way in and the way out, using an out- of-house service, where it can all be archived too. We also archive our mail and documents in-house, using large removable hard disks and DVD.

I live in Surrey and my partner Ernest Schneider lives in Aldgate, just east of the City of London. Our server is based in my cellar and we have broadband with a 1Mbps upload – SDSL is just too expensive. The improvement in broadband speeds has made a great difference. Although not the same speed as an internal Ethernet network, most software we use runs over the VPN satisfactorily.

In terms of office procedures, not a great deal has changed. All our materials and procedures are stored on the server and are accessible through Sharepoint as well these days. We have never used a proprietary practice management system because we have found that we work perfectly well without one. Also we have not seen anything that appeals to us enough to spend the money!

We use MS Office 2003 and are likely to move over to the 2007 version once it is available, at least partly because of the promise that Outlook might work even better. Outlook manages email from our Exchange server, which also enables Outlook Web Access and Active Sync from our mobile phones running Pocket PC software. The mobiles have Bluetooth, WiFi and GPRS capabilities so they can access the server from just about anywhere.

I should perhaps point out that when we set up all those years ago, we used as little Microsoft software as possible, but because we wanted to be compatible with our clients (funny that!) we succumbed. Since then we have just stuck with it because most Microsoft things work quite well with each other and we save ourselves a lot of time.

There are occasions when snail mail arrives at the wrong address, or we need to see a document which the other has, but with scanners available and the use of email, that is not really a problem. Our main scanner is an old Xerox copier, printer, fax and scanner that enables scan to desktop using FTP. Our central fax number converts all faxes to PDFs which are emailed to our server. This then distributes the email to both of us. I guess we could have separate fax numbers but there seemed little point. The beauty of fax arriving as email is that it can be accessed remotely also.

Simon Page, simon@schneiderpage.com.

See also the articles on the other six Virtual Law Firms featured in the September/October 2006 and November/December 2006 issues:

Lawyers Direct by James Knight

Family Law International by Amanda Quinn

Woolley & Co. by Andrew Woolley

NetworkLaw by Marcus O’Leary

The Legal Desk by Alyson Jackson

Scott-Moncrieff Harbour and Sinclair by Lucy Scott-Moncrieff

Comments from Delia: During this series, we have seen “virtual firms” varying from large firms to very small ones. The larger firms have a formal structure with the lawyers often on a contract basis and with very advanced IT and management structures. The smaller firms, on the other hand, have in several cases (like Schneider Page) “evolved” into what is now called a virtual firm without making a lot of fuss. I think that both approaches will continue until being a “virtual firm” is really quite common.