3 Geeks and a Law Blog

Dan and Jane: Ep. 4 - The Social Law Firm

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan McClead) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Jane: I recently read a short book by Nilofer Merchant called 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era. In this lovely little tome she draws some powerful conclusions about the impact of the Social Era on business and the opportunity it provides to promote the Onlyness of individuals. Onlyness is the concept that each and every person brings a unique set of knowledge, intuition, and experience to the workplace. When done correctly, social media allows the organization to tap directly into an individual's Onlyness and to leverage the vast knowledge and experience that typically goes unnoticed by the enterprise. Take for example, Rosanne, a legal secretary with 25 years of experience supporting litigation lawyers. Rosanne is a great resource for the few lawyers that she supports directly, but her Onlyness is almost entirely unavailable to the rest of the firm. Through social media, her Onlyness could be become a firm-wide resource, easily tapped by anyone and everyone who wants a piece of it.

Dan: Put away the love beads and go wash your Birkenstocks, Jane. The halcyon days of free love have been over for more than 40 years and, last I checked, tapping the Onlyness of a secretary is generally frowned upon in our more enlightened era. I don't deny that law firm's have plenty of underutilized resources within their employee base, but there is no way that social media is the answer. Most of the interactions on social networks revolve around gossiping with Facebook friends, or Tweeting your cat's latest hi-jinx. Spreading around that kind of Onlyness does absolutely nothing to help the business, it is just another distraction from the work that employees should be focusing on.

Jane: Dan, by that logic -- and I always use that word loosely when talking about you -- we should brick-up all of the windows in the office. I've seen plenty of attorneys and managers (the rest of us don't have windows) while-away the hours gazing absent-mindedly through the glass.

Dan: It's not surprising that you would confuse deep thought with absent-mindedness, Jane. Knowledge workers, like attorneys and managers, often focus deeply on a problem. Granted, to the ignorant, such focus could easily be misunderstood as "whiling away the time".

Jane: Leaving aside you're "ignorant" jab for the moment (pun intended), you don't consider secretaries and other staff to be knowledge workers?

Dan: Not in the same way that attorneys are, no.

Jane: You care to dig your own grave on that one?

Dan: There's no digging my grave about it. The fact is, most employees in a law firm are task-completers, not creative types like attorneys and managers. Their access to knowledge is simply, by any measure, not as important as...

Jane: You know what, I think we've just hit on another Dan and Jane topic. Let's table this for now and come back to it later. Regardless of whether employees are "knowledge workers" there is clearly value in better connecting people within the enterprise. It's important to create relationships where there would otherwise not be any; between offices, regions, practice areas, etc. It is about building community, Dan. Surely, you don't deny that it's important for IT personnel, for example, in various offices and at every level throughout the firm to communicate effortlessly.

Dan: Jane, why in the world would I want IT people to talk to each other? I, as a partner, am not paying them to talk, I'm paying them to fix things.

Jane: Wow. I'm speechless... Let me give you an example you might understand, Rumpelstiltskin. Back in your day, people would congregate around the water cooler. This would provide a connecting point for employees and allow them to discuss ideas, some of which related to work and many that didn't. More importantly these conversations, work related or not, created connections between people, and those connections allowed them to more easily work together to solve work related problems. The water cooler conversations allowed the individual to share their Onlyness with their colleagues. Today, we are too dispersed and everybody is moving too fast for a water cooler to provide that kind of informal and serendipitous communication, however, social networking can accomplish the same thing on a global scale, instantaneously. Social Networking is the new water cooler.

Dan: I remember the water cooler. We got rid of it because people like you would stand there all day talking instead of getting their work done. You're suggesting we should now make it possible to achieve that same level of inefficiency from the comfort of your own desk chair? You're social "tools" will only make it harder to tell when someone is wasting the firm's time.

Jane: Speaking of wasting time... The point here is not which “tool" we use, Dan, it is that we must unleash the potential knowledge and expertise of ALL of our employees. Law firms have a very strong caste system, and it does not serve the enterprise well. There are many problems to be solved and many long time employees have a much better understanding of the inner workings of the firm, and the legal business in general, than young associates, or even many partner's do. In the traditional social model of the law firm, there is no mechanism to incorporate the vast experiences of the lower caste employees into the eventual solutions that will propel the firm to new heights. Social networking levels the old system and makes it possible for little old Roseanne to contribute to the ultimate success of the firm.

Dan: Roseanne?

Jane: Roseanne...uh, Dan!....uh... never mind.

The Value of Fee Caps

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Brown) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Image [cc] Rigmarole

As legal pricing evolves, it is taking many twists and turns - along with some convoluted spins. The initial efforts by clients to save money typically results in requests for bigger discounts. This allows the GC to go back to the CEO and say “we saved 5% more this year.”

After a year or so of this approach, clients realized bigger discounts don’t directly translate into savings. I would argue that in this situation, clients can’t even tell if they are saving money or not. So at a point the CEO comes back and says “Show me the money.”

Next up on the pricing evolution list is usually Fee Caps. These are hourly billings with a “not to exceed” number. Of course these deals usually retain whatever discount level the client previously received. So now the client can say with more certainty they are saving money. Or can they?

To fully explore this question, we need to understand the behavior such a fee arrangement drives. People like to talk about value pricing, which many times means creating an alignment of interests between client and law firm. So an examination of the behavior each type of pricing arrangement motivates, for both law firm and client, is in order.

On the surface it appears a fee cap motivates efficiencies. Law firms should logically want to keep their fees under the cap, so they will carefully dole out resources during the engagement to avoid hitting the cap. This is the "efficiency" clients seek. And to some degree this outcome may be true.

However, lawyers are motivated to maximize revenue in order to drive up their personal compensation. To that end, they are motivated to hit the cap. Going over does mean write-offs, but coming in too far under means lost revenue attributed to them for comp. These lawyers are also motivated to have as many of their personal hours involved in the matter as well. Since their comp is also driven by that factor. And once a cap is exceeded, the lawyers are motivated to reduce their personal hours and pull back on resources. So instead of motivating efficiencies, fee caps can easily motivate counter-productive behaviors.

Now one might point accusing fingers at law firm compensation systems (and rightly so), but that doesn’t change the current motivations.

On the client side with these motivations in place, they need to closely monitor work on matters to make sure the right tasks are being performed by the right levels of expertise.Clients trying to manage costs under a traditional hourly arrangement will have the same burdens. An added burden is watching the fees billed against the cap. I heard of one client using fee caps who was not monitoring this metric. One month they suddenly noticed the size of the bills dropped dramatically. The outside counsel had hit the cap and pulled back case activity significantly.

One other point for clients to consider - fee caps with discounts can put law firms in a no-win situation. If as a client your goal is reducing your law firms’ profitability, fee caps are a great tool. They make it increasingly difficult for law firms to maintain a healthy bottom line. Now many will argue this goal, perhaps as an unintended consequence, is not so bad. I would argue as a client you probably don't want to be doing business with financially unstable partners.

Fee caps probably deliver some savings to clients in some form. However, they bring with them significant unintended consequences. My advice to both clients and firms considering various fee arrangements: make sure the arrangement truly aligns interests. As I repeatedly say - it’s about The Conversation. Clients and lawyers need to have open, honest conversations about goals and motivations when it comes to fees. Otherwise, clients may get what they pay for and not what they wanted.

The Value & Strategy Behind Where to Play & How to Win

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Lambert) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:00:00 +0000

As many of you have watched over the past two years, JC Penny has gone through a bit of a rough patch with its failed experiment with Ron Johnson as its CEO. In fact, today is the two-year anniversary of Johnson’s appointment, which collapsed back on April 8th. Johnson was viewed by most people as an impressive strategist who made the Apple Stores into the success it is. There were many people, most of whom seemed to hold sway on JCP’s shareholders, that thought Johnson could come in, apply his strategy to JCP’s ‘mismanaged’ retail operations, and make it into the anchor-store equivalent to Apple. Needless to say, it just didn’t work out as envisioned.

Roger Martin of the Harvard Business Review Blog Network wrote an interesting article on Thursday that discussed how one of the basic failures that “Under Johnson, JCP had nothing even vaguely resembling a worthwhile strategy and its path to get to where it wished was comically disastrous.” Although Martin’s article gives much more on the topic, the basic failure was that JCP didn’t make a “coherent set of choices about where-to-play (WTP) and how-to-win (HTW)….” It was this concept of WTP and HTW choices that really stuck out to me, and it made me wonder how these strategic concepts are applied to what many of us are attempting to do in the legal industry.

I run in a circle of friends, peers, and acquaintances within the legal industry that are always questioning the status quo. None of us are content with the way things are, and we all think that we have great ideas on what our piece of the legal industry should be doing to change for the better. Pricing gurus want firms to be better at how they address revenues, profitability and how we structure the business of law. Knowledge Management gurus want us to be better at sharing, re-using, and improving our overall abilities to leverage our previous experiences in order to be better, faster and cheaper in our current experiences. Library and Research gurus want us to be able to access external resources needed for our firms to practice law effectively in a way that gives us an advantage over our competitors, in regards to content, quality, coverage, use, and price.

These are all great ideas, but are these ideas aligned with a strategy of where we want to play?

Are we asking the WTP questions like:

Which people within the firm do we focus?
What products and processes are we promoting?
How do we do this better than the competitors or alternative processes?

This is all about strategy, but Greg Satell has a great quote that many of us need to repeat to ourselves whenever we think our strategy is impressive:

“Your customers don’t care what your strategy is…. What they really want is for your product or service to do an important job for them, to be reasonably convenient and available at an attractive price.”

In other words, your customers (most likely, attorneys and key decision makers in your firm) want you to deliver and maintain value to them on a consistent basis.

We all have good ideas on where we want our firms to go, but so did JCP’s CEO, Ron Johnson. Are you thinking about where to play your strategy and if that aligns you with how to win by creating a result that is viewed by your customer as important, valuable, convenient, and affordable? That’s the formula for how to win.

Adam Smith’s Pin Factory and the Law Firm

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Brown) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Image [cc] paojus

One of Adam Smith's great contributions to economics was his commentary on the ‘division of labor’ - explained in his pin factory example. For those of you who may have fell asleep during this part of the Econ 101 lecture, Adam Smith demonstrated how productive capacity increases with specialization.

He evaluated an artisan craftsman who makes pins with great care and quality, one at a time. The craftsman performs every function, from straightening the metal to attaching the pin head. Adam Smith then describes a factory where each function is performed by a specialist who only straightens the metal or only applies the pin heads.

He researched this to compare how many pins could be made each day per worker with each approach. His thesis was that the division of labor leads to much higher productivity. “The result of labor division in Smith’s example resulted in productivity increasing by 24,000 percent (sic), i.e. that the same number of workers made 240 times as many pins as they had been producing before the introduction of labor division.” His argument was compelling to the point that Henry Ford modeled his car factories based on these principles.

You may have already jumped ahead of me in how this applies to the practice of law, especially after I used the term “artisan craftsman.” Most lawyers are generalists / craftsmen (please excuse the sexist reference) as it relates to their functions. They may specialize in patent litigation, but under that umbrella they perform all of the practice functions. One might argue certain functions are reserved for more experienced lawyers, however that is not specialization. That is expertise. Specialization would be document drafting, or oral arguments at hearings or prior art research or any other specific function.

Instead lawyers fancy themselves as artisans who work with clay (e.g. words) to create works of art (e.g. pleadings). In their minds specialization, and the standardization that follows, equals lower quality. In contrast, in Adam Smith’s world, specialization and standardization equal efficiency and quality.

For as smart as lawyers can be, they continue to miss some basic business lessons. In this instance, Adam Smith was proven right decades ago … repeatedly.

Add “division of labor” to the list of changes needed at law firms.

Dan and Jane: Ep: 3 - The Billable Hour

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan McClead) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:00:00 +0000

Image [cc] - Tomozaurus

Jane: The billable hour is dead, Dan. It is the sad and lonely remnant of an era when clients were to stupid to realize they were being fleeced by outside counsel. I for one can no longer, in good conscience, blatantly steal my client's money. I officially declare the billable hour six feet under, pushing up daisies, defunct, deceased, kaput. Never to be heard from a…

Dan: OK, OK. I get it. You do realize, Jane, that repeating something incessantly doesn’t make it true, it just makes you slightly more annoying than usual. Also, as a graduate of North Tuvalu Online Law School, I’m pretty sure you're stealing your client’s money regardless of the billing arrangement.

Jane: Woo hoo! Go Land Sharks! I choose to ignore your petty insults, Dan. They are nothing more than the last dying gasp of a big dumb lizard.

Dan: What is that supposed to mean?

Jane: It means that you, my unfriend, are a post-asteroid BigLaw Dinosaur. Desperately grasping at the last lingering rays of light before the sun is forever blocked out, the plants all die, the critters that eat the plants pass away, and your BigLaw Tyrannosaurus -- still billing by the hour -- ignominiously starves to death.

Dan: OK, first of all, paleo-breath, the dinosaurs that survived evolved into birds not reptiles. Secondly given your ridiculous scenario, my Tyrannosaurus would die of dehydration or disease long before it starved to death. And finally, you’ve taken this metaphor waaaaay too far. I have no idea what your original point was.

Jane: My point IS that the billable hour, by its nature, creates terribly perverse financial incentives for the attorney and provides absolutely no value whatsoever to the client.

Dan: I have no idea how that relates, but let’s move on. Perverse financial incentives?

Jane: By rewarding the total time spent working, rather than the actual work completed, the billable hour incentivizes attorneys to either do more work than is necessary, or to work more slowly. Either way, the client is paying more for less relevant work product.

Dan: I’ll keep this really simple for you Jane; the method of billing doesn’t incentivize anything. The structure of attorney compensation is the problem. Take for instance the guy that changes the tires on your pickup truck. He doesn’t care whether the garage charges you for parts and labor (hourly billing) or a flat rate. He only cares how HE is compensated. If he is paid based on how long it takes him to change the tires, rather than the number of tires he changes, then he’d be a fool not to double tighten your every lug nut and thoroughly polish your rims.

Jane: You pig!

Dan: What?

Jane: I… don’t know, but it sure sounded... Anyway, your argument fails to take into account that by artificially increasing revenue, the billable hour incentivizes the owner to create those bad compensation structures in the first place. Any way you look at it, the billable hour amounts to little more than institutional theft and I, for one, am shocked that you would defend, even advocate for such chicanery!

Dan: I’m not advocating for anything! I’m saying that, as usual, you have entirely missed the point! For certain engagements, certain clients will always be best served by aligning effort and outcome, not just focusing on the outcome. Your attempt to prematurely bury the billable hour is severely hampered by the fact that it is still the most prominent method of billing for legal services. I’m not saying it is the greatest thing ever, or even appropriate most of the time, just that the problem for clients is that the cost of legal services has steadily risen, while the value they have received in return has stagnated. This is not a problem of billing practices; this is a lack of management oversight. Law firms need to completely rethink the way they manage their practices, the way they compensate their attorneys and, yes, the way they bill their clients! But even if the billable hour as a concept were to completely disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow, the vast majority of the problems facing BigLaw and their clients would remain entirely unaffected!

Jane: ….

Dan: C'mon, Jane! No snappy comeback? No witty repartee?

Jane: The last dying gasp of a big dumb turkey.

Dan: I’ll take that as a no.

Please submit topic suggestions or make your own arguments at dandj3Geeks@gmail.com.

The Internet Steps Up to Help Crowdsource The NSA's Woeful Presentation Skills

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Lambert) — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:35:00 +0000

It seems everyone is talking about the NSA's surveillance program, PRISM, these days. Although the program seems to be very creative in ways of gathering information, it seems that the group's presentation skills need a bit of work. Don't worry, French freelance presentation designer, Emiland, has come in to help!

Emiland has taken the poorly designed NSA PowerPoint presentation and converted the data into something that is actually worth monitoring.

NSA Children's Books

Emiland isn't alone in noticing a lack of creative expression from the NSA. The Guardian has assisted in helping (well, in addition to breaking the story), by creating a gallery of #NSAKidsBooks crowdsourced by Darth (probably without a court order, or copyright permission... but, hey, it's a parody, so we'll let it slide this time around.)

Even one of my favorite artists/cartoonists/graphic designers, has contributed to help the NSA with their ability to express their abilities in the form of a Venn Diagram, that shows the NSA that "They've seen it all."

Of course, we still live in an age that requires some of us to be stimulated by short videos helping us understand why such a program is worth the price we pay for it (how much is a Civil Liberty going for these days??) Don't worry NSA, BreitbartTV has you covered there,too.

Let's hand it to those on the Interwebs that can step up and help the US Government when it falls a little short in its abilities to graphically describe how it is monitoring you.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Brown) — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Image [cc] doni19

Everyone seems to agree that BigLaw is f’d up. The business model is completely screwed up and not in alignment with reality. This allows great sport for those of us who enjoy picking at the various aspects of exactly how BigLaw is headed for disaster.

But what does this disaster look like?

Many prognosticators are on death watch. Which firm will be the next Dewey / Howrey to collapse?

I propose another alternative for BigLaw - Death by a Thousand Cuts. The vast majority of firms will not implode, but instead will fade slowly to black.

Why do I say this?

Law firms, for the most part, act like sheep. They keenly watch the actions of the other sheep and then match them. As we have noted previously on 3 Geeks, most innovative ideas at firms are met with the response: “What are other firms doing?” The result is that firms don’t break away. Instead, they move as a herd.

Alongside the Sheep Factor is the Financially Conservative Factor. BigLaw firms love to brag about being debt free. The point being is that most firms are not in a “Dewey” situation, where their finances are in bad shape. Instead, they will experience profit pressures at the margin. The profitability of their work will slide over time. So instead of facing a cliff, they face a relatively gentle slope.

They will then react in one of two ways (per the Sheep Factor). First they may just accept declining profit. At a former firm I repeatedly heard partners say “Maybe we have been making too much money.” Those partners may be perfectly fine with slowly declining (high) incomes.

The second option will be right-sizing the firms. This will likely take the form of fewer equity partners: be that through de-equitization or smaller incoming partner classes. In this scenario, profits may be maintained or even enhanced, but there will be a smaller ownership pool. So effectively theses firms will shrink to maintain profit.

In either case, these firms will not be in much danger of imploding. They will pay their bills and make partner distributions. Their market share will be shrinking, but there will not be catastrophic collapses.

Of course firms whose financial fundamentals are not in shape should be concerned. But I would venture a guess that after Dewey, most firms took a hard look at those numbers, tightened up their lateral policies and further limited their debt exposure. So there may not be many firms facing a cliff.

Which leads us to our Death of 1000 Cuts – which greatly lowers the entertainment factor of a Death Watch.

Where’s the Value?

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Brown) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Image [cc] Ed Callow

I used to joke with Geek #1 about how we could pluck a lawyer from 1985, teach her email and Word, send her to a few CLEs to update her legal knowledge and she would be “good-to-go” to practice law. The point being - the practice of law hasn't changed much in 20 or even 30 years.

As a car guy, I tend to translate legal (or any other) market issues into the market for cars. Recently I purchased an older car for a fun project (‘72 Coupe De Ville if you care to know). Besides sending me back in time, the difference between the Caddy and cars of today is extreme. Cars are WAY nicer, safer, faster, more fuel efficient, more comfortable, .... For those who may want to get a ride in the Caddy, I will make sure to point out the advances in braking technology before you get in.

The main point here is that the value proposition of cars advances every year. Recent advances include things like adaptive cruise control, a/c in the seats, self-parking and lane assist. So price increases are more about increased value than they are about inflation, although inflation does factor in.

So … here’s the trick question: How are lawyers advancing their value every year (to match price increases)? Keeping up on the law doesn’t count. Neither does upgrading your office suite or getting new computers.

But now here’s a better trick question: How much does Efficiency and Effectiveness add to value? Clients are pushing for lower prices, which is ‘‘more for less’ but is that more value?

I am definitely an advocate of utilizing legal project management and approaches like process improvement. But for all these tools provide, they are not designed to increase value. They reduce costs. In my humble opinion, efficiency is not a value enhancer. One might argue effectiveness is, but I see that as semantics. “Effective” is being better at getting desired results. It’s not about getting different results.

Here are some examples to demonstrate the point:

- Instead of securing better litigation results, offer a service to reduce the amount of litigation.

- Or how about a service that organizes client legal content for consistency, to reduce risk.

- Or how about a service that monitors patent filings against a patent portfolio?

- Or how about a service that organizes legal content to streamline acquisitions (for clients in acquisition mode)?

Pondering this topic, one value adding legal example does jump to mind: The Poison Pill Strategy developed by Wachtell. That was a new service that added value. But I struggle to think of others.

Back to cars - Auto makers employ process improvement, project management, new technology (robots), out-sourcing and other tools to lower their cost of production. You might argue some of these efforts that focus on effectiveness add value, such as improved gas mileage. However, value-add does not come from improving efficiencies in production to lower costs. Value add comes from new features, functions and services.

Where are those in legal services?

Dan and Jane: Ep. 2 - Secretary Ratios

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan McClead) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Dan: Recently a number of firms have announced reductions in their secretarial ranks as a means of improving their secretary ratios - which is to say 5:1 is the new 4:1. For those not familiar with this stat - it means that the new goal is 5 timekeepers for every 1 secretary. This approach makes a lot of sense. Technology is, in many ways, displacing the traditional role of the legal secretary. Firms should take advantage of these new technological advancements and reduce their headcount to pass along a cost savings to their clients via lower rates.

Jane: That seems perfectly logical and sensible, Dan...

Dan: Why... thank you, Jane?

Jane: Or, I'm sure it would to someone completely incapable of logical thought.

Dan: Here we go.

Jane: First, you callously assume that legal secretaries do nothing but sit around playing Farmville and buying crap on eBay all day. If that is true in your firm, then you don't need a target secretary ratio, you need to fire people.

Dan: I'm not saying legal secretaries are lazy, just that times have changed. Most firms are fully digital. Most attorneys draft their own documents, and send their own correspondence. But we still staff as if everything is done by secretaries.

Jane: So, you think the problem of under-utilized secretaries is exclusively caused by disruptive technologies?

Dan: No, not exclusively, but in part...

Jane: How typically asinine. The vast majority of technological enhancements in law firms are upgrades to the OS and office suite. Neither of those bring significant productivity enhancements. In fact, some evidence shows that office suite upgrades actually reduce productivity.

Dan: I would expect a technological lightweight like you, Jane, to think that the OS and office suite are the most important technology upgrades at a law firm, but there is much more going on technologically behind the scenes.

Jane: And there appears to be nothing going on behind your scenes, Dan. No single, or even group of technologies, has replaced the services of a single legal secretary. If secretaries are indeed performing less work, then that work is either no longer being done or someone else is doing it. I know of very few things that firms have stopped doing, so that suggests someone else is doing the secretarial work.

Dan: Look, you ignoramus, I have never said that a single technology can replace a legal secretary, just that the totality of technological productivity enhancements over the last few years have reduced the need for a firm to have so many legal secretaries.

Jane: You mean, because attorneys are typing their own documents, and sending their own correspondence, and managing their own schedules?

Dan: Yes, exactly. I believe I said that earlier.

Jane: And because many do their own document editing and formatting, basic data entry, and presentation creation?

Dan: Yes.

Jane: And they answer their own phones and get their own coffee?

Dan: Yes!

Jane: And they do all of these things better than their secretaries used to?

Dan: Well...

Jane: In less time?

Dan: No, but...

Jane: So, assuming it takes an attorney 3 hours to do a task that a secretary can do in an hour, and you have an attorney to secretary ratio of 5 to 1, rather than 4 to 1, how much more money can the firm bill in a year?

Dan: ... 4 to 5, plus...??

Jane: Don't worry about it, genius. It's a trick question.

ALM – Please Stop With the Pop-Up Ads!!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Lambert) — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 13:53:00 +0000

I'm going to make this post short and sweet. American Lawyer Media (ALM), stop acting like this is 2002 and quit with the Pop-Up Ads on your site. There is a good reason why Internet Explorer created a Pop-Up blocker in 2004!!

Nina Platt reminded me this morning of just how annoying and counter-productive these are when you're trying to actually read something on an ALM site and you have to navigate through the pop-ups and the over-zealous ad placements on the page. I count two pop-ups surrounded by four additional ad placements. We all understand that you need to get ad revenue… but be a little more classy about how you do it, okay?? And LexisNexis, it makes you look bad, too.

Count 'em… 2 Pop-Ups and 4 Inset Ads

Defining 'Success' in the Modern Day Work Flow

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Lambert) — Fri, 31 May 2013 14:21:00 +0000

Image [cc] Alistar McDermott

Ryan McClead's post on THE Knowledge System has made me think of the way we ask others to work, and how effective, or ineffective that process is. In watching the TEDx video, there was a different part that stood out to me as Michael Idinopulos discussed the Disembodied Work process and how most of our work is now a series of "one-off" requests rather than a structure process. Idinopulos discussed the idea of putting Wikipedia-style knowledge system in place and encouraging people to transfer their knowledge from inside their heads onto a discussion board. The process started out fine, then dwindled, then incentives were offered (iPods, champagne) to promote sharing, but as the incentives went away, so did the effort to add information into the knowledge system.

The basic problem to these types of processes are actually very simple to explain, but difficult to fix. The overall problem is that these processes are viewed as "outside the normal" flow of work. If a person has to stop what he or she is doing (practicing law, answering reference questions, responding to RFPs, etc.) and go do some data entry so that someday in the future the results will make it easier for someone else to do their job, then these processes are doomed to fail. We try to make adjustments for this outside-of-the-normal-work-pattern by giving incentives for data input (back to the iPod, champagne ideas) or, even worse, by hiring people to be data stewards to do the work for them because we simply know the person that should be adding in the knowledge, won't do it.

Now, this brings me to a story that I heard at lunch last week with a vendor. He said he was talking with his boss about a new product launch and they wanted to define what they would consider to be a "success." Do they look at dollars as a benchmark? Do they look at usage? Do they look at market share? All of those are pretty definable goals and easy to track. Or, do they look at ease of use? Do they look at how the product helps attorneys do their jobs better? Do they look at whether current customers tell others about how great the product is? Not as definable, but probably a better indicator of how good their product really is. At the time, we didn't really come up with which of these questions would actually help identify what would be a success. Then he mentioned another story, and that's when I realized what the answer should really be.

While in the UK, he mentioned that he surveyed a number of attorneys about a product and what is would take to get them to move off of that product and on to his alternative platform. One of the responses he got went something like this:

If you take this away from me, I will quit my job. I cannot effectively do my job without it.

That, my friends, is what everyone wants to hear. That is the definition of success.

Now, this answer related directly to a product, but the same concept can be applied to almost any type of process that should be included in the normal flow of how we conduct our work. Take for example, the library:

If you take the library support away from me, I will quit and go somewhere that has it. I cannot effectively do my job without the resources and support the library provides.

Or,

If you take the knowledge base that KM (or IT or __) provides to this practice, I will quit and go somewhere that has it. I cannot effectively serve my clients without it.

The key is that the product or service has become so ingrained into the normal work flow of the person, that they would be less effective without it. The PC, email, and 'the network' have already become success stories in the modern work flow. Can you say the same about the Client Relationship Management system? The Document Management System? The Firm Wiki? The After-Matter Review process? Probably not.

As long as those systems are viewed by the worker as processes that require them to stop doing their normal job, and input data into something that they may, or may not see any return on their investment of time and effort, then those systems will never be successful.

Dan and Jane: Ep. 1 - Stupid BigLaw

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan McClead) — Wed, 29 May 2013 09:00:00 +0000

Hello! And welcome to the inaugural post of our brand new "Dan and Jane" series here on 3 Geeks.

At a conference recently, a fan mentioned that she missed our old Elephant posts. We loved getting outside opinions and ideas, but frankly it was a lot of administrative work and we're not really administrative people. Well... actually, we are administrative people, but only in our day jobs. We don't want to do it in our free time too. We'd rather spend our time writing our opinions than cobbling together a whole bunch of different opinions. So, we've decided to split the difference with our Dan and Jane posts.

These will be the written equivalent of the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the style of Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtain's Saturday Night Live Point/Counter-point sketches. (Oh, c'mon children. Google it.) We will hit beneath the belt and above the intellect. We will have Dan and Jane tackle big controversial topics that you or we, probably wouldn't write about under our own names. We have a couple of examples lined up in the next few days, but ultimately, we want you to submit topics and arguments for Dan and Jane to discuss. Don't worry about being funny or insulting, we will take care of that. Send us your tired and poor arguments, your huddled whiny complaints yearning to be published. We'll sufficiently tart them up and put them in Dan and Jane's voice. And if you want it, we'll even give you full credit.

UPDATE: You can submit topic ideas for Dan and Jane to DandJ3Geeks@gmail.com.

For those of you not wanting to fully enter the Dan and Jane fray - feel free to voice your opinion on whether Dan or Jane wins the day, or if you think they are both completely off point. Leave a comment, or just vote in the box to the right.

Episode One finds Dan and Jane arguing about whether change is possible in BigLaw...

*****************************

Image [CC] - Kili

DAN: Listening to everyone harp about how stupid BigLaw is, or even how stupid lawyers are in general, has got me thinking lately. First - I grow tired of hearing about it. Second - we (as an industry) are not that stupid. The industry may be risk-adverse, or even at times fully risk avoiding. However, stupid is not usually on the list. Things HAVE Changed and I have proof.

JANE: Well, Dan, it's about time that you've finally started thinking, but I'm wondering what kind of mushrooms you had on that hemp burger at lunch? Nothing has changed and to my eyes, yes, we ARE that stupid. Richard Susskind has been telling us for fifteen years that the legal world was changing and warning that we had to adapt, but still many firms are following the path so deftly blazed by Dewey and Howrey. Whatever "change" you're about to pull out of your butt wouldn't buy you a cup of coffee.

DAN: Too bad we're not checking yours for change, Jane, I could probably buy a Buick. Lawyers are adapting. Admittedly, not in big ways yet. However, they are absolutely changing the way they deliver their services. Some of these changes are due to direct client demands (ala no first year associates). Others are being embraced much more directly, in response to market demands. It’s good ole market forces in action.

JANE: Lawyers couldn't find a market if they wanted to buy tomatoes. The only forces "in action" are the "Oh $#&!, they're going to dump me if I don't cut my rates" forces.

DAN: As usual, you're as wrong as you are ugly, Jane. More and more lawyers are creating budgets for matters. Some (or likely many) of these are simple, high level budgets, but they are budgets nonetheless. Five years ago - not so much. And these budgets are starting to matter more and more, even when they are only internal targets.

JANE: Budgets?! Budgets!! That's your freaking change? Lawyers finally start doing something every seventh grader learned to do in Home Economics and you're ready to throw a doo-dah parade.

DAN: I AM about to start throwing something... Also, staffing of matters is MUCH tighter. In part based on client demands, but also driven by budgets, lawyers are limiting the number of people billing on each matter.

JANE: No longer billing for the janitor's time, huh?

DAN: This approach drives cost savings and drives some minimal project management. With a limited number of team members, it means resources have to be allocated more thoughtfully.

JANE: No more "matter parties", where every associate in the office gets drunk and naked and bills a couple of hours to the client they pull out of a hat.

DAN: Look, you smarmy little cynic, perhaps it’s not full-on project management, but it is a greater focus on managing to budgets. And that IS a definite change from the way they used to do things.

JANE: You...

DAN: Will you shut the heck up and let me finish! Lastly, there is much more interest in new technologies. Prior to 2007 any technology that cut the number of hours on a matter was not very popular. Now, there is a clamor for these types of tools. Admittedly there is limited adoption, but the mere fact that opinion has swung around so hard is a sign of change.

JANE: I'll tell you what's swinging around hard... The idea that this interest in new technologies is in any way related to a real change in the mindset of lawyers. The only thing driving new legal technology is the iPad. You just try selling a new time-saving project management tool that doesn't have an iPad app.

DAN: Jane, you ignorant sludge monger. That is simply not true. There is real change going on and I am seeing it at all levels of the market. Just last week I heard about a small firm (20 or so lawyers) utilizing AFAs and efficiency approaches. Granted, much of this change is a refinement of the old way of doing things.

JANE: Much of this change is masking the old way of doing things.

DAN: I still think the legal market needs to embrace deeper, more structural changes. However, to say lawyers are stupid and not changing is missing the real picture.

JANE: Dan, PEOPLE are stupid and you've just proven it. To the extent that lawyers are people...well.

DAN: Change is occurring!

JANE: Whatever.

THE Knowledge System

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan McClead) — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:12:00 +0000

By Jon Pallbo (Jon.Pallbo@gmail.com)
(Own work) [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

I recently watched a TED talk by Michael Idinopulos, called Mr. Manager, tear down these (digital) walls! It's a great talk and is well worth your while to view the entire 17 minute presentation. The story he tells beginning at the 2 minute mark has been haunting me since I first watched it.

He tells of visiting his grandfather's stock brokerage firm when he was a child and seeing all of the desks lined up in the open office space. Then he tells of returning when he was in high school and seeing his grandfather's brand new big private office. He assumed his grandfather would be happier with the office, but the grandfather longed for the old office layout. The grandfather tells of how new information traveled in the old space.

"You could almost watch... that information as it traveled from one end of that floor to another. One broker would tell another broker, it was overheard by a third broker, and within 2 minutes flat that information could go from the first broker to the last and we all knew what was going on as soon as any of us knew anything. Now, we sit in our private offices. We call our clients on the phone, but really, we have no idea what's going on."

Idinopulos uses this story as a launching point to tout the benefits of a social workplace and while I wholehearted agree with his point of view (go watch the video), I'm going to use his story to make a slightly different point. Given the right conditions human beings are pretty good at instinctively managing knowledge within an organization.

Unfortunately, our modern firms do not conform to those conditions. To compensate we have created large KM infrastructures and systems designed to deliver institutional knowledge to employees across the world at the flip of a switch or the push of a button. We imagine these tools to be delivery mechanisms akin to plumbing or electrical wiring, but knowledge is not a utility like water or electricity. It can not be generated at a single spot, or efficiently gathered into a reservoir before being pumped down system. Sadly, there is no fount of ultimate wisdom from which we can siphon gallons of knowledge to be distributed to the great masses of thirsty thinkers. Instead we ask people to help us capture knowledge "for everyone's benefit". Like asking each person to carry one bucket of water up to the rooftop tower so that we can all benefit from running water for the day. And we wonder why it doesn't always function as we would like it to.

The ultimate key to designing systems that can facilitate knowledge transfer and flow across a global enterprise is not to better incorporate our utility-like systems into existing workflows, or to make them easier to use, or to improve the quality of knowledge they capture (all perfectly fine goals), but to change the metaphors around which we design them. KM is not a utility, it's a big open room. We need to focus on building systems that replicate the open office layout of Michael's grandfather's brokerage on a global scale. We need geographical representations of who is working with whom on what, updated in near real time with a point-to-click and pinch-to-zoom interface that an infant could use. And that should be our intranet home page! The user drills down into this slowly spinning globe to get details on individual projects, matters, groups, practice areas, attorneys bios, experience, etc. With a quick tap you can see the public profile and e-social history of each, and then send a message, email, telephone, or instantly collaborate with any individual or group across the world. The presence and availability of all firm employees are readily visible for all to see, and those with appropriate rights can see graphical representations of Toby's profit drivers for each matter. Another simple gesture inverts the globe to show our clients and our contacts in much the same configuration. Drilling down on this map gets you to client history, financials, news, etc. All relationships are graphically represented and previously hidden connections become obvious at a glance.

All of this technology and the data backing it up already exists, but it's in a hundred different unrelated, utility-like systems, each of which requires extensive training and the occasional bucket to be carried to the roof. THE knowledge system, the KM holy grail, is the system that gives Michael's grandpa the feeling he had in the open floor plan while he's sitting at his desk behind his closed door in one regional office of his multinational firm. Just imagine...

"You can almost watch the information as it travels from one continent to another. One lawyer tells another lawyer, it's noticed by a third lawyer, and within 20 minutes flat it goes from the first to the last. We all know exactly what is going on as soon as any of us knows anything."

Social Media & The Strange Combination of Empowerment and Helplessness During a Tragedy

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Lambert) — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

As I was riding back from Austin, Texas yesterday afternoon, looking out the windows at the remains of the Bastrop fire from two years ago, I got the first news of the tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma. It brought back the thoughts of me hunkering down in the basement of the Oklahoma City University School of Law fourteen years ago. My fingers danced across my phone going back and forth between social media sites, CNN, and KFOR television’s web broadcast looking for more information on what was going on. The sickening combination of déjà vu and helplessness started drifting over me in waves.

It is strange how we are so connected these days to others around the world. Almost no place seems to be foreign to us any longer. We could track our friends through their posts on Facebook, and fear for those that hadn’t yet updated their status to let us know they were okay. We could hear from old friends who had long since moved away from Oklahoma, relive those past tornado experiences, and send prayers, best wishes, and contributions to their friends that remained and were currently affected by the latest storms. I reached out to my cousin in Boston to determine if his sister in Moore, Oklahoma had contacted him yet to let him know she was okay. The connections were both comforting, and unsettling. I felt like I could know exactly what was going on at any moment, and frustrated by the reality that I really didn’t have that power.

After 20 minutes, I received a message back from my cousin saying that his sister was fine and that the tornado went south of her existing home, and just north of the home she and her husband were building. They were thankful to have been spared, once again from the third F4 or F5 tornado (May 3, 1999; May 8, 2003, and May 20, 2013) to strike the Oklahoma City suburb in fourteen years.

I turned back to Facebook to track other friends (mostly librarians) in the area.

My good friend, and fellow AALL Board Member, Katie Brown, was having nearly the same experiences I had back in 1999. She posted on Facebook that she was:

In the basement of the law library stay safe people!

She was actually with some of the same people I sat with in that very basement. I could picture sitting along the walls of that lower level looking back and forth between the doors of the bathrooms, the other library staffers and a few law students that were there for their final exams, and the doors that went in both directions toward the serials collection and the National Reporter sets. I’m sure the building has changed with the renovations over the past dozen years, but I still see the old layout as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. In 1999, my pregnant wife and two-year old daughter were on the opposite side of the damage. In 2013, Katie's husband and kids (well, cats) were also on the other side of the destruction. It was bizarre watching the updates and understanding what would happen next as she made her way back across a broken terrain to reunite with her family, just as I had done so many years ago.

As a librarian in Oklahoma, there is kind of a trend of living in Norman, and working in Oklahoma City. The idea is to enjoy the college-type atmosphere and more liberal settings of Norman, and actually make a living in your profession in the more populous OKC region (that is, if you absolutely can’t find a job in Norman that pays a decent wage.) The drive each day takes you up I-35 via Flood Ave or 24th Ave and you pass through Moore each morning and afternoon. I’ve been gone from the area for more than 10 years now, but can still remember taking the 25 minute drive every day from my North Norman residence to the Administrative Office of the Courts building just blocks away from the State Capitol building. Moore wasn’t a place we went to… it was a place we drove through.

As I watched update after update come in from friends, I started remembering how difficult it was to drive back home to Norman that night back in 1999. That 25 minute trip became a five-hour journey. My Oklahoma librarian friends were having to make that same journey last night.

One friend posted:

I am going to take Sara Road down to Highway 9, then back up into Norman. If anyone knows why this won't work, let me know.

Katie posted:

Just got the all clear to leave the basement. But there is a tornado between my work and my house so I am staying in okc for awhile.

Then the wait began to see the next post, knowing it would be hours from now, to confirm that they made it home safely. Four hours later, both had confirmed they made it. My initial reaction was relief… then I had a twinge of jealousy that they beat my travel time by an hour. I chalked that up to having a cell phone, social media and GPS to guide them around the roads they had most likely never traveled before.

Like I said earlier, it is strange at how connected we are these days. You feel empowered, yet helpless at the same time. I'm not sure if it is a good thing or bad thing, it's just a thing we all have to get used to. Now time to go back to Facebook and check in to make sure everyone else is okay.

Bloomberg, Terminals, Reporting, Intelligence, and Ethics

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Lambert) — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:05:00 +0000

One of the very first things you hear when you attend a Competitive Intelligence (CI) seminar is that CI is the ethical gathering of intelligence. The reason that ethics is stressed so highly when discussion CI, is that if your CI team is dabbling in unethical behavior (and that gets exposed), it reflects upon your whole organization and casts a shadow upon everything you do.

It seems that there are some reporters at Bloomberg L.P. may need to sit back in on some of those classes on ethics. The report in the New York Times states that reporters used information found through Bloomberg Terminal usage from banks and traders to break stories on certain people being fired from those companies (based upon users that suddenly "went dark" … i.e., were no longer logging into their Terminals.) That type of information, while effective, falls squarely on the unethical side of the ledger, and as a result gives all of Bloomberg a black eye.

Immediately, we all started wondering what exposure law firms had to this type of research, and if there were additional issues that were at play. According to Jean O'Grady's blog, Dewey B. Strategic, the Bloomberg Law platform was not included in this type of internal research strategy. O'Grady contacted Greg McCaffery, CEO of Bloomberg Law, and got confirmation on that point. However, as Jean also points out, many law firms have the Terminals as well as Bloomberg Law access. It brings up ligitimate questions like the one Ed Walters of Fastcase asked on Twitter yesterday:

Alledgedly, Bloomberg reporters where systematically using this type of research on a regular basis. Hundreds of reporters used the technique according to the NY Times article. It simply makes Bloomberg look bad.

In this age of instant communications, hacking, and whistle-blowers, unethical behavior is very difficult to keep covered up. This should be held up as an example to others in the world of information gathering, that if you are performing unethical practices, you should expect that eventually those practices will be exposed. When they are, you will need to spend years repairing the damage.

This same type of damage can happen with Competitive Intelligence research. Be very careful how you conduct your gathering processes, and ask yourself what would happen if those practices were exposed to the public.

GeoGuessr: Making a Game out of Google Maps

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Lambert) — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:50:00 +0000

I usually put some of the non-legal (but fun) things on Friday posts, but today I am leaning toward more of the "Geeks" side of the blog than the "Law" side. Last week I saw a tweet fly by that mentioned GeoGuessr, so I had a few free moments to go try it out. I've probably spend a good couple of hours playing it over the weekend with the family, and found it to be a really fun (and somewhat educational) game to play.

The concept is pretty simple, yet very challenging at the same time. The game puts you on a Google Street View somewhere in the world. You get to move around on the street view, and attempt to figure out where you are based on the landmarks and other visual clues you see. Once you think you know where you are, you zoom in on the inset map and plunk down a marker. The closer you are, the more points you score. The game lasts five places, and you combine the scores for all five guesses.

I usually have three windows open at the same time to help me along:

GeoGuessr
Google
Google Maps

There are times when it is really easy to figure out your location. Last night, GeoGuessr placed me between a What-A-Burger and the South Padre Island Water Tower. Other times it is very difficult to find out where you are. The Outback in Australia is pretty non-descript, and there aren't a lot of road signs to help you out either!

The game uses a lot of deductive reasoning. For example, are the cars driving on the left or right side of the road? Are the signs in English or Japanese? Is it an arid climate, or are the Royal Palm Trees lining the boulevard? You use anything you can find to help you isolate where you are. For example, there are times when all the signs are in Tamil, but the phone numbers are still Arabic, so I have Googled the prefix to isolate what area code it falls in. I've seen delivery trucks with company logos on them and found where those companies are located in order to narrow down where I am. It is like a mix of being Doctor Who stepping out of the Tardis in the wrong location, and Sherlock Holmes using visual clues to determine where I might actually be.

If you've got a few free minutes, go try out GeoGuessr for yourself. However, remember it is Monday, so you probably need to quit after one game if you plan on getting any work completed.

Even Westlaw Knows It's a Tough Market – Law Graduates Can Keep Access Through November

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Lambert) — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:33:00 +0000

Image [cc] Salem State Library

Maybe I'm reading a bit much into this announcement from the Dorraine Zief Law Library at the University of San Francisco, but, the fact that Westlaw has decided to allow graduating law students access to their law school Westlaw IDs through the end of November seems to be a sign that even the folks up in Eagan, MN know it's a tough market for law grads.

Graduates that go to extend their passwords by May 30th can have access to Westlaw classic and WestlawNext through their student logon. According to the USF post:

Graduates who extend their password will receive access to WestlawNext and Westlaw Classic through November 2013 instead of just through July. The exact number of monthly access hours is not available, but is at least 40 hours per month.

Graduating students who have already extended their access don’t have to do anything further to get the extension through November. There’s a link to the extension site in an e-mail sent to graduating students. Students may also click the “Need Westlaw this Summer?” ad on lawschool.westlaw.com.

I'm glad that Thomson Reuters decided to allow grads to keep access to this very expensive resource to help keep their research skills fresh as they are hunting for work. Of course, I'm wonder who will be the first grad to put on his or her resume that "if you hire me, I'll have 40 hours of free Westlaw searching I can bring with me"?? Please, don't be that person!!

The iPad Law Library?

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Lambert) — Wed, 08 May 2013 09:00:00 +0000

Is it live, or is it ~~Memorex~~ iPad?

As I was walking through one of the libraries at the firm, I started looking around at all of the books that still remain on the shelves. Some are battered, but most are in pristine condition with spines that would make an audible snapping sound if you were to open them for the first time. Some are primary law, while others are secondary resources dedicated to specific practice groups. Most of them we have through our multiple online subscriptions and databases. Some will soon be packaged as eBooks. Nearly all of them are expensive (costing $100+ per volume or more.) Yet, the rate of which these physical books are going away is not nearly as fast as I predicted ten years ago when I wrote a couple of chapters in a book about the Futures of Law Libraries. It seems some of us are going to be stuck with these for many years to come.

Then a thought hit me... a crazy thought, yes, but a thought. For about the cost of three of these books, I could actually buy a lower-end iPad and place on the shelf. Could I replicate a reporter set and make it easy for the researcher to 'flip' through the online version of the material on the iPad? Could it be set up to replicate the 'feel' of a book (which is kind of what the new eBook sales pitch wants us to believe)? What if I told the attorney that, just like with the books, if you use this format, we won't bill the client for any of the usage? Would that do the trick? Could we get attorneys to use some of the online content that they don't even know exists (cough, cough, IntelliConnect, cough, cough.) Could everywhere we had a law review section, place an iPad connected to HeinOnline there instead? Instead of a library copy of all those personal desk copies, could we have a pre-loaded iPad available in the library instead?

Is there a way to ween lawyers away from all these books that fill up shelf after shelf? Is that even something we really want to do? I'd really like to test out the whole 'replace books with library iPads' idea. Just for the simple reason that even if it failed... I'd at least end up with a number of iPads to play with in the end.

Evaluating IT

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan McClead) — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:45:00 +0000

You could be forgiven for believing that I am anti-IT. I have written about the End of IT. I have called IT people names. I have generally been pessimistic about our ability or desire to change. I stand firmly behind all of the things I have written, but I am absolutely not anti-IT. (Some of my best friends are in IT.) I am, however, terribly afraid that IT as it is currently practiced is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the business. Whatever business your company happens to be in.

To that end, I've been working on an IT evaluation exercise. The idea is to evaluate each of the services that an IT department provides and begin to have conversations around the specific value that those services bring to a firm or company. This is built on the premise that IT provides the most value when it is actively supporting the business rather than "keeping the lights on". That is not to say that there is not value in keeping the lights on, just that in many cases there may be other less expensive, more reliable, and more secure ways to do that.

This exercise is intended to give context to the ongoing conversation about what IT should be doing and where IT should be investing its time and money. This is not guaranteed to provide any clear or easy answers to those questions. The example below is focused on Legal IT, but you could replace the word "Legal" with your industry of choice, and "Firm" with your company name and I think it would work for any IT department.

I would like to open-source this concept. By which I mean, I want someone else to try it out and let me know how it goes. Suggestions or recommendations are very much encouraged and welcome.

Ryan

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All IT services fall into one of three categories:

Universal IT: Technology, infrastructure, or functionality that every Information Technology Department in every company in the world provides.
Legal Specific IT: Technology services that are specific to Law Firms.
Firm Specific IT: Technology services that provide a unique value to our firm and our attorneys.

Enter each category as a heading in a table and list each IT service as an entry beneath the appropriate heading (like below).

Universal IT	Legal Specific IT	Firm Specific IT
1. 2. 3.	1. 2. 3.	1. 2. 3.

Evaluate each service and articulate the specific value that the service provides to the firm. If you cannot define the value provided, cross out the service.
You want to try to move as many services as possible to the columns on the right. If you believe you can enhance the service in any way that would provide greater legal or firm specific value, then move it to the appropriate column, make note of the potential value add, and underline the service.
Add any NEW services that would potentially provide legal or firm specific value and place an asterisk on either side.
Circle any services that an outside vendor could potentially provide at an appropriate service level AND the entire Universal IT column.
Draw a box around any service in the Legal Specific or Firm Specific columns that is not crossed out, underlined, asterisked, or circled.

Any services that are:

Crossed-out: Just because IT cannot articulate the value to the firm does not mean the service provides no value. Ask other departments, or attorneys, to articulate a particular service’s value to them. If no clear value can be determined, begin the End of Life process immediately. There should not be many, if any, of these.
Circled: Begin looking for vendors to take these off your hands. A circled service should not be automatically “outsourced”, but it is probably a good candidate for the kind of service that can, and eventually will likely, be outsourced. Yes, I said to circle the entire Universal IT column. Not everything in this column will be a candidate for outsourcing, but if it's in this column, it should be considered.
Underlined or Asterisked: These are opportunities to increase the value that IT provides to the firm. Invest in R&D for these enhanced or additional services.
Boxed: These are the current services which provide the most unique value to the firm. Focus on these and continue to invest resources here.

Repeat this exercise every six months.

What do you mean by Talent?

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Brown) — Fri, 03 May 2013 11:09:00 +0000

Image [cc] CN Impressions

I read a great interview of an EVP from a major financial institution recently. It had two value points for me. The first was the international economic data he explained. He basically said everything is in place for a major expansion, except nobody seems to be paying attention. Whether that bodes well or ill for law firms is yet to be seen.

The second value point was more pressing for law firms. The final interview question was: What keeps you up a night? The EVP had a succinct and focused answer: Talent. He went on to explain that his senior management team needs to be “best in class.” For him this meant a combination of subject matter expertise, willingness to work hard and the ability to bring in business. Or in other words: Get the business and keep the client happy. He knows these goals will drive his business, both in terms of revenue and profitability.

So where are law firms on such a scorecard?

Traditionally law firms viewed talent as purely subject matter experts. Lawyers would gain a seat at a firm based on law school performance and then rise through the ranks to partner based on their lawyering abilities. So being “best in class” meant you were a high-level subject matter expert willing to work hard.

But that is no longer enough. For starters, keeping clients satisfied is only indirectly measured at firms. When a client goes from being a large one, to a less large one, management does take some notice. But even then, reductions in fees can easily be explained by episodic litigation or any number of other factors seemingly out of the partner’s control.

The ability to bring in business has become a more prominent factor for evaluating law firm partners, but this is still in a transition in terms of being a “best in class” measure. For instance, laterals are evaluated on billings, however the profitability of that revenue is not typically measured.

My 2 cents: Today’s Managing Partners should be “kept up at night” on the talent issue as well. But they should revise and expand their definition of talent at the partner level. In order to do this effectively, they will need to start measuring partners with different metrics.

One of the last things the EVP mentioned was that he knew where he had “best in class talent” and where he didn’t. So he spent his energy on making sure the “best” was happy and was pursuing talent to replace those that don't make the grade. Another good lesson for law firms.

From the Heartland to Mount Royal

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen Cable) — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:34:00 +0000

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries is holding their annual National Conference May 5^th to 8^th in beautiful Montreal. The conference theme is: Librarian: a multi-faceted professional, which was inspired not only by the current demands of our profession, but also by the city of Montreal.

I will be attending the Conference as the representative of the Special Libraries Association Legal Division, and I couldn’t be more excited. This is a fabulous opportunity to network with colleagues and friends, learn from all the fabulous educational sessions and explore a beautiful city. I wanted to take a quick moment to highlight a few sessions I’m planning to attend and provide the Twitter information (#callacbd2013) in case you want to follow the discussion and/or comment.

Date & Time (Eastern)	Session Name
Monday May 6, 2013 @ 9:00 a.m.	Plenary Session: Thriving on Chaos (Winds of Change: The Future of Law Librarians)
Tuesday, May 7, 2013 @ 9:00 a.m.	Librarians Under Pressure: Stress Management Secrets Shared
Tuesday, May 7, 2013 @ 3:30 p.m.	Librarians as Innovators
Wednesday, May 8, 2013 @ 9:00 a.m.	Plenary Session: Land of Confusion: EBooks’ License Negotiation Demystified

Colleen Cable is a Library Consultant for Profit Recovery Partners bringing the “consultant angle” to Three Geeks.

The eBook & The Return of the Technical Services Librarian

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Lambert) — Thu, 02 May 2013 09:15:00 +0000

Image [cc] PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

As I sat through a demonstration of the LexisNexis Digital Library (eBook) platform, there were a few thoughts that crossed my mind:

The eBook platform for law firms is inevitable
How do I keep from suddenly having (paying for) the same "book" in three formats – print, database, and eBook?
Holy crap… I'm going to need a really good Technical Services Librarian to manage this!

Whenever a question came up about actually managing a digital collection, the common response was, "the library can simply go to the [eBook platform/library catalog] and run report X" or "process and distribute eBook Z" or "recall the eBook" or "place the eBook on hold" or "place the link to the eBook in your 852 or 856 fields", and so on. Again, most of the conversation assumed that your Acquisitions librarian, Serials librarian, or Cataloger would simply do their job, but the resulting item was simply an eBook instead of a traditional Monograph, Personal Copy book or a Treatise. In an era of shrinking physical books, the role of the technical services librarian didn't seem to be a vital. However, in the era of managing eBook collections, that role may be rising from the ashes of the collection.

Bess Reynolds' article, The Challenges of E-Books in Law Firm Libraries, hits the issue right on the head when she wrote:

The mechanics of acquiring and distributing books, making sure they are up to date, and retrieving books from departing attorneys are all part of the job of the technical services department. Transferring these tasks to e-books was therefore already within our department's job description.

She goes on to talk about the interaction between the Integrated Library System (ILS) and the eBook distributor and the need to manage the collection for the firm. The key to success is the seamless transition between physical book and electronic book for the actual user (read: attorney.) That seamless transition seems to hing upon the firm's ability to manage, distribute and maintain the collection and the vendors ability to create a method flexible enough to allow the firm to handle the eBooks in the way that works best for that firm. The connecting piece in this puzzle is a good technical services librarian. So, if you don't have one already, you better start looking now.

Fastcase's Bad Law Bot: "Big Data Applications For Legal Research"

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Lambert) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:09:00 +0000

The bad boys of legal research, Ed Walters and Phil Rosenthal of Fastcase, are once again looking at unique ways to look at legal information and create new methods to cull that information. In the latest iteration, they have come up with a way to use an algorithm to identify court cases with negative treatment. They are calling this enhancement, "Bad Law Bot", not to be confused with J.J. Abram's movie production studio called Bad Robot.

The idea of algorithmically setting up a way to identify 'bad law' has been floating around since the idea of placing legal decisions in database began. When I was at the Oklahoma Supreme Court's OSCN.NET, we dreamed of doing exactly this same type of identification of bad law, but simply did not have the technology, expertise, or guts to take on that challenge. Looks like Walters and Rosenthal are stepping up to the plate to take a swing at it.

Ed does list a couple of caveats, that should be expected when you use technology to replace humans on decision making processes like this:

It's an algorithm… thus the "bot" name
If you see that Bad Law Bot has presented negative treatment, then that means there's a good chance the case has probably been overturned, however if Bad Law Bot doesn't show negative treatment, that doesn't necessarily mean the case is 'good' law. You should double-check with Shepards or KeyCite.

Despite these caveats, the fact that Fastcase is willing to go out and present something like this to its users shows that they are ready to test the boundaries of what you can do with legal information, technology, Big Data concepts, and the guts to go out and actually do it.

Bad Law Bot is available starting on April 25th, and the press release from Fastcase is included below. Also, Ed Walter's introduces the product in this two-minute YouTube video.

Fastcase Enhances its Authority Check Citator Service

“Bad Law Bot” Uses Big Data to Identify Negative History for Judicial Opinions

Watch Video at http://youtu.be/ZsKu7FoO2Ns

Washington, DC (April 25, 2013) – Legal publisher Fastcase today released an algorithmic enhancement to identify overturned or reversed cases in its Authority Check system – Bad Law Bot. Bad Law Bot uses algorithms to identify court cases that are cited with negative treatment and to alert researchers of a case’s negative citation history.

The Bluebook manual for legal citation requires that, when courts cite a case that has been overturned or reversed, they say so right in the citation. Judicial opinions, and particularly their citations, are full of this kind of “big data” about which cases are still good law. Bad Law Bot scours all of the citations in judicial opinions. When the opinions cite a case as being overturned, Bad Law Bot flags the case for Fastcase users, identifying negative history as reported by the courts.

“Fastcase’s Authority Check feature is already a very powerful tool for identifying whether your case is still good law,” said Fastcase CEO Ed Walters. “Authority Check includes data visualization tools to see the later history of cases, citation analytics and filterable lists of later-citing cases. The addition of Bad Law Bot, to help identify negative history, is a major step forward. This is the first of many additions to Authority Check that we’ll roll out over the next year.”

The new Bad Law Bot feature helps users identify negative treatment of the cases judicial opinions. However, because it only reports what cases say in citations, researchers should rely on Bad Law Bot as an aid to identifying negative history, not as a comprehensive guide.

Since 1999, Fastcase has been building smarter research tools for understanding the law. In 2012, the company launched eBook Advance Sheets available for the major eReaders (iPad, Kindle, Android, and Nook).

In 2010, Fastcase was the first company to launch an app for legal research, and later, the first company to launch an app for iPad. The American Association of Law Libraries named Fastcase for iPhone the 2010 New Product of the Year. In 2011, Rocket Matter named Fastcase’s apps for iPhone and iPad the Legal Productivity App of the Year and the company furthered its mobile market presence by debuting the Fastcase for Android app in 2012. Lawyers on the go appreciate Fastcase Mobile Sync, which allows full integration of its mobile apps with the desktop version of Fastcase.

Fastcase has gained very strong momentum in the legal research market and continues to challenge the norm in legal publishing and legal technology. Fastcase was voted #1 in Law Technology News’s inaugural Customer Satisfaction Survey, finishing first in 7 out of 10 categories over traditional research providers Westlaw and LexisNexis. Fastcase has introduced new opinion summaries, Fastcase Cloud Printing, and has been named to the prestigious EContent 100 list of leading digital publishing and media companies alongside Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook for two years in a row.

For more information on the Bad Law Bot feature, visit the Fastcase Legal Research Blog at www.fastcase.com/blog and watch this video: http://youtu.be/ZsKu7FoO2Ns.

About Fastcase

As the smarter alternative for legal research, Fastcase democratizes the law, making it more accessible to more people. Using patented software that combines the best of legal research with the best of Web search, Fastcase helps busy users sift through the clutter, ranking the best cases first and enabling the re-sorting of results to find answers fast. Founded in 1999, Fastcase has more than 500,000 subscribers from around the world. Fastcase is an American company based in Washington, D.C. For more information, follow Fastcase on Twitter at @Fastcase, or visit www.fastcase.com.

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The Legal Duck - A 3 Geeks Interview with Legal Restaurateurs

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan McClead) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +0000

The Legal Duck is a brand new, very exclusive, and extremely expensive restaurant owned and operated by Lena Dewey and Daniel Cheatom, two of the most successful attorneys in our fair city. Last week, we sat down with Lena and Dan to discuss their new endeavor…

3 Geeks: So, what inspired you two to try your hand at being restaurateurs?

Lena: Dan and I were partners at DCH for nearly 25 years…

Dan: We both made partner the same year.

L: Back when we were associates, we realized that we were both passionate about good food. We dreamed about one day opening a restaurant together.

D: A couple of years ago, Lena strolled into my office and said, “You know, Dan, I think it’s time. We’ve got the money. We’ve got the knowledge. We’ve still got the passion for good food. Let’s do it.”

L: So we went for it.

3G: And you decided to go with a legal themed restaurant?

L: You know what they say, go with what you know, right?

3G: A number of critics have faulted you for your unusual style. For instance, the average lunchtime meal at The Legal Duck lasts about 4 hours.

L: When we set out on this journey we decided we would take everything we had learned from our combined 70 years the legal business and apply it to running this restaurant.

D: We would provide only the finest foods, prepared by the finest craftsmen in the business. Our Partners and Associates are artists, creating unique and wonderful experiences for our customers.

L: Perfection takes time.

3G: Which brings us to another complaint that I’ve heard about the food not living up to the promise.

L: Really? Where have you heard that?

3G: Michelin gave The Legal Duck their first ever 2 Negative Stars.

D: Well, I don’t think their reviewer really understood the value that we are bringing to our diners. We are exclusively focused on providing the greatest meals to the people with the biggest appetites. We aren’t really interested in creating commodity food.

3G: Which raises an interesting point. Michelin seemed to believe that’s exactly what they were getting.

L: In consultation with our service associate, the Michelin reviewer decided to have a simple sandwich, the “Big Mike”.

3G: Yes, he described it as, “two grass-fed Kobe beef patties, a mild tomato and mayo spread, a sprig of romaine lettuce, gruyere cheese, thinly sliced gherkin pickles, Vidalia onions, all on a sesame encrusted brioche bun.” Doesn’t that remind you of anything?

D: It sounds like an amazing sandwich.

L: Yeah, my mouth is watering.

3G: Changing the subject… You mentioned the initial consultation with your Service Associate. Can you talk a little about the unusual experience of dining at The Legal Duck?

L: Sure! You are greeted at the front door by our lovely receptionist and asked to take a seat in the waiting area.

D: We believe anticipation is a big part of an enjoyable dining experience, so we ask people to wait even if there are no other diners.

L: Once you are seated, you are visited by our Service Associate, who asks you a few questions about the kind of meal you are interested in having.

D: The kinds of meals you’ve eaten before? Who you’ve eaten them with? Etc.

L: Exactly. Then she or he will take that information and do some research on the kinds of meals that other people in your situation have eaten in the past. The associate, will consult with a more experienced Senior Service Partner or two and together they will draw up a customized menu for your perfect meal.

D: Then the entire service team will seek advice from an expert chef on the best method for preparing your meal, presentation suggestions, etc.

3G: You mentioned your chefs, but I understand that you don’t actually have a kitchen in your restaurant.

D: That is correct. We’ve determined that the actual preparation of the food can be accomplished more efficiently and economically off site.

L: We have subcontracted food preparation to an industrial food services company that primarily caters to major airlines. We’ve found that they can prepare the food at a tenth of the cost that we could do it ourselves. We pay them ten times what the airlines pay and they give our meals priority. It really is a win-win.

3G: But isn’t the preparation of food the actual service that you, as a restaurant, should be providing your customers?

L: (laughing) No. We work in conjunction with our customers to design and implement the perfect meal for their enjoyment.

3G: Which someone else makes?

L: Yes.

3G: Uh…OK. One final question: The average bill per diner for lunch at The Legal Duck is over thirty-five hundred dollars. First, how is that possible? And as a follow up, how do you justify those prices?

D: Yes, I admit our restaurant is expensive. But we provide unparalleled customer service and we stand by our work. We have only had to sue a handful of our diners for non-payment.

L: And thirty-five hundred is not so much when you realize how much work is being put into each meal. To produce the typical four-hour meal requires at least six hours of a Service Associates time at, let’s say, a hundred and fifty dollars an hour. Then each Partner is charging around three hundred an hour, Expert Chef’s don’t come cheap, maybe five hundred…

D: Yep, depending on the time of day. Then there’s the minor incidental expenses for the ingredients, the preparation, and of course, the delivery of the food. Before you know it, it’s real money.

L: But it’s worth it.

D: Yeah, we couldn’t be happier.

Are You Doing It For The Firm? Or For The Club?

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Lambert) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:40:00 +0000

A consultant recently asked "Are you making this decision for the firm, or are you making this decision for the club?" The question has stuck with me and it is one that I've asked others when it comes time to make decisions that are going to cause some people to have to change their habits. It is a pretty straight forward question, but there is a lot of meaning behind it. Do you do something that benefits everyone, and causes pain to a few, or do you do something that has little to no benefit for everyone, but keeps a few select people happy?

Whenever hear something like this, I immediately think of the scene in the movie Office Space where there is a banner hanging over the staff that asks "Is This Good for the COMPANY?" The Draconian concept of stiffling innovation and individuality and relying upon following every rule and playing your part as a single cog in a great big machine. With "The Firm or The Club" question, however, I don't think it falls into this "Is this good for the Company?" category. Instead, I think it allows for creativity and innovation and discourages the collective and blindly following the rules. In fact, I would say that this question gets raised whenever new ideas and innovation are shot down rather than when new ideas are accepted. Most times when new ideas are dismissed, it tends to fall under the idea that "we can't do that because Partner X, who has been with the firm for 150 years, wouldn't like it."

So the next time you have a discussion about changing the way you are doing business, and the idea is challenged or dismissed, ask those making the decision if they are deciding upon what benefits the firm, or what benefits the club?