UPSTACK delivered a fully integrated dual-circuit solution on the firm’s aggressive timeline and stayed engaged to manage the vendor complexity that comes with a growing footprint.

Summary

A mid-size litigation-focused law firm with multiple offices across the Western United States needed to rapidly and confidentially connect a new office location to its existing SD-WAN network, with dual circuits, consistent firewall and network equipment, and an early termination fee waiver secured before any commitment could be made. UPSTACK moved immediately, evaluating carrier options, negotiating the required waiver, and delivering a fully integrated solution on the firm’s timeline. UPSTACK’s service delivery team managed the full implementation end to end, and the firm benefits from ongoing client services support that keeps the vendor complexity of a growing multi-site footprint actively managed, rather than compounding on the shoulders of an already stretched IT team.

The challenge

A mid-size litigation-focused law firm with multiple offices across the Western United States needed to connect a new, confidential office location to its existing SD-WAN network quickly. The expansion couldn’t become visible to the market before the firm was ready, which meant the entire process of evaluation, quoting, negotiation, and commitment had to happen within days.

The technical requirements were clear: dual circuits, firewall and network equipment consistent with every other office, and full integration into the existing SD-WAN fabric. Before any commitment could be made, the firm also needed confirmation that early termination fees from any incumbent agreements would be waived, a non-negotiable condition that added another layer of complexity to an already compressed timeline.

The firm’s IT team was already stretched across an existing multi-site footprint. In a distributed environment, every new location introduces more to manage: a new provider relationship, a new contract to track, a new point of failure to monitor. Adding a new location under a compressed, confidential timeline while simultaneously managing carrier negotiations, equipment specifications, and SD-WAN integration wasn’t something the team could absorb without outside support. And the stakes were high. The moment the doors opened, attorneys needed full access to case management systems, document repositories, and secure communications infrastructure, with the same performance and security standards as every other location. A delayed or underperforming deployment had direct consequences for the firm’s ability to serve clients from day one.

The solution

UPSTACK moved immediately, evaluating carrier options for the specific address, securing competitive pricing, and identifying a primary provider with strong on-net coverage at the new location, leveraging existing local loop infrastructure into a national carrier backbone to avoid the lead times of a full new build.

Before any commitment was made, UPSTACK negotiated the early termination fee waiver the firm required — removing a key financial risk from the decision and giving firm leadership the confidence to move forward on their timeline.

A second provider was brought in as a backup circuit, consistent with the firm’s existing redundancy architecture. Both circuits were integrated into the firm’s SD-WAN deployment, and firewall and network equipment was specified to match the firm’s standards across all other locations, ensuring the new office would be operationally consistent with the rest of the network from the moment it went live.
From there, UPSTACK’s service delivery team took over, managing the full implementation end to end. That meant coordinating provisioning across two carriers simultaneously, tracking milestones against the firm’s aggressive timeline, handling escalations when they arose, and keeping the firm’s IT team informed without pulling them into the details of carrier management. The firm didn’t have to run a multi-vendor deployment under a confidential, compressed timeline. UPSTACK did that for them.

The outcome

The new office launched on time, within budget, and fully integrated into the firm’s existing network, indistinguishable from any other location in its footprint from a connectivity and security standpoint. The early termination fee waiver secured by UPSTACK removed a financial obstacle that could have delayed the decision or forced the firm into a suboptimal provider choice, and the confidentiality of the expansion was maintained throughout the engagement.

For firm leadership, the value of the engagement extended well beyond the procurement decision. Expanding under a compressed, confidential timeline meant taking on real vendor complexity at exactly the wrong moment, and UPSTACK absorbed that complexity entirely. A new location also means a new set of vendor relationships to manage, contracts to track, and service levels to hold providers accountable to, overhead that compounds as the firm continues to grow. UPSTACK’s client services team owns that ongoing relationship, so firm leadership isn’t pulled back into vendor management every time the network needs attention. The engagement didn’t close when the office opened. It continued.

For the operations and IT teams, that ongoing model is where the sustained value lives. In a multi-site environment, vendor fragmentation is a slow accumulation, with each new location adding another layer of provider relationships, contract timelines, and performance variables for the internal team to track. UPSTACK’s involvement interrupts that pattern. Circuit performance, carrier relationships, upcoming renewals, and changes in the firm’s requirements are all within scope of how UPSTACK stays engaged post-deployment, so the IT team isn’t inheriting more complexity with every new location. They have a partner that takes it on.