Technology & Special Services

When you hire Womble Carlyle, you receive more than top-notch legal counsel. You also get state-of-the art technological support to help your legal team work with optimum efficiency and effectiveness on your behalf.

The firm’s Practice Support Group of paralegals, programmers, systems engineers, communications specialists, application support specialists and trainers works to provide technological solutions in service of clients. During a trial, for example, the practice support staff provides comprehensive support, including on-site assistance in preparing and displaying exhibits and presentations.

The Practice Support Group’s capabilities include:

• Trial Support. During a trial or hearing, members of the practice support staff work on-site to help prepare and present exhibits using PowerPoint and other technologies.
• Off-Site Access. Because Womble Carlyle handles matters nationwide, it is crucial that our lawyers be able to function in remote locations just as well as they could in one of the firm’s offices. So our attorneys and staff are equipped with the latest Pentium laptop computers with sufficient storage and RAM to handle numerous applications as well as large databases. Through the use of CD ROM and Iomega JAZ drive technology, even databases too large for the laptop hard drive are capable of being fully portable. Any data that has not been downloaded to the laptop is still fully accessible by our lawyers from remote locations through the firm’s remote dial-in capability.
• Document Assembly. Our in-house document assembly systems have enabled us to increase productivity in preparing documents and reduce costs for clients. Our systems typically use a "decision-tree" format enabling the user simply to answer a series of questions to create complex documents from existing pre-approved templates. Our document assembly systems range from very complex drafting systems, such as trusts and estates with over 1300 separate templates, to very simple, standard litigation form drafting systems.
• Imaging. Womble Carlyle has the capability to quickly and accurately scan, number and link images to their respective document databases. Our imaging program provides quick and easy retrieval of documents in original format that includes handwritten notes and other marginalia.
• Video Conferencing. Every Womble Carlyle office is equipped with videoconferencing equipment for high-resolution videoconferencing with clients and among firm offices, providing a practical, cost-effective communications solution. In addition to office-to-office communications, we use person-to-person videoconferencing to link individual attorneys in the firm to individuals in clients' offices.
• Client Communications. The firm’s e-mail system is a point of emphasis, with safeguards and redundancies to make sure the firm’s attorneys can always communicate with their clients, even during a primary systems failure. Microsoft Live Communications is enabled on every computer and laptop in the firm, allowing users to connect via Instant Messaging (IM), quickly ascertain the availability of resources throughout the firm, and communicate with Internet-based IM services that our clients may be using.

The firm's Wide Area Network (WAN) is a state-of-the-art Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network which facilitates efficient collaboration between any of our offices. This network enables the highest quality voice, video, and data services. It is backed up by high-bandwidth Internet connections in each office which switch to back-up networks in the event of a primary WAN failure.

Also, the firm’s EMC Network-Attached Storage (NAS) infrastructure is designed to meet the growing storage demands of the firm’s caseload. Each office’s storage capacity can now rapidly expand to meet the needs of even the largest tort.