Wires, Wi-Fi & What Keeps It All Running

Thomas Hawkins – April 11, 2025  – 6 mins read

When people ask me what I do, I usually just say, “I keep the lights on.” That might sound flippant, but for those of us in legal IT operations, it’s pretty accurate.

We’re not just looking after the flashy stuff — new platforms, smart tools, case management rollouts. We’re also the ones who get the call when the network’s down, a switch fails, or Wi-Fi in the meeting room collapses mid-presentation. Legal IT infrastructure is one of those areas that’s invisible when it’s working and very visible when it’s not.

Here’s what I’ve learned managing the tech backbone of a busy law firm — what’s worked, where we’ve tripped up, and how we’re trying to build something that lasts.

Building for Resilience, Not Just Performance

A few years ago, our priority was speed. Everyone wanted faster internet, snappier logins, lower latency in the DMS. But over time, I’ve realised that what the business actually needs is resilience.

We’ve since moved to a fully redundant setup across two physical locations — load-balanced firewalls, dual fibre lines, and automatic failover across critical systems. It’s not cheap, but it’s paid off. When a construction crew dug through our main line last year, we failed over in seconds. Users didn’t even notice.

Wi-Fi: The Hidden Bottleneck

If you’re supporting a hybrid legal workforce, here’s my advice: don’t treat Wi-Fi like an afterthought.

We did — for too long. The result? Inconsistent video calls, flaky courtroom connections, and frustrated fee earners. We’ve since moved to a managed Wi-Fi solution with controller-based smart handoff, zone-specific tuning, and user density analysis.

It cost more upfront, but it’s transformed our in-office experience. Reliable Wi-Fi is now non-negotiable — just like coffee and keyboards.

The Cloud Is Here, But On-Prem Still Matters

We’ve embraced cloud for what makes sense — Microsoft 365, Teams, backups, and some practice management tools. But we’re still running on-prem infrastructure for key legacy systems and high-performance workloads.

The hybrid model works, but only when it’s well-integrated. We had issues early on with latency between our cloud-hosted DMS and on-prem AD, which slowed everything down. Syncing those worlds — both technically and operationally — took time, but now we’ve got the balance right.

I’ve found that hybrid IT isn’t a stepping stone — it’s a long-term strategy in legal. The key is treating both environments with equal care and planning.

Monitoring Beats Guesswork

We used to find out about problems the old-fashioned way — users complaining. Now we’re proactive. We use centralised monitoring (PRTG and Sentinel) for uptime, bandwidth, and hardware health, plus synthetic testing to alert us to lag before users even notice.

It’s not glamorous, but it’s made a huge difference in trust. If something fails now, we know before the helpdesk rings.

Things We’re Focusing On Next

• Network segmentation — to tighten internal security and isolate sensitive systems
• SD-WAN rollout for branch office optimisation
• Zero Trust architecture planning, starting with least-privilege network access
• 5G failover trials for remote sites — especially useful in rural locations where fibre’s still patchy

Final Thoughts: Infrastructure Is Never “Done”

If there’s one lesson I’d pass on to anyone in legal IT ops, it’s this: infrastructure is a living system. You don’t build it once and walk away. You tune it, evolve it, watch how users behave, and adapt to what the business needs next.

For me, it’s not just about connectivity. It’s about enabling people to do their work — seamlessly, securely, and without ever thinking about the cables, switches, or cloud stacks running underneath.

That’s when I know we’ve done our job right.