How DLA Piper Plans to Save $1M a Year in Travel Costs
It’s going to cost $500,000 annually for five years. But DLA Piper expects to save $1 million a year in travel expenses and lost productivity by upgrading from videoconferencing to telepresence equipment at six of its United States offices.
The virtual meetings the new setup makes possible allow lawyers in far-flung offices to talk together and even break into small groups, just as lawyers would do in an in-person meeting around the conference table, Don Jaycox tells the San Francisco Chronicle. He is chief information officer for DLA Piper’s operations in the U.S.
The idea first hit his radar screen in 2007, Jaycox says, when DLA Piper partners tried out a telepresence meeting between demonstration rooms in London and San Jose, Calif. He went to the meeting thinking of telepresence equipment as “expensive new technology I don’t need” and left as a convert.
Because of the global economic crisis, the firm decided it was the wrong time to roll out telepresence technology throughout its offices, and has instead focused on doing so in its U.S. operations only, the newspaper reports.
About 80 percent of the megafirm’s American lawyers are now within an hour’s drive of one of DLA Piper’s new telepresence sites, Jaycox says.
