What law firm IT and facilities teams should look for in an AV partner

Three proposals sit on the desk. All of them describe capable rooms. All of them list similar equipment. The prices are not close, and nothing in the documents explains why.

This is a familiar position for the people who end up making the decision: a facilities or workplace lead who will absorb the complaints if the rooms disappoint, and an IT lead who will absorb the tickets if they misbehave. Between them they carry the consequences long after the installation is signed off.

The equipment is rarely what separates one proposal from another. What separates them is how the work is planned, how the rooms are designed around the people using them, and what happens in the months after handover.

This article sets out what tends to matter most when a law firm assesses an AV partner and the AV solutions on offer: relevant experience in the legal sector, the technical groundwork, the design decisions that affect everyday use, and what is in place once the installers have left.

Table of Contents

• Experience in comparable environments
• The technical groundwork
• Design decisions that affect everyday use
• What this looks like in practice
• Comparing proposals sensibly
• FAQs

Experience in comparable environments

Legal environments have particular characteristics: client-facing rooms that carry reputational weight, confidentiality expectations that affect acoustics and room separation, partners whose time is expensive, and often several offices that need to feel like one firm.

A partner who has worked in professional services will recognise these without being told. One who has not may propose technically sound rooms that sit awkwardly in the way a firm actually operates — a boardroom that requires a briefing, or a client suite that carries sound into the corridor.

Asking for reference work in comparable settings, and asking what was difficult about it, is usually more revealing than a capability list. So is asking who will be on site, since design quality and delivery quality often come from different teams.

The technical groundwork

Most disappointing installations can be traced to questions that were never asked before work began. A partner worth shortlisting raises them unprompted.

For IT and facilities teams, the groundwork worth testing in any proposal:

• Teams and Zoom integration — which platform each room runs natively, how meetings on the other platform are joined, and whether the answer is the same in every room.
• Network and infrastructure — what the rooms need in terms of cabling, bandwidth and device provisioning, and whether the partner has confirmed that the buildings can support it.
• Support ownership — a clear boundary between what internal IT handles and what the partner handles, with response expectations written down rather than implied.
• Documentation and handover — a room specification and a short user guide that a colleague could work from without a phone call.

Proposals that answer these in concrete terms tend to be the ones that survive contact with an occupied building.

Design decisions that affect everyday use

The details that determine whether a room is liked are mostly unglamorous, and they matter most in the boardroom, where clients see the firm at its most formal. Where the display sits relative to the seating. Whether the table has enough reach for a laptop and a notebook. How the room sounds when it is full. Whether cabling is visible in a space where clients sit. Good boardroom AV tends to be judged on what the room does not make you notice.

A useful test is how a partner responds to a request for simplicity. Reducing a room to one obvious way of starting a meeting takes more design effort than adding options, and partners who treat that as a serious objective rather than a limitation generally produce rooms that need less explanation.

It is also worth asking how the same design will be applied in a smaller office or an older building, since consistency across an estate is where good intentions most often come apart.

What this looks like in practice

Viewpoint delivered a large-scale technology upgrade for Mills & Reeve LLP across multiple locations, completed cost-efficiently and with minimised environmental impact — a useful illustration of what multi-site delivery and clear rollout planning look like in a legal setting.

The full Mills & Reeve case study sets out what was involved.

Comparing proposals sensibly

Where proposals differ significantly in price, the difference is usually in scope rather than margin: acoustic work, cable containment, commissioning time, training, documentation, and the support arrangement that follows. Comparing line by line makes those omissions visible in a way that comparing totals does not.

It also helps to consider the relationship over several years rather than a single project, since firms rarely fit out every room at once and consistency depends on the same standard being applied to each subsequent office. Clarifying how Microsoft Teams and Zoom rooms will be configured and kept aligned across the estate is a practical place to begin that conversation.

Viewpoint AV works with law firms as a long-term AV partner rather than a one-off supplier — get in touch.

FAQs

What should a law firm look for in an AV partner?
Relevant experience in professional services, concrete answers on platform integration, network requirements and support ownership, and a clear picture of what happens after handover. Reference work in comparable firms is more useful than a general capability list.

How should a law firm compare AV proposals that vary widely in price?
Line by line rather than by total. Differences usually reflect what has been included — acoustic treatment, containment, commissioning, training, documentation and ongoing support — rather than differences in equipment quality.

What AV solutions work best for the legal sector?
The ones that prioritise reliability and discretion over feature count. In practice that means dependable video conferencing, boardroom and client-room setups that start the same way every time, sound and acoustics suited to confidential conversations, and a consistent standard across offices. The specific products matter less than whether the solution is designed around how a firm actually works.

Does a law firm need an AV partner with legal sector experience?
Not exclusively, but experience in comparable professional services environments helps. Client-facing reputational risk, confidentiality-driven acoustic requirements and multi-office consistency are not universal concerns across sectors.

What should a law firm look for in boardroom AV solutions?
Reliability first, since the boardroom is usually the most client-facing room in the building and any hesitation happens in front of an audience. Beyond that, clear sound for remote participants, displays sized and placed for the seating, concealed cabling, acoustics appropriate for confidential discussion, and a support arrangement agreed before installation rather than after a fault.