RollOnFriday can reveal that lawyers at legacy Fentons, which was acquired by Slater & Gordon last year, have been unable to log on to the firm's network for the last eight weeks because of a crippling IT problem, which the firm says will take up to a year to resolve.

So instead of accessing the riches of the S&G intraweb, Fentons staff have been left staring at Microsoft's "blue screen of death". A source tells RollOnFriday that as a result lawyers are spending 80% of their time "doing absolutely nothing". The firm has recognised that this is a bit of a problem really, but so far the combined IT might of legacy Fentons, legacy Pannone and the Slater & Gordon Australian mothership has proved incapable of exterminating the gremlins.

It seems the problem is serious enough to have defeated even the great IT support secret of turning the computers off and then turning them on again, and incredibly the firm has said it will take up to a year to reconnect the lawyers to the 21st century.
 
    A Slaters computer about to meet a fist, yesterday

An insider says that Slater & Gordon, which entered the UK market in 2012 and has been snapping up firms with indecent haste ever since, has not invested in the IT infrastructure of its acquisitions, lumbering them with the "£2.99 service package" and antiquated servers incapable of accessing its bespoke software.

Group IT Head Jonathan Pangrazio admitted to RollOnFriday that the issue "has caused great frustration to the affected staff", but he said the issue had not impacted clients and claimed it was an isolated problem. Pangrazio also said that Slater & Gordon was investing heavily in the UK "to establish our standard core applications platform" and "transition all staff and groups onto this environment in phases over the coming 12 months".

In the meantime, to show a Fentons lawyer that you care, simply print off a copy of this article and other interesting bits of the internet and send it to them by DX.
 
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