Using PingPlotter

PingPlotter Talks a Law Firm's IT Team Down from the Ledge

When the pandemic started in early 2020, the IT team of Levenfeld Pearlstein, a mid-sized law firm in Chicago, didn’t know that working remotely was here to stay.

“We were very much everyone in the office all day, every day, type of firm,” says Tim Quigg, Director of Technology for Levenfeld Pearlstein. “If people had an IT problem, they would just walk down the hall.”

Serving 80 attorneys and a total of 170 staff, Quigg’s small, five-member IT team was struggling to keep everyone working remotely. “9 to 5 doesn’t happen anymore,” says Quigg. “People are working all kinds of different hours, but we still have the same small support team. We’ve got to work smarter, but harder.”

Fortunately, in this chaotic environment, the Levenfeld Pearlstein IT team found both solace and solutions in PingPlotter Cloud— a network troubleshooting tool designed for remote work.

The VPN is not on trial here.

“We had to FaceTime an employee to make sure they weren’t plugging their Ethernet into the phone jack,” laughs Quigg. “People’s home networks are always a problem. Every morning, we get that email that says ‘Is the VPN down?’”

The company VPN and Quigg’s IT team were always being blamed for lost network connections and non-billable downtime. They knew that home internet connections were likely the cause, but needed the data to prove it. That’s when Quigg found PingPlotter. PingPlotter Cloud helps legal IT teams get the evidence that their VPN works. It constantly tests network connections from the end-user’s perspective, visualizes the source of the problem, and recommends how to solve it.

“Speed tests don’t show latency. They don’t show dropped packets. And those were things that were a problem,” says Quigg. “That’s where PingPlotter came in and was really helpful. We’re going to see any problems first…and anticipate what is going to happen.”

Using PingPlotter data as proof, the LP IT team was even able to resolve an ISP issue that impacted multiple attorneys (their connections were slowing down at the same point on the ISP’s network). “Many of our attorneys lived in the same couple of towns and we could see one backbone link,” says Quigg. “We did get that backbone fixed and that solved a problem for seven to eight people.”

“It’s hard to argue with people who argue for a living. PingPlotter gives my team the data and a leg to stand on.”

Timothy R. QuiggDirector of Technology at Levenfeld Pearlstein

LP IT rests their case.

Thanks to PingPlotter Cloud, the Levenfeld Pearlstein IT team discovered that they could solve network issues quicker, increase work-from-anywhere productivity, and foster a more collaborative relationship with the attorneys they serve.

“It’s hard to argue with people who argue for a living,” says Quigg. “PingPlotter gives my team the data and a leg to stand on.”