Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/13683
should determine how much the final cost should be,” says James W. Jones, Co-Managing Director of Hildebrandt Baker Robbins, leading consultants to the legal industry. “Clients are increasingly demanding alternative fee arrangements, such as fixed fees, in order to obtain lower and more predictable legal expenses.” Industry analysts say that the pressure to provide alternative fee arrangements may be due to more factors than just the recent economic downturn and is potentially a longer-term trend that firms should anticipate. Law firms need to identify new growth strategies, such as securing more or higher quality work from existing clients. A key to this will be focus on providing greater value for clients in terms of doing exceptional legal work delivered at a fair price. These challenges are especially acute for litigators. The rising cost of litigation directly impacts clients’ approaches to litigation including deciding, as plaintiffs, whether or not to file actions, and conversely, as defendants, whether to settle cases or to contest them and incur the costs and risks of litigation. A recent Thomson Reuters survey found that the vast majority of large law firms anticipate increases in alternative pricing models, as well as investments by firms to make practices more efficient. As a result, it is increasingly important for firms to find ways to improve litigation productivity, such as the use of automated tools. While the increase of alternative fee arrangements poses many challenges for firms, it also provides new opportunities for growth. Those firms that consistently provide high-quality legal services at competitive prices may win long-term loyalty from clients and greater opportunities to consolidate clients’ myriad legal needs, while maintaining firm profitability. But this depends heavily on their abilities to handle matters with high levels of productivity. PRODUCTIVITY VS. EFFICIENCY Productivity is about creating greater value in work product in less time. It is often confused with efficiency, but the difference is an important one. Efficiency is about performing a task with less time or effort. Productivity is about producing greater value. In litigation, the goal is to do faster, better work in building effective case arguments, backed by testimony, exhibits, legal research and other case-related information. But managing case information can make or break a litigator’s productivity. The key to litigation productivity is spending more time lawyering and less time managing information. Many productivity-robbing tasks are extremely time-consuming, yet fail to add any real value to case preparation. The following are some of the biggest productivity bottlenecks: • Accessing and searching information: Case information is often stored in different physical locations (e.g., a desktop computer, a firm server or remote storage) as well as on different systems (e.g., transcript repository, legal research service or word processing). As a result, considerable time is spent finding and moving information from one location to another. In addition, accessing information remotely and securely can be difficult or even impossible. • Processing information: A major cause of productivity loss is time lag in processing information. Insights gained at a deposition may be lost by the time the transcript arrives two weeks later. Citations need to be www.iltanet.org Case/Matter Management 29