The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/271291
WWW.ILTANET.ORG 25 the annual billable goals are or how many hours per week, on average, a lawyer works at your firm? • Do you know what WIP and realization are? • Do you understand the internal process of conflicts? Walking the talk means knowing the answers to these questions, no matter what your role in the firm. MAKE EDUCATION A PRIORITY We all have the power to self-educate, and it starts with listening. Every interaction, including a helpdesk ticket, has a story. Listen not just to understand the problem, but to understand the reasons why something is a problem. Understand what your user is doing and why, and what the ramifications are if something isn't working and if a task isn't done correctly or on time. Be curious. When appropriate, ask questions and strive to build relationships at the same time. You should also read. There are several excellent publications, both in print and online, that you can learn from. The American Lawyer, the ABA Journal, Law Practice Magazine and Peer to Peer are just a few. Look up the annual list of 100 Best Legal Blogs the ABA awards annually and subscribe to a few. And, if you haven't already, read the ABA model code. Additional education can be garnered from the knowledge of the people around you: your users — including lawyers and your IT team — and your ILTA peers. Build relationships with people with tenure, and ask them questions. Always ask "why" when you don't already know. WALK THIS WAY Getting to a point where you're walking the talk will be a process, but you will feel the change. You will be able to identify opportunities for improvement and offer more to your firm. You will be viewed differently as your knowledge and client service will be apparent and valued, and career doors could open. You will be a part of your business, not just a "cost center." If you invest time and energy into this effort, there will be a new pep in your step. The change will be transformative and rewarding. In today's fast-paced, electronic world, it's more important than ever for organizations to make it easy for clients to access important information. For example, a law firm might find it beneficial for clients to have access to a Web portal that has up-to-date information about their cases. Some forward-thinking firms have provided online tools that allow their clients to go far beyond providing answers to frequently asked questions. One Am Law 200 firm based in San Francisco allows their clients to enter matter details, provide follow-up information and, ultimately, track a matter's progress and status. A legal department within a corporation could find it useful to have frequently requested items stored and available in an online application so they can reduce the number of requests into the department. It is becoming more common for a legal department to have standard contracts and agreements available for the various divisions within the company. As a new agreement is requested, it can be automatically drafted, forwarded to an attorney for review and finally sent on to the requester. As a failsafe, reminders can be created for appropriate follow up. All of this is intended to put the power in the legal department's (i.e., the client's) hands. This reduces overhead and dramatically increases the amount of production. Government agencies can benefit to the same degree as any other organization. One Court of Tax Appeals handles protests from citizens regarding their property tax assessments. Each year thousands of protests are received, resulting in the potential nightmare to schedule hearings for each protest. The agency has adopted a public-facing website to provide each appellant with the current status of their claim, any missing information, scheduling information and, eventually, results of the hearing process. There are a few methods of providing self-service access. The two most popular are to build something internally using Microsoft SharePoint. This tool, while relatively inexpensive, provides a basic tool set to create your own portal to share information. A few of the disadvantages are that it has a steep learning curve and it can be difficult to connect to the various sources of information needed. An alternative is to use a commercial product designed for the legal industry. These applications come ready to allow for collaboration and self-service access to data and include integrations to many popular systems such as document management, case management and accounting. Either way, self-service is the wave of the future for client access to information. THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-SERVICE ACCESS TO INFORMATION by Philip Homburger of LawBase