Running technology and supplier reviews across a multi-office NZ law firm

Plenty of NZ firms run three or four offices across a region. Each one grew up with its own arrangements, and often its own way of doing things.

How the drift happens

• Each office picked its own internet, phone and print supplier locally
• One office kept the system it used before joining the firm
• Local relationships are genuinely good, so nobody wants to disturb them
• No single person can see the full picture across sites

What's worth standardising

Some things should be firm-wide, full stop:

• Identity and email (one tenancy, one MFA standard)
• Document management and matter records
• Trust and general accounting
• Backup, recovery and endpoint protection
• Cyber and professional indemnity cover

What can stay local

Some differences are legitimate, not sloppiness:

• Connectivity — rural offices have genuinely different options
• Print and scan hardware
• Facilities, cleaning, security monitoring
• Local courier and archive arrangements

The test isn't "is it the same everywhere?" It's "does someone own it, and do we know what it costs and when it renews?"

One view, many setups

Record every system and supplier once, with an office tag. That gives you the two views you actually need: everything the firm relies on, and everything a given office relies on. Duplication shows up immediately — four contracts for the same service with four different renewal dates is a negotiating position, not just an untidy list.

A review cadence that survives distance

• Firm-wide critical suppliers — reviewed centrally, every six months, with the practice manager leading
• Office-level suppliers — reviewed annually by the local office manager, against the same checklist
• Annual sweep — one meeting, all offices, comparing cost per seat and service quality across sites

Use one checklist everywhere so the outputs are comparable — the Technology Supplier Review Checklist works for both levels. Keep the register itself shared in AvenorOps.