Their ruling? Stark & Stark is thrilled with 8x8’s simplicity and flexibility

Stark & Stark is a multi-practice firm, taking cases from personal injury and workers’ compensation to corporate litigation, compliance, investment management, and more. With over 80 years of experience, Stark & Stark attorneys bring dedication and excellence to their particular disciplines.

The Challenge: An inflexible patchwork solution

The law offices at Stark & Stark were already growing frustrated with the high costs and complex infrastructure from their communications provider when the first round of pandemic shutdowns happened in early 2020. The firm was using on-premises Avaya for communications, and the disjointed and expensive ongoing operations were complex and inflexible. They knew they needed a better solution—and fast—to improve agility and stay connected.

Stark & Stark heard about 8x8 as they were evaluating different communications platforms. “We looked at a lot of different features,” says Thomas Kline, Director of IT at Stark & Stark. “We wanted to avoid disruptions when we switched from our current system. We wanted to make sure that this was, in all ways, an upgrade. And we wanted to deliver more features to our end users.”

The firm was also on the hunt for a more advanced mobile experience, including the ability for their team to answer business calls on their mobile phones in the same way that they would answer a typical cell phone call, without the need for a desk phone or complicated routing system.

The Solution: A seamless transition to 8x8

After carefully reviewing various providers, Stark & Stark chose 8x8 Work for their new communications solution. One of the deciding factors was 8x8’s extensive training materials and hands-on migration approach.

“We were very worried because we were onboarding during the pandemic. It was important for us to make sure that our users understood how all of the features worked, from making a simple outbound call to running a complex online meeting,” recalls Kline.

Thankfully, 8x8 was there every step of the way. “We were concerned, but 8x8 provided a lot of training materials and videos through 8x8 University. We incorporated those into our staff training,” says Kline.

Kline was familiar with pushback and reluctance when switching systems, so he was surprised with how quickly the employees at Stark & Stark embraced 8x8. “Normally, when you switch systems, you are constantly fighting adoption,” he remarked. “It was very surprising to me how welcoming our users were of 8x8. It’s really a testament to how easy and successful the system is as a whole, delivering the core telephony needs and many additional features that our end users really enjoy.”

Additionally, Stark & Stark was already using Okta as their identity management provider, which seamlessly integrates with 8x8. With 8x8’s Okta integration, organizations have a powerful tool to help standardize and configure their platform experience and streamline the onboarding process.

“That really sped things up when we were setting up profiles for different roles within the firm and onboarding users,” says Kline. “All of that happened extremely quickly and correctly with minimal tweaking after the fact, which we really valued highly. It allowed us to get our users into the 8x8 system and gave them time to get familiar with how all the features work in advance of porting our phone numbers.”

The Benefits: Lower costs and fewer headaches

After switching to 8x8, Stark & Stark could fully sunset their old on-premises Avaya system, including WAN links, PRI lines, and MPLS networks that connected their offices for interoffice dialing.

“8x8 enabled us to simply utilize our internet connections—nothing else needed. So all of those extra costs just simply went away,” says Kline.

With roughly 50% of the firm being consumer-focused individual practices, it’s critical that the attorneys and employees are able to have simple and easy communication with their clients. 8x8 allows Stark & Stark to be readily available to their clients, whether in the office, at home, or on the go. “I would absolutely recommend 8x8 to a peer or another law firm looking for a cloud telephony solution,” says Kline. “It has worked out very well for us. In the legal industry, there is always the urge to maintain the status quo, but you also want upgrades that go above and beyond. And I think 8x8 offers the best combination of features and core telephony out there.”