Firmex – Testimonial – Jason Mervyn, Director, IT Business Solutions, Gowlings[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, my name is Jason Mervyn. I’m the Director of Technology Business Solutions at Gowlings, Lefleur, Henderson. We’re a Canadian-based international law firm with offices across Canada, and I happen to be based west of Toronto in our Waterloo region office. So I’ve been with Gowlings for 19 years. I’ve seen a significant number of changes in both the legal industry and the technology industry. Really what’s changed over the last five or more years is that the business of law is changing. Lawyers are dealing with decreased timelines. They’re collaborating with co-counsel and clients all over the globe. There’s really no nine-to-five day anymore given that the business is global. That’s introduced some challenges in making sure that people are sharing the right information, that documents and versions are available to the right people at the right time across time zones and across the globe. That’s where technology comes in. When we assess a new technology, we’re really looking for a partner and a platform that we can leverage significantly. So we spent a lot of time looking at how we will leverage that technology, fit it into as many use cases as we can, both at the present time and even sort of looking forward and finding some potential use cases that we think will evolve over time. The wrong technology can be frustrating for everyone involved. Stakeholders who are investing the dollars to buy the new technology get frustrated because they’re not truly getting the return on their investment. And team members are really getting frustrated as they try to deliver the work to customers and clients. IT folks get very frustrated because they’re the ones trying to implement a new solution to deliver value, and it will miss the mark if the wrong technology is being used for a particular problem. We’ve been involved in projects where there’s just such a great amount of information and documentation that managing it well, having it available and shared to the right people at the right time is critical. And without a data room, usually folks resort back to send emails with large amounts of information that often don’t get delivered, become very difficult to manage, and version control becomes non-existent. Tier 1 providers like Firmex are now our partner of choice so we can leverage all that they offer and allow our lawyers and teams to share information around the globe seamlessly. I can share a little anecdote. As an example, I was recently traveling on train, early in the morning, and I received an email overnight that requested the setup of a due diligence data room. And while connected on the train, with the ability to quickly set up the room and add users, I was able to do so before I reached my destination. Now contrast that with the old way that we use to set up data rooms, and that just wouldn’t have happened. It would’ve taken much longer. It would’ve required a couple additional people be involved in getting everything set up. Firmex has delivered a web-based platform that’s easily adopted by our users. They require very little training, if any at all. And it’s been important for us to partner with a firm like Firmex that provides globally the 24/7 customer support that we require in supporting our clients. The Firmex and data room platforms have traditionally been thought of in the due diligence context for completing transactions. But what we found is that Firmex is able to be flexible enough to solve many of our collaborative challenges, whether that be in corporate or in areas like IP or advocacy. So it’s really any area of the law firm where you’re collaborating internal teams with extended teams outside the firm Firmex provides a great solution.