Goulston & Storrs Enhances Flexibility and Streamlines Operations with Zoom

Goulston & Storrs, a law firm headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts has been serving clients in the United States for the past 120 years. The firm provides legal services around real estate, private client, corporate, and litigation practices. Goulston & Storrs serves a wide range of industries such as real estate development, hospitality, technology, and more. 

Providing pro bono services for organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Goulston & Storrs has a long history of supporting civil rights causes as well as international justice efforts. The Goulston & Storrs team provides an effective, full-service experience for a diverse client base, but was needing a solution provider who could keep pace. 

The need for dynamic, flexible communications solutions 

Goulston & Storrs frequently leverages video meetings to engage and collaborate with its clients. However, its legacy solution lacked a modern user experience.  Thus, making communication and collaboration with clients seamless was a priority. 

“The majority of our video conferencing happens in our meeting rooms, and we were using older codecs, which were expensive and difficult to maintain,” said Gary Zaino, Director of IT Operations at Goulston & Storrs. “It was also proprietary technology, which made it difficult to connect with clients and other stakeholders that were using different solutions.” 

Goulston & Storrs’ legacy phone provider also couldn’t provide the critical functionalities that its legal teams needed. “Our cloud phone provider didn’t seem like it was catering to law firms and the functionalities they rely on,” Zaino said. “Things like line delegation and presence were features that we needed because assistants rely on those to seamlessly transfer phone calls or take messages.”

Zoom was a ‘no-brainer’

After evaluating leading video meeting solutions, Goulston & Storrs moved to Zoom just a few months before the pandemic. This switch reduced management costs and created a more frictionless user experience. 

After the successful implementation of Zoom Meetings and its impact on their communications, the team at Goulston & Storrs evaluated Zoom Phone as part of their plan to implement a more dynamic and seamless cloud phone solution. 

“Zoom was already huge at the firm, which made the transition to Zoom Phone much easier,” Zaino said. “When we launched phone, it just showed up in their Zoom client. And the training load was very light because people were already so familiar with the Zoom platform.” 

Enhancing the user experience with Zoom

With Zoom Phone, Goulston & Storrs enjoyed enhanced flexibility with the phone solution, as employees can rely on a consistent, frictionless experience regardless of what device they are on. 

“We have employees using Zoom Phone on desk phones, desktop clients, and the Zoom mobile app as well,” Zaino said. “Our teams, including myself, often elevate a Zoom Phone call to a Zoom Meeting or transfer a Zoom Meeting to a phone call as well. That flexibility has been great for us.” 

The teams at Goulston & Storrs frequently leverage Zoom Team Chat — included for free with every Zoom license — for secure, fast, and efficient exchanges, helping them streamline everyday operations.

“Zoom Team Chat is my preferred medium because it doesn’t clutter up my inbox, I can tag people, and it’s real-time,” Zaino said. “We use Zoom Team Chat in IT all day, every day, so we can address those IT issues more quickly. We also tweaked our settings so our chat messages automatically delete after 7 days, which helps us keep things secure.” 

Goulston & Storrs also implemented Zoom Webinars, using the solution to host a wide range of both internal and external events. 

“Our trainers and our business development group are heavily leveraging the webinar functionality of Zoom in terms of marketing and training events,” Zaino said.

The future of Zoom at Goulston & Storrs

As Goulston & Storrs continues to leverage Zoom to enhance collaboration and communication, Zaino and his teams are excited about what the future holds. 

“One of my favorite things about Zoom is the pace at which new features come out,” Zaino said. “The new whiteboard feature is really interesting and we’ve had people reaching out to us about it because they’re really excited.”