publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/550988
ILTA WHITE PAPER: JULY 2015 WWW.ILTANET.ORG 40 However, make no mistake; this non-legal work is valuable, and many clients will pay for it. Firms might wish to consider charging a flat or sliding fee for a bundle of services. IN-HOUSE OR CORPORATE EFFICIENCY Under the second model, cross-functional teams would primarily support their clients' in-house legal departments or help clients without legal departments find efficiencies. Again, recognizing that a law firm's lawyers are good at analyzing and resolving legal matters, the firm in this model seizes the opportunity to showcase — and possibly sell — the services of its many other talented professionals. To illustrate, consider this: Do your lawyers know when annual planning starts for all your key clients? You are missing an excellent opportunity if you are not at the table with them at that critical time of year to help project legal spending and conduct an emerging legal needs analysis. A law firm's KM team can draw out a client planning matrix in a few minutes and guide proactive legal planning in partnership with the firm's lawyers and the client. Someone from the firm's finance team should be at the table too, providing support on budgeting and other financial planning. In addition, the firm's professional development team could invite the client to sessions of particular relevance or create a calendar of programs tailored for the client. The firm's practicing lawyers could likely sort this all out, but most practicing lawyers do not have the time to devote to allocating different teams to help with this annual planning. But would clients even want their law firms' practitioners to try? Each practicing lawyer would likely lead these teams in a dozen different ways. Conversely, KM could create a methodology and process for doing this work efficiently and making every team member's job easier to perform well every time. We can take this concept further. Suppose a law firm's clients — whether they have an in-house legal department or not — need help creating templates or model documents. KM lawyers know a great deal about available suitable technologies and could draft these documents with or for the firm's clients. Many clients do not have the internal resources to do this work themselves. Offering the firm's clients the services of a seasoned KM team would, at a minimum, build good will and might lead to a new source of revenue. Imagine starting with a free pilot to impress clients with the KM team's quick creation of sleek, customer-centric model documents and providing more drafting and updating services as an ongoing value-added or paid service. The KM team could then expand the offering by introducing the firm's professional development team to create a CLE plan for in-house lawyers or the business lines and the firm's law librarians to deliver research, current awareness and business intelligence. With smaller client companies that do not have their own training staff, the law firm's technology trainers might be added to the mix to help onboard and train new hires on the Office suite or legal technology (a perennial request). Law firms should send their KM-led teams out to the clients, prepared to sit down and demonstrate how, with a little help, the client might do things a whole lot better. WOULD IT REALLY WORK? Is this idea far-fetched? Would law firm executive management committees find thousands of reasons to not try it? Probably. Firm management might respond, "Our lawyers would hate that." Indeed, lawyers might resist, but a brave executive committee will see the logic and try a pilot with a few receptive clients. One big success should be enough to get lawyers rethinking their stance. Management might also claim, "Our clients would never go for it." How do they know? Clients continually seek innovation from their firms, and this new relationship model fits the bill. Firms have little to lose and potentially a great deal to gain by trying. And many firms would say, "No one has done it before." Well, (sigh) that is the point! Take a risk, and be the first to innovate. KM AS THE CLIENT RELATIONSHIP TEAM OF THE FUTURE