Omolabake Adeyemi, IT Director at a commercial law firm in Victoria Island, Lagos, had a recurring complaint from fee earners: their PCs were slow. Documents took too long to open, Outlook lagged with large email archives, and the PDF review software — essential for contract work — was noticeably sluggish on complex documents.
The Problem
The firm was running 5-year-old Core i5 systems with 8GB RAM and spinning hard drives. Windows 11 had been deployed but the hardware was undersized for it. Legal work generates enormous document archives — some attorneys had 50GB+ of email data in Outlook. The combination of HDDs and insufficient RAM was creating constant disk thrashing.
The Sephora Systems Approach
After a site assessment, Sephora Systems recommended a standardised workstation spec across all 8 seats:
- Intel Core i5-13400 (10-core efficiency for background tasks)
- 32GB DDR5 (eliminates paging for even the heaviest Outlook archives)
- 1TB NVMe SSD (dramatically faster document and email access)
- Integrated graphics (no GPU needed for legal workflows)
- mATX form factor for space efficiency in the open-plan office
The Outcome
"The difference was immediate," said Omolabake. "Senior partners who had stopped complaining because they assumed slow PCs were normal are actively commenting on the change." Boot times dropped from 3+ minutes to under 20 seconds. Outlook search became near-instant. PDF review of 500-page contracts is now smooth.
The firm calculated that if each of their 8 fee earners recovered 15 minutes of billable time per day from faster hardware, the payback period on the hardware investment was under 3 months.