Enhancing Legal Operations: 20 Years of Strategic Support for BakerHostetler

A multi-year telecom managed services partnership with a leading national law firm: how BAZ Group served as the strategic technology advisor that vetted providers, managed wireless carriers, led SD-WAN and SIP migrations, and consistently outperformed Gartner’s industry savings benchmarks.

About BakerHostetler

BakerHostetler is one of the largest law firms in the United States, with offices across the country serving clients in industries ranging from financial services to healthcare to technology. Managing the technology infrastructure of a national law firm requires a higher standard than most enterprise environments: communications systems must be reliable, secure, and compliant, and the cost of downtime — in billable hours lost, client service disrupted, and operational continuity broken — is significant.

Law firms also operate under specific financial pressures that make telecom expense management particularly important. Partner compensation structures, billing rate disciplines, and overhead cost management all create strong incentives to ensure that technology investments are delivering real value and that unnecessary spend is identified and eliminated. For a firm with offices nationwide, the cumulative impact of unmanaged telecom expense is substantial.

The Challenge: A High-Stakes Environment That Needed a Strategic Partner, Not Just a Vendor

BakerHostetler’s challenge wasn’t a single problem with a single solution. It was the ongoing complexity of managing communications technology across a national law firm footprint — multiple offices, multiple carriers, multiple technology generations, and a business environment where network downtime is simply not an option.

The firm needed an advisor who could operate across the full stack of telecom management: evaluating and vetting new providers, preparing accurate annual budgets for technology spend, managing wireless carrier relationships through the constant churn of office expansions and moves, and leading major technical transitions — specifically SD-WAN and SIP migrations — that required both strategic planning and rigorous implementation oversight.

What distinguished this need from a standard telecom vendor relationship was the requirement for genuine strategic partnership. A vendor delivers a contract. A strategic partner understands the business well enough to make independent recommendations, manages the ongoing complexity so the internal team doesn’t have to, and holds itself accountable to financial outcomes, not just technical deliverables. That’s what BakerHostetler selected BAZ Group to provide.

In a high-stakes legal environment, network downtime isn’t a technology problem — it’s a client service problem. The bar for telecom management in a national law firm is categorically different from most enterprises.

The Solution: A Multi-Phase Strategic Partnership Across Voice, Wireless, and Network

BAZ Group’s engagement with BakerHostetler has evolved through multiple phases, each addressing a distinct dimension of the firm’s communications environment. Across all phases, BAZ has operated as an extension of the firm’s IT and Finance teams — bringing the telecommunications expertise and independence that internal teams rarely have the capacity or specialization to provide on their own.

Phase 1 — Voice Transformation: 56% Savings Through IP Telephony Re-Architecture

The first major engagement was a comprehensive re-architecture of BakerHostetler’s local voice services to support centralized IP telephony. The transition from legacy voice infrastructure to a centralized IP platform yielded a 56% reduction in voice costs — a savings figure that reflects both the scale of the inefficiency in the legacy environment and the precision with which BAZ designed and executed the replacement.

Voice transformation engagements of this type require careful sequencing: the existing infrastructure must remain fully operational throughout the transition, the new architecture must be validated at each location before the old system is decommissioned, and the financial benefit must be realized quickly enough to justify the investment. BAZ’s management of all three dimensions is what delivered 56% savings rather than the more modest gains a less rigorous approach would have produced.

Phase 2 — Proactive TEM: Wireless Management and Office Moves That Outperform Gartner Benchmarks

Following the voice transformation, BAZ took on ongoing telecom expense management (TEM) for the firm — with a specific focus on wireless carrier relationship management and the telecommunications implications of office expansions and moves. In a national law firm that is continually evolving its physical footprint, each office move or opening creates a cascade of telecom decisions: which services transfer, which need to be newly provisioned, which should be decommissioned, and how wireless costs for the new location should be structured.

BAZ’s proactive TEM approach — staying ahead of changes rather than reacting to them — has consistently outperformed Gartner’s industry savings benchmarks. That benchmark comparison is significant: Gartner’s telecom benchmarks represent what sophisticated enterprises typically achieve with dedicated internal or managed TEM resources. Outperforming them consistently reflects the depth of expertise and attention BAZ brings to the engagement, not just competent execution of a standard process.

Phase 3 — Network Modernization: SD-WAN and SIP Strategy and Implementation

The most recent phase of the partnership has centered on network modernization: providing strategy and implementation oversight for BakerHostetler’s SD-WAN and SIP migrations. Both transitions represent significant investments in network resilience and redundancy — capabilities that are particularly important in a law firm environment where communications reliability directly affects client service.

SD-WAN migration in a multi-office professional services firm requires careful planning around circuit diversity, failover architecture, and the sequencing of site conversions to minimize risk. SIP migration — transitioning from traditional PSTN connections to session initiation protocol trunking — requires equally careful management of call quality, number porting, and the analog services that don’t fit cleanly into an IP architecture. BAZ provided the strategy that defined how each migration should be sequenced and structured, and the implementation oversight that ensured execution matched design.

The Results: Millions in Cumulative Savings, Benchmarks Exceeded, Partnership Ongoing

Why BAZ Group: Long-Term Partnerships That Deliver Value Year After Year

Most telecom engagements are transactional: a problem arises, a vendor is engaged, the work is done, the contract ends. The BakerHostetler partnership represents a fundamentally different model — one where BAZ operates as a continuous extension of the firm’s IT and Finance teams, managing the ongoing complexity of a national communications environment and ensuring that every new technology initiative is both technically robust and financially optimized.

This model produces compounding value over time. The first-year savings from a voice transformation are meaningful. But the ongoing savings from proactive wireless management, combined with the strategic guidance on major network investments, combined with the carrier credits recovered through continuous TEM oversight, combined with the cost avoidance on technology decisions made with expert guidance rather than vendor recommendations — the cumulative effect across years is categorically larger than any single project could deliver.

The benchmark comparison tells the story clearly: outperforming Gartner’s industry savings standards isn’t a one-time achievement. It’s the consistent result of a partner who is deeply invested in the client’s financial outcomes and who brings the independence and expertise to act on that investment year after year.

What distinguishes this long-term partnership:

• Multi-phase scope — voice, wireless, TEM, SD-WAN, and SIP managed under a single trusted relationship
• Strategic advisory role — BAZ vets providers and prepares budgets, not just executes contracts
• Proactive TEM — stays ahead of changes rather than reacting to billing surprises
• Outperforms Gartner benchmarks consistently — not a one-time result, an ongoing standard
• Millions in cumulative savings — the compounding effect of multi-year partnership vs. one-off projects
• Full independence from all carriers and vendors — every recommendation reflects the firm’s interests
• Ongoing engagement — BAZ continues to manage the environment as the firm’s technology evolves

Frequently Asked Questions

What is ongoing telecom expense management for law firms?

Ongoing telecom expense management (TEM) for law firms covers the continuous monitoring, optimization, and management of all communications costs across a firm’s office footprint — voice, wireless, data, and cloud. For a national law firm, this includes managing wireless carrier relationships, optimizing costs as offices open, expand, or relocate, validating carrier billing for errors and discrepancies, recovering credits for SLA breaches, and preparing accurate annual technology budgets. BAZ Group’s TEM engagement with BakerHostetler has consistently outperformed Gartner’s industry benchmarks for telecom savings — the standard by which sophisticated TEM programs are measured.

What does an SD-WAN migration involve for a national law firm?

An SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) migration for a national law firm involves transitioning from legacy dedicated circuits or MPLS connections to a software-defined network architecture that provides greater flexibility, redundancy, and cost efficiency. The migration requires: assessing current circuit inventory and identifying consolidation opportunities, designing the target architecture for each office location, selecting and contracting with SD-WAN technology and service providers, sequencing the site-by-site migration to maintain continuous connectivity, and validating performance against design specifications at each location. For a law firm where network downtime directly affects billable hours and client service, the sequencing and risk management of the migration are as important as the technology selection.

What is SIP migration and why does it matter for law firms?

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) migration is the transition from traditional PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) voice connections to IP-based trunking — carrying voice communications over the firm’s data network rather than dedicated analog or digital circuits. For law firms, SIP migration typically delivers significant cost reductions in voice infrastructure while improving call quality and flexibility. Key considerations include number portability (ensuring all existing phone numbers transfer to the new system), analog service handling (fax lines, conference room systems, and other services that don’t fit cleanly into a SIP architecture), and call quality validation across all locations. BAZ Group provides both the migration strategy and the implementation oversight to ensure the transition is seamless.

How does telecom management differ for professional services firms vs. other enterprises?

Professional services firms — law firms, consulting firms, accounting firms — have telecom management requirements that differ from other enterprises in three important ways. First, communications reliability is directly tied to billable work and client service, raising the cost of downtime above what most industries experience. Second, office footprints are more dynamic, with frequent expansions, moves, and openings that create ongoing telecom management complexity. Third, overhead cost discipline is often stronger, creating higher expectations for demonstrating ROI on every technology investment. BAZ Group’s experience managing BakerHostetler’s environment across multiple years and multiple technology transitions reflects a deep understanding of all three dimensions.

What does outperforming Gartner’s telecom savings benchmarks mean?

Gartner publishes industry benchmarks for telecom expense management that represent the savings rates typically achieved by enterprises with sophisticated internal or managed TEM programs. Outperforming these benchmarks means consistently generating savings above what the most effective standard programs deliver — not just matching industry norms, but exceeding them. For BakerHostetler, BAZ’s consistent outperformance of Gartner’s benchmarks is a measurable indicator of the depth of expertise and attention the engagement receives, and a concrete way to compare the value of the BAZ partnership against what the market typically provides.

How does a long-term telecom managed services partnership generate more value than one-off projects?

A long-term telecom managed services partnership generates compounding value in ways that one-off projects cannot. First, the ongoing TEM work — catching billing errors, recovering credits, optimizing wireless costs, managing office moves — generates recurring savings every month rather than a single recovery. Second, a partner who understands the organization’s technology environment deeply over time makes better strategic recommendations on major investments like SD-WAN or SIP migrations. Third, the relationship itself creates accountability: BAZ’s engagement continues only as long as it’s delivering value, which creates a structural incentive to consistently outperform rather than deliver once and disengage.