publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/550988
ILTA WHITE PAPER: JULY 2015 WWW.ILTANET.ORG 39 One might wonder why I suggest that KM — rather than, say, marketing or professional development — lead this team. All departments have skilled people interested in advancing the firm's relationships with its clients. Yet, KM is best-suited to lead for two reasons: Most KM professionals are former practicing lawyers who can speak about the law and legal practice from experience, meaning new mandates could get started even during the pricing, intake and planning phases KM would effectively manage the knowledge resources used and generated by this team One might also ask why the client relationship manager would not be the better choice to lead a cross-functional client relationship team. The client relationship manager is a revenue-generating, practicing lawyer who needs to focus on giving legal advice and producing legal work product. Lawyers rarely come bundled with a package of cross- functional client relationship skills, such as pricing, developing business referrals, planning or managing risk. A senior practicing lawyer should be a member of this core team, but that lawyer's role would be to point out legal issues that might require attention pre-engagement. KM is in the best position to manage the full-service client relationship team, applying both legal knowledge and other firm resources as needed to add value consistently. Law firms could offer these KM dream teams to their clients in one of two ways: The teams could be the conduit for legal work from the client, or the team could serve as the conduit for the client's internal efficiency. LEGAL WORK FROM THE CLIENT In this model, all lawyers except the client relationship manager keep to their offices until legal work on a new engagement is ready to begin. Until then, the KM-led team handles initial intake calls and meetings, developing a smooth relationship to hand off to the practicing lawyers when ready. Before any time is put toward legal work, KM marshals the cross- appointed team to: • Generate two to three (or more!) innovative pricing models for the client to choose from • Review the conflict report and resolve conflicts as needed • Develop a project charter, budget and plan • Design a staffing model of partners, associates and law clerks from appropriate practice groups (including a RACI chart) • Conduct business and competitive intelligence for the client • Identify issues missing from the client's view of the engagement, such as emerging regulatory issues • Create a client risk tolerance model for the engagement (e.g., whether the client requires 99 percent certainty from the legal advice, or will 75 percent do?) • Draft and obtain an executed engagement letter • Gather templates and models and, in some cases, write first drafts of basic documents • Create a digital workspace, extranet or wiki for collaboration • Map out a workflow to manage after-action reviews, ongoing professional development opportunities, lessons learned and similar services How much time is wasted when lawyers execute any of the tasks above (or worse, ignore them) rather than focus on legal work? Practicing lawyers doing non-lawyer work is not what clients are looking for when they ask their law firms for value-added services. When practicing lawyers work, they should be completing legal work on the matter. Additional work that creates a deeper and richer client relationship should be led, managed and performed by others in the firm. KM AS THE CLIENT RELATIONSHIP TEAM OF THE FUTURE