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Bespoke Web-Based Solution for a Law Firm
About the client
The customer was an American law firm established in the 19th century, employing several hundred people across a dozen offices. As such, it serves a broad client base, ranging from individuals and privately held enterprises to national corporations and international public companies. Its attorneys combine deep legal knowledge with practical guidance to help their clients minimize risks and capitalize on opportunities. The firm emphasizes collaboration, long-term client relationships, and diverse perspectives. In tech terms, the customer maintains an in-house IT department and technical expertise, supporting its ongoing innovation initiatives.
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Business Context
Andersen was engaged to build a new web app aimed at assisting the customer’s employees in handling numerous Excel documents for legal purposes. This app was expected to not only generate reports from client files but also allow users to view and compare historical data with current documents. It was expected to automate such manual processes as table creation, data copying, and elimination of inconsistencies in data handling, thereby reducing the risk of human error.
Challenges
While working on the project, Andersen’s team was quick to successfully overcome the following challenges:
- Product and domain complexity. The project involved working with complex XLS-based data structures and reporting logic within a limited discovery window. While the overall approach was sound, the scale and variability of XLS parsing and reporting scenarios required deeper domain immersion and iterative refinement during the delivery phase;
- Infrastructure alignment and integration. The solution needed to be deployed within the customer’s Azure environment under strict access and security constraints. Aligning infrastructure practices, cost models, and deployment processes – all without direct access – required extra coordination and careful planning, particularly during migration and handover phases;
- Requirements clarification and validation. Some project documentation and user flows were refined in parallel with development. As a result, requirement reviews and approvals took longer than initially expected, calling for closer collaboration and step-by-step alignment between stakeholders on both sides.
Project overview
To address the customer’s challenges, Andersen developed a cloud-based web app that enabled employees to manage documents securely and efficiently in a single, centralized platform. The solution improved report generation, supported historical data comparison, and automated routine tasks, reducing manual effort and minimizing the risk of human error.
About the project
The application consolidated document management into a single, secure platform, eliminating inefficiencies and enabling smarter use of resources.
Business benefits:
- Minimized errors, duplicates, and missing information in legal documents;
- Optimized and accelerated file creation and report generation;
- Supported business growth via expanding the client base without increasing headcount.
App functionality
The app’s functionality centers around secure document management, streamlined report generation, and historical data comparison.
To enable these capabilities, the following architectural choices were made:
- Using a monolithic architecture;
- Hosting the back-end in Azure App Service;
- Using Azure Blob Storage for report file storage;
- Using Azure DevOps to automate CI/CD pipelines, manage repositories, track work items, and facilitate team collaboration;
- Using Azure Key Vault to securely store and manage secrets, keys, and certificates;
- Applying TLS/SSL for external communication and enabling encryption for databases and other services;
- Implementing a static report generation algorithm;
- Hosting the front-end (React) in Azure Static Web Apps;
- Storing data in Azure SQL Database;
- Implementing Microsoft Entra ID as the identity provider;
- Using Azure Backup to protect critical data and apps from deletions, corruption, or disasters;
- Using Azure Monitor for comprehensive monitoring and diagnostics of resources and apps (not shown in diagrams);
- Ensuring all integrations follow the Zero Trust Security Model;
- Restricting the app to only process one type of template.
Solution
The Microsoft Azure DevOps cloud platform was selected as the foundation for the solution, as it provides a comprehensive suite of tools and services to support the entire software development lifecycle, from planning and development to testing, deployment, and monitoring. This choice ensured a unified environment for collaboration, automation, and continuous delivery.
Project results
The custom web application delivered by Andersen enabled the customer to achieve the following business results:
- Higher document accuracy through standardized templates, version control, and automated data checks;
- Faster and more efficient operations driven by automated reporting and reduced manual processing;
- Business growth without additional staffing, as the application supported higher workloads with the same team size.
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