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The Change Agent
Dressed in a sharp, dark pinstriped suit with a baby-blue shirt, Stova Wong looks more like one of the firm's attorneys than the guy you call when your computer crashes.
Born in Hong Kong and educated at California State University, Long Beach, Wong had worked at aerospace giant Rockwell International and real estate company Grubb & Ellis before joining a consulting firm called LAN Systems, which did a lot of work with law firms. One of Wong's clients was Paul Hastings, where he worked on a two-year project converting the firm from DOS to Windows.
"Legal is a very difficult business," says Wong. "The business is about information and documents; that's lawyers' bread and butter -- contracts, pleadings. How to manage that information and make that information available in an organized fashion at any time is a challenge."
In 2001, when Paul Hastings' CIO decided to retire, she hired Wong as director of engineering. Two years later, he became CIO. When Wong took the job, the firm's IT department numbered 75 people; today it has 120.
"I have a very lean organization," Wong says. "We do a lot of things in-house. We spend between 3.5% to 4% of revenue on IT. We're still at the lower end for law firms. I've seen law firms spending 4.5% to 8%. My biggest challenge is to take what we've invested and continue to capitalize on it to allow what we pay for to provide the proper return."
As one example: When the firm converted to Microsoft XP two years ago, power users such as attorneys got new, top-end machines, while clerks who use computers mostly for mundane tasks such as printing labels got hand-me-downs.
"We buy," Smith says. "Most firms lease. We got more bang from those 7-year-old Dells, fully depreciated. We have users who do nothing but print file labels. We're not going to do something because it's cool and sexy. There has to be a business benefit."
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