I've never used Barracuda's anti-spam firewall. I have, however, recently implemented a front-end mail server called ESVA (see www.global-domination.org/ESVA.php). We actually downloaded the pre-built virtual machine from VMWare's website (www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/542) and are running it under VMWare Server.

Re: Spam filter costs lawyers their day in court.

Granted, this solution might require a little linux know-how to get it up and running, but the benefits are tremendous. Besides greylisting and the ability to set up recipient filtering, e-mails that get a spam score in a certain range will cause an e-mail to be sent to the recipient. If the score is on the lower end of spamminess, the user gets the e-mail anyway, but with a link to report it as spam so SpamAssassin can learn. If the score is on the higher end of the range, the user gets a notice that the message was blocked and is given a link to click on to release it and teach SpamAssassin that it was ham.

Oh, and did I mention that ESVA uses ClamAV to scan for viruses?

For what it costs to buy a Barracuda Spam Firewall, you could buy a dedicated front-end server for ESVA, hire a linux guru to get it up and going, and pocket the savings. Granted, this would not necessarily be an enterprise-grade highly scalable solution, but for someone like a law firm--more than adequate. Also, the Barracuda Spam Firewall may have some features ESVA doesn't, but it lacks greylisting, which is IMHO, absolutely essential in the war on spam.