Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/7694
ILTA White Paper The Business of Law 44 should have enough alternatives on your list to represent the realistic spectrum of your options. • Recognize the Consequences Map out the consequences for each alternative as precisely and accurately as possible. This stage often requires some research, but being as specific as possible at this point will both ease and strengthen your decision. Record easily measurable costs (software, hardware, consultant services, resource time to upgrade, resource time to address user problems, number and length of delays in client service), as well as more difficult to measure, but equally important, factors (reputation of the firm, attractiveness to new hires, morale of employees). Seeing the data in front of you can be invaluable. In fact, often just by listing the alternatives and their respective consequences, the right decision can quickly become clear. If this happens, congratulations; your decision can be made, and you can move forward with confidence. • Evaluate the Trade-Offs In some cases, you will be faced with the daunting task of pitting equally important values and objectives against each other: budget needs vs. risk management; stability vs. scalablity; business acumen vs. legal skill. The authors of "Smart Choices" lay out a creative process for handling this scenario. First, eliminate "dominated alternatives." If option A is better than option B in meeting some objectives, and no worse than option B in meeting all other objectives, then A dominates B, and you can cross B off your list of alternatives. For options that remain on your list, use the "even swap" method to eliminate the poorer choices. The concept of this method is based on the elementary pros vs. cons list, comparing the pros and cons of option A to the pros and cons of option B. The "even swap" method, while it can get more complicated in practice, does, at its core, offer a structured and helpful approach to weighing decision alternatives. First, create a chart with your options along one axis and your objectives along the other. Then, score each option based on how well it meets each objective. Finally, cross off your list any objectives that receive the same score for all options (no analysis is necessary here since choosing any option will allow you to meet that particular objective equally well). For the remainder of the objectives, modify the scores as described below to reduce the comparison to one or two objectives. For example: Option A • 's software cost score is a 5 (very good), and resource time score is a 1 (poor); Option B's software cost score is a 3 (average), and resource time score is a 3 (average). Which option is better — Option A with a very high score for cost but a very low score for resource time, or Option B with average scores for both? Option A Option B Software Cost 5 3 Resource Time 1 3 To make the evaluation easier, you need to reduce • the objectives to one criterion, let's say software cost. In order to eliminate resource time from the analysis, you must make the scores for that objective be the same across all options. Pick one option, Option B, and to reduce its resource time score to 1, determine how much resource time you