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Express Solicitors Safeguards Business Continuity with Access Managed Services
A three layer disaster recovery strategy supporting growth, resilience and unwavering client service
About Express Solicitors
Express Solicitors is one of the UK’s fastest growing, private equity backed law firms. Handling significant volumes of sensitive client data across a large estate of fee earners, the firm requires exceptional stability, high availability, and rapid recovery in the event of disruption. Expansion, including frequent acquisitions, increased the need for a more robust, modern disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity platform.
“The bigger you are, the more you need to protect the business… we needed a quicker response time rather than relying on restoring backups.”
Stuart McLachlan, Head of IT, Express Solicitors
The Challenge
With growth came increasing operational complexity:
- Traditional backups weren’t fast enough for real time business needs
- Any outage risked disrupting cases, client service and revenue
- Ransomware threats and cyber insurance expectations were rising
- Failover and failback processes needed to be seamless
- DR must scale effortlessly as the firm acquires more businesses
- A trusted partner was essential
The Solution
A three layer DR & business continuity strategy
Access Managed Services implemented a resilient, scalable and high performance DR platform built across three complementary layers: Veeam Cloud Connect, Zerto replication and Public Cloud DR.
After researching the market, the technology options were similar. The deciding factor became partnership, reliability and ease of working together.
“Everyone was comparable… so then it was the ease of working with someone — and obviously price point.”
1. Veeam Cloud Connect: Secure, flexible off site backup
- ~30 servers backed up
- ~130TB of protected data
- Custom retention policies
- Self service restore
- Fully managed off site storage in the AMS Woking data centre
This forms the foundation of long term data protection and recovery assurance.
2. Zerto real time replication: 4 second RPO, ransomware rewind & reverse replication
Zerto provides Express Solicitors with the fast, continuous protection needed for a high volume, always on law firm.
- Near real time replication
- Continuous replication
- RPO of around 4 seconds
- Minimal data loss during incidents
Ransomware resilience
Journal based rewind enables recovery to a clean state seconds before encryption begins.
Seamless failover - Proven in recent testing
Zerto enables Express to fail over into AMS’s secondary data centre at extraordinary speed.
In their most recent DR failover test:
“We were able to spin up a 40 terabyte machine at the DR site and have it fully ready for use within five minutes. For a system of that size, that level of performance is exceptional. It gives us huge confidence that the business can stay online no matter what happens.”
— Stuart McLachlan
This real world performance confirms the system’s ability to support the full business during a crisis.
Reverse replication
One of Zerto’s biggest advantages is reverse replication, also known as reverse protection.
In plain English:
When you fail over to the DR site (in a test or a real emergency), the DR site instantly becomes the new live production environment. And Zerto immediately starts replicating data back to the original production site. With no manual setup, no reconfiguration, and no downtime.
This ensures:
- Continuous protection during and after failover
- Easy, clean failback to the original site
- Zero loss of DR capability while running from DR
- No operational gaps
This capability is critical for law firms where uptime is non negotiable.
Why Zerto?
Zerto provides:
- Ultra low RPO
- Fast, automated failover
- Automated reverse replication
- Ransomware rewind
- Modular scalability
- Non disruptive DR testing
For Express, this delivers “business as usual even in worst case scenarios.”
3. Public Cloud DR: Instant availability of core servers
Six high value VMs, including the firm’s core RDSH servers, are continuously replicated into AMS’s public cloud.
This ensures:
- Immediate spin up capability
- Continuous access for fee earners
- Zero delay availability for core case handling systems
- A hybrid model supporting both resilience and growth
“From a technical point of view, the business can fully run from the DR side… that is the solution.”
Business Impact
Rapid recovery: Business ready in under an hour
Express expects full DR readiness within around an hour - often faster.
“It should all be there within an hour… and to be fair, it might be faster.”
This includes user access, server availability and continuity of fee earning activity.
DR removes a major risk during acquisitions
Express’s acquisitive strategy requires a stable, uninterrupted platform.
“If we were partway through an acquisition, not having DR would be a showstopper. Having this in place means it’s no longer a showstopper.”
Automatic scalability as the firm grows
The DR platform expands automatically without redesign.
“As we continue to grow, the system automatically allows that growth… it’s really flexible for the business.”
A positive factor for cyber insurance
While not part of Cyber Essentials, insurers view DR as a major benefit.
“It’s discussed as part of cyber insurance… definitely seen as a benefit.”
The partnership: Why Express chose Access
More than the technology, the partnership was the real differentiator.
Stuart described the relationship with Access Managed Services as exceptional:
“I literally don’t think it could get any better from a relationship point of view. The ease of working with James and Tony is superb.”
He emphasised the contrast to other providers:
“With other parties, you get off the phone and it’s frustrating. We’ve never had that with Access.”
And noted how the long standing relationship through Proclaim made expansion natural:
“The relationship between Express and Access was already there… it just made sense to explore these other avenues.”
Implementation exceeded expectations:
“It was super quick… I can’t say anything was below an 8 or 9 from the experience all the way through.”
Even more importantly, the platform simply works:
“Everything is generally running okay… I know Tony is there if needed, but it’s just not needed because the solution runs behind the scenes.”
Conclusion
With Access Managed Services, Express Solicitors now benefits from:
- A resilient, multi layered DR strategy
- Ultra fast failover and reverse replication
- Industry leading ransomware protection
- Automated scalability
- Proven real world failover performance
- A trusted, responsive partnership
This ensures the firm can continue delivering uninterrupted legal services - even during major incidents.
As Stuart summarised:
“It’s not exciting… but it’s business critical. It’s superb that it’s in place.”
