P2P

14 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 2 2 accounting department. And, finally, there is likely a need to generate analytical dashboards speaking to client revenue, the mix of work, attorney efficiency analysis and many other related topics. Each of these functions is important to a different class of worker within an organization. Without getting into a morass of detail, all attempts to integrate I.T. folks within the legal business for the purpose of better understanding issues and defining business requirements to address and improve these issues should be executed within all organization levels to ensure all system constituents are included in improvement processes. What is the Realized Value? Requirements more aligned with legal operations goals and needs. Clearly, the most obvious benefit is an improved ultimate technology-based solution. The better job legal operations groups or law firms do defining project and business requirements and needs, the more value one will derive from technology investment. The best system in the world – "best" as defined in the eyes of an industry expert perhaps – has no value to clients if it does not help with issues of the day. In fact, it often can be detrimental if it fails to address issues that the legacy application, even with all its' shortcomings, previously handled. Having to roll back to a legacy system because the new shiny toy does not operate as advertised – often because it is designed to address issues which are not the priority of the organization installing the product – is a worst case scenario. Realistic timeframes relating to user involvement and time commitments. Embedding tech folks into legal ops also is a great benefit to project planning and communication. Getting the requirements right is a key aspect of defining specific, measurable work tasks. Work tasks are a prerequisite to defining implementation effort, and the allocation of resources to work tasks is a necessary building block to identifying implementation timing and costs. It's a ground-up effort – it's impossible to be accurate with time and cost estimates without a grassroots effort to define the elements of a project. As we all know, projects which exceed budget or are not implemented in a timely manner often fail solely for that reason (lack of funding, patience, or a critical time- sensitive business need), so this is not a topic to be taken lightly. Some Final Random Thoughts Personal Experience I serve as Chief Technologist of Tanenbaum Keale LLP, but also as the leader of a small software company (Xerdict Group LLC). Within Xerdict, we build client applications, and at times in my capacity I am acting in the role of a timekeeper executing tasks such as organizing and updating data, F E A T U R E S "Embedding tech folks into legal ops also is a great benefit to project planning and communication."

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