P2P

35 I L T A N E T . O R G ensure that your practitioners are better trained on simple search techniques. It's always surprising to find out how few lawyers are able to effectively search the DMS in its native form! Carrying forward with that theme, there is opportunity to clean up, organize and put some rules around using and maintaining file shares, collaboration sites, internal practice-focused databases to better organize them. What belongs to closed matters? Has content been saved somewhere it doesn't belong? Now is an opportune time to apply stripped down governance – an interim strategy to get the wild out of the west. This can also be a good time to develop training and awareness plans. During normal business operations it can be difficult to get the time and engagement of support teams to provide input, so develop cross-functional remote teams to create the relevant messaging you want and need. While most are likely looking at cost reductions and perhaps deferring investments in new technology, now may actually be the perfect time to engage with the vendor about that solution you've been eyeing up for a while. There may be motivation to negotiate pricing that may not otherwise be possible during a time of normal operations. This can be both a short term (as envisaged here) or a longer term more significant undertaking. During transformational times such as these, there is a need to quickly develop creative solutions to support and enhance client service around the changed landscape. Practice and firm leaders are actively engaged in these efforts, and in some cases have the foresight to engage the firm's administrative and practice support network (IT, Litigation Support, Research, KM, etc) as active implementation partners in these discussions. One of the benefits is to encourage collaborative reimagination of the way tools and processes can be employed once the new challenges faced by the practitioners are understood, in order to speed up and improve the viability of these solutions. Assessment Template So while it's good to have a nicely compiled list of relatively frictionless initiatives to choose from, the trick remains, which ones best suit your particular environment? While we are all dealing with similar challenges, no two Firms are the same so appropriate consideration should be given to identify your Firm's priorities and areas of opportunity. Making this assessment can bring its own challenges as you sort through the priorities - such as lowest cost, smallest implementation footprint, most needed (and by whose standard?), fastest to deploy ….. the list of contributing variables is lengthy! Let's find a way to demystify the relative importance and viability of these initiatives. Here are some factors to consider, and they can be categorized or grouped into non- exclusive impact buckets (i.e. span multiple buckets): Revenue/Savings Formalizing and expanding the initiative will result in an increased volume of work in an existing or new area, and /or will increase efficiency of delivery of service to such an extent that the timekeeper will have increased "This can also be a good time to develop training and awareness plans."

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