Peer to Peer Magazine

PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGA ZINE OF ILTA 80 ASK THE EXPERT What process improvements should firms and legal departments implement now? Toby: Legal departments and law firms should look at processes related to how they develop budgets for matters and engagements because that typically is done haphazardly. Both firms and legal departments would benefit significantly from having a well-defined, thoughtful process for determining the budget for an engagement. That process improvement would provide high value, and it has immediacy because everyone is concerned about fees and budgets. Angela: It's going to depend on the type of practice your firm does and the culture of your firm or law department. New matter intake and conflicts are at the top of most people's lists. These often have multiple administrative groups backing the project, and there are mature technologies already set up to help with this. However, some organizations aren't ready for that big a step, so take a look at smaller processes. Look for a stakeholder who has a problem with a current process. By starting with that bite-sized chunk, you will have an audience that has an interest in working with you to make a process improvement. A win with one stakeholder can lead to their help with buy-in from a larger audience. Ted: Pick that low-hanging fruit first. Those are usually highly repetitive processes that are easily identified and relatively well-understood. Processes done hundreds of times a day are good candidates for dividing up responsibilities across different labor tiers and can provide immediate and measurable cost savings. What's the one piece of advice you'd give to someone embarking on a long-term process improvement initiative? Toby: You always hear "start simple," but my advice is to follow the money. If you're looking to where you want to have impact or where you need to have impact — I mentioned write-downs and write-offs earlier — that's the place to start. Look at the work you're doing that you're not getting paid for, whether it's a fixed fee, an hourly billing or other fee structure. You want to have an immediate impact on the bottom line. Angela: My one piece of advice is to be patient. We work in legal, and we are not the fastest to adopt new things. Don't give up. It's a continuous process. You might want to jump in and start a big project to kick things off, but sometimes it's about starting small and building that momentum organically. If something doesn't work, look at it from a different angle. There's this idea in the corporate world about learning from failure. We don't necessarily have that in our DNA in law firms and law departments, but process improvement is not a set-it-and- forget-it fix. You need to continuously go back, get feedback, refine your processes, improve your change management or marketing tactics, etc. Patience throughout it all will work in your favor. Ted: The key words here are "long-term." In any long-term endeavor, it's always good to have a solid starting point. Get some quick wins on the board, and leverage an existing disciple like Lean Six Sigma. The benefit of Lean Six Sigma is you will always do a baseline, so you'll measure how a process performs before and after you've re-engineered it. That will give you the ammunition you need to generate senior-level buy-in, which will help you move your BPI initiative across the rest of the business. The most important thing is to demonstrate that it works. Once you do that, it becomes much easier to knock down walls into different silos of the business. Imagine the "modern law firm" in the year 2040. Tell me what that looks like. Ted: 2040 — that's a long time from now! It's hard to talk about the future of law without incorporating some of Richard Susskind's ideas into the conversation. I recently read Susskind's Tomorrow's Lawyers, and he talks about three main drivers of change. • The "more-for-less" challenge, which is where rising regulatory pressures on businesses and declining legal budgets create a market scenario where firms that embrace efficiency get rewarded • Liberalization, which is a relaxation of the laws and regulations that govern who can perform legal work, which means certain categories of legal services will be done by non-lawyers in the future • Information technology (any attorney who doubts that IT will have a major impact in legal should watch the Jeopardy series where Watson beats the brightest minds the show ever had) We're seeing "minute clinics" and 24-hour urgent care facilities pop up everywhere, and medical care is even being delivered via Skype. There has been a tremendous amount of change there. Legal isn't far behind.

• Cover