In my recent series on Staying Relevant, I coined a new phrase: Precedence is a legal philosophy, not a business model. The thrust of this phrase is that lawyering skills are better aimed at practicing law instead of running a business. In recent conversations this same thought was being discussed around a different problem.
I occasionally will rib Greg about ‘running lists.’ He receives requests like this all the time at his firm. One of my golden rules is beware the request to run a list. Lawyers seem to think they need to find completely defensible high-ground before they make any decisions. This is manifest in the list request. Before they start calling clients to talk about fees, they need one more list of clients, industries, fees, fee types, realization rates, leverage, …. You get the idea. Often in these situations, these lawyers never pick up the phone and call the clients. Instead they keep requesting lists until the reason for running the lists becomes moot.
Now – this behavior on its own represents lawyers being lawyers instead of business owners. Admittedly you do need reasonable information before making business decisions, but you will never find the high-ground lawyers crave. But the subject of this post is actually about an extension of the ‘running lists’ model of business development.
Recently a colleague at another firm had run yet another list and shared it with a law firm partner. The partner, in typical fashion, found an anomaly on the list. It was one record that didn’t make sense to him. “Why is this on the list?” was his response. “If this record is on the list, then the entire list must be flawed in some way and entirely suspect.”
Spotting flaws and exploiting them is a basic lawyer skill. It is how they attack both litigation and deal terms. Lawyers who are good at this skill are usually the successful ones in court and at the deal table.
However … in the list world, firms will always have anomalies for two reasons. One – you want to be over-inclusive in creating lists many times to make sure the high-value records are not missed. And, two – law firm data sucks. The old days of an endless flow of work encouraged very poor data capture habits. Therefore all firms suffer from severe GIGO syndrome (garbage in – garbage out).
So – here comes the analogy – finding a suspect record on one of these lists and dubbing the list worthless is like spotting a broken twig on a tree branch and declaring the tree dead.
My advice to lawyers running firms and building books of business: Look past the broken twig. Find the healthiest branches of the tree and focus your energy there. Instead of trying to eliminate risk, focus your business energy on opportunities with the highest ROI. Stop focusing on the trivial outliers.
Socrates may have made a great lawyer, but I wouldn’t want him running my firm.

Image [cc] noluck

[We are very happy to have Guest-Blogger, Jeffrey Brandt, who gives us the CIO perspective on the relationship between Law Firm Libraries and Law Firm CIO’s.]

After my highlight of his post “The Law Firm Library & CIO Relationship” in the PinHawk Technology Digest Greg, was kind enough to reach out and ask me to write a guest post rebuttal.  Who can refuse an offer to guest post on 3 Geeks?

Greg said a few things in his post that I took exception to. First he said that “It isn’t that CIOs are purposely antagonistic toward the library….”  Then he said that the CIO’s approach to dealing with the library (and other law firm administrative units) is “Lead, Follow or Get the Hell Out of the Way.”  I would like to think that those descriptors describe very few of my fellow CIOs.

It is only natural that Greg would be biased from the librarian point of view.  As a veteran CIO I suppose it is quite safe to say my bias is from the opposite direction.  But I was also one of the first CIOs to have the law library report to me in the early 1990s, and as such, maybe I have a special affinity for the library.  What I said in my brief highlight was that Greg had missed something – the part about the library being antagonistic toward IT.

I first want to say that I have been very fortunate in my CIO roles to work with some very great librarians in my 25+ years in legal.  They’re smart, professional and I’d work with all of them again in a heartbeat.  And since I am sure Greg will make some comment on who holds the power, I want to note that I’ve worked with librarians as peers, almost/semi peers and as direct reports.  A good relationship isn’t a function of direct reporting.

I can recall the days when many librarians wanted little to do with electronics.  When the library began to report to me, I was shocked by how little was known about the new CD-ROM and online technologies.  I would think and say, “How can you not be interested in these things that will fundamentally change the way you work?”  Over generalizing some, I could say they were a very insular group, their only care and concerns were for the books and the center-of-the-firm, showcase space.

I can still recall a rather hostile crowd of librarians at the beginning of a presentation I gave for the AALL way back in 1995, and the many librarians who warmed up during the presentation and came up to talk to me and ask me questions.  Greg’s point, “there are many firms out there, big and mid-sized, where the library leadership simply doesn’t have a good relationship with their CIO” rings an old bell with me.  But I would have thought we would have progressed a bit further in 16 years.

I always appreciated my relationship with the librarian.  The last thing I want them to do is remain insular.  In my last role, one of the first things I did was bring the librarian into my weekly meetings with my IT and eDiscovery reports.  I have worked with the librarians at my firms to successfully launch KM programs, to improve the document management systems, and to help consult on various aspect of information management.

There is a lot more in common between IT and the library than you might think.  Let me take just two examples.

Let’s take the library itself.  A showcase place that, rightly so, librarians take a lot of pride in.  The physical books being purchased are lessening, losing out to on-line research.  Many administrations want to reclaim the space and repurpose it for non-library uses.  On the IT side, how many firms still have computer rooms?  Many of those showcase computing facilities have been placed in secondary space in secondary cities or completely outsourced to a co-lo provider.

What about billings?  It used to be that some libraries turned a small profit.  At a minimum, hard-working librarians were able to make sure billable revenue covered the non-billable research that was conducted. Most all of that has vanished as clients today refuse to pay for any electronic research.  On the IT side it was telephone charges.  Complex billing and cost recovery systems used to be the norm, capturing every phone call made and placing them on bills.  One of the first things clients refused to pay was telephone charges, and many firms were forced to take it as pure overhead.

Too many librarians remain insular today.  They do their “library thing” and not much more than that.  But this is not 1995.  Not even 2005.  No group can remain insular and isolated.  Improved process and technology have pulled all the groups closer together.  Look at the evolution of finance and records.  A few librarians have stepped out to work with knowledge management teams, marketing and other areas of the firm.  More need to do this.

Greg says CIOs are interested in Security/Privacy, Mobile Technology and a whole laundry list of other things.  That is true, those certainly are topics that a CIO needs to be interested in.  Some, I might argue, should consume more of the IT Directors time, not the CIOs.  But I think a good CIO is really all about advocacy, enablement and forwarding the business strategies.  That advocacy and enablement is across all practices – administrative and legal.

Greg’s views and mine converge when he talks about engagement and education.  But again, it should be a two-way street.  As librarians you need to be aware of what changes are happening around you.  So if you’ve got a CIO who is antagonistic (purposefully or not) toward the library and are not sure how to proceed, send him or her to me and we’ll talk.  The library, the librarians and the services you provide are too important to waste in a hostile relationship – whoever’s fault it might be.

Image [cc] publik16

As the former access to justice / pro bono guy for Utah, I have a long term view on issues surrounding legal services for the poor. So it is with sadness and a bit of frustration I write this post.

Funding for access to justice generally comes from a handful of sources. The first is federal funding – with some state funding mixed in here and there, the second is from IOLTA (Interest On Lawyers’ Trust Accounts), the third is from foundations and the fourth is from individuals, primarily those in the legal market.
If any one of these sources is compromised, then competition for the other sources greatly increases. One source already greatly reduced has been IOLTA, since interest rates have been pushed very low by the Fed over the past 5 or so years as an economic stimulus tactic. Foundations suffered a bit from low rates and the downturn as well. So legal services for the poor was already in a struggle for survival.
And now the coup de grace – Congress cuts legal services funding by 14%. The WSJ reports that cuts will result in predicted losses of 1,226 people for legal services agencies.
The usual thinking from politicians is that the legal profession bears the responsibility of serving the legal needs of the poor. So the answer is more pro bono hours. Unfortunately, pro bono hours have also suffered at the hands of the downturn.
I suppose if one searches, they can find a logic to the legal services segment suffering with the rest of the legal market. The problem with that thinking is that the ranks of the poor are swelling now. So it’s not a lack of demand driving a reduction in supply.
In the end I am not sure where to take this post. I could appeal to a sense of justice to get people invigorated to take action. But given the dire situation, I am not sure where one would point such enthusiasm.
Thoughts?
Image [cc] USDAgov

Later this month, I will presenting with Scott Preston (lovingly referred to around here as “Geek #4”) at the ARK Group Conference focusing on law firm libraries and information services. Initially we were going to discuss the CIO/Library relations, but after discussing it for a while, we decided to go a bit broader and bring it back to an IT/Library relations. The change, however, left me with some of my preparatory notes on the initial topic, and not wanting anything to go to waste, I decided to use these as a basis for a blog post. After going to the CIO Forum at LegalTech a few days ago, it was clear to me that most of the CIOs there are focused on the issues of:

  • Security/Privacy
  • Mobile Technology
  • Legal Project Management
  • Keeping e-mail and the network up
  • Industry Trends (mainly Cloud Storage)
  • Consumerization of Technology
  • Training Users on New Technology
  • Dealing with Legacy Data Systems
  • Technology that can be Outsourced

On the surface, you would think that the CIO is just too overwhelmed to think about the library, but you’d be wrong. CIO’s do think about the library… and many think that the library needs to be refocused. The anecdotal stories I hear from CIO’s when they talk about the library tend to run in these categories:

  • The Library is a space (that can be better allocated)
  • The Library is about books
  • I rarely talk to the librarians
  • When I do talk to the librarians, all I hear is “blah, blah, blah, library catalog, blah, blah, blah.”

It isn’t that CIOs are purposely antagonistic toward the library, it’s more that the library just isn’t on their radar. On the rare occasion the library does surface to them, it is usually with a problem the library has that the technology team needs to fix. It would seem that the CIO’s approach to dealing with others on the Administrative side of the house falls into that theme of “Lead, Follow or Get the Hell Out of the Way.” This isn’t just the approach CIOs take with the library, it is the approach they take with all law firm administrative departments. Of course, I’m sure many of you reading this will counter that you have a great relationship with your CIO, and maybe you do… if so, congratulations, and thank you for making the library profession look good… but there are many firms out there, big and mid-sized, where the library leadership simply doesn’t have a good relationship with their CIO… some of which don’t realize how bad their relationships are because the CIO has dismissed them and they haven’t realized it yet. This type of relationship makes the library profession look bad. For those that have this type of relationship between CIO and Library Services, how do you fix the relationship? I would think that one way to approach situations like this is to: Engage the CIO and educate him or her on the high levels of work performed by the library in a way that explains both the talent level needed to perform these jobs, and in a way that plays off of the pain-points that the CIO addresses (managing risk for the firm, managing projects, dealing with the consumerization of information, training, etc.) In many ways, the pain-points of running a library and all of its subsidiary divisions (records, conflicts, CI, BD, etc.) parallels the pain-points of a CIO. The library is more than just a place. There is value in the services provided, but that value has to be displayed in a way that others understand it. Once a CIO understands that value, and can relate to it based on their own experiences, then the relationship can grow. It is up to the leadership within the Library to educate the CIO of that value, because a CIO that thinks your department has limited value is very dangerous thing to your career as a leader of a law firm library.

I just received an announcement from Bloomberg Law that they have just inked a deal with the 25 US offices of DLA Piper to bring Bloomberg Law to the desktop all of the 1,400 attorneys in those offices. This is by far the biggest coup that Bloomberg has had to date within the Big US Law Firms. It is actually exciting news to hear, and should cause a few wrinkles in the business of legal publishing.

Right off the top of my head I have a few questions that pop out on this deal.

  1. Who lost DLA Piper’s US business?? (I’d find it very hard to believe that a firm, even of DLA Piper’s size, would want to carry Westlaw, Lexis AND Bloomberg on their annual budgets.)
  2. If DLA Piper did dump one of the other vendors,  what resources does DLA Piper lose in the change? Does making a deal like this for the US office affect future deals with legal vendors outside the US?
  3. Did the deal with BNA come into play on the negotiations of a US office-wide agreement?
  4. How are attorneys going to adjust to the new platform? I know DLA Piper has had Bloomberg in a more limited access role for a while now (in fact they were one of the first, if not the first firms to jump on the Bloomberg trial when it rolled out.)

This announcement will make a number of firms stand up and take note. There is a lot of talk about BigLaw firms going with a single-vendor, or at least a primary vendor with another smaller deal with the other. It’s apparent that the folks at Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis are taking notes as well, and attempting to set up barriers to going down this route (such as no longer offering pay-go or credit card access for one-off research requests.) With a legitimate third party in play, it may shake up the game a bit and make for some interesting times ahead for both the law firms and the legal publishers.

I’m hoping to learn the answers to the questions above. As I do, I’ll do some follow-up posts with what I learn. I applaud DLA Piper for testing the waters on this idea, and look forward to seeing if other firms follow suit. Things just got interesting!

Here’s the press release I received:

BLOOMBERG LAW ANNOUNCES AGREEMENT WITH DLA PIPER FOR LEGAL RESEARCH
Bloomberg Law to Provide DLA Piper’s US Lawyers with Legal Research and Business Information Platform
New York – Bloomberg Law, the legal research system from the world leader in data and information services, today announced an agreement with DLA Piper, the world’s largest global business law firm, to provide high quality, cost-effective legal research for all its lawyers throughout the United States. Bloomberg Law’s integration of legal research with the Bloomberg industry and financial information relied upon by corporations and investment institutions throughout the world, provides lawyers with a competitive edge in understanding their clients’ businesses.
With DLA Piper’s enterprise-wide adoption of Bloomberg Law, the firm’s 1,400 US lawyers practicing in 25 cities will have unlimited access to Bloomberg Law from their desktops. Bloomberg Law’s legal research system integrates comprehensive legal content, company and financial information, and news all in one place, including Bloomberg’s world-class proprietary news, company and market information. Bloomberg Law’s all-inclusive, transparent and predictable pricing means that every user has the same unrestricted access to the content in the Bloomberg Law databases.
“We are deeply gratified that a firm of DLA Piper’s caliber has chosen Bloomberg Law for its lawyers throughout the United States,” said Bloomberg Law Chairman Lou Andreozzi. “We look forward to working closely with DLA Piper as we continue to develop the resources to help law firms better manage their research and costs so they can concentrate on adding value to their clients.”
Don Jaycox, DLA Piper’s Chief Information Officer, said, “Law firms need to cost effectively deliver great client service in a highly competitive environment. In addition to being experts in law, our clients have made it clear that they also want us to understand the business challenges they face on a daily basis. Bloomberg Law’s unique combination of legal research, company information, and news helps our lawyers stay abreast of a wide array of information affecting our clients.  Plus, Bloomberg’s inclusive pricing model helps us manage costs in a predictable way.”
About Bloomberg Law
Bloomberg Law is the real-time legal research system that integrates innovative search technology, comprehensive legal content, company and client information, and proprietary news all in one place. This collaborative workspace also includes a suite of new tools for more effective legal analysis and more productive client development. For more information, visit BloombergLaw.com.
About Bloomberg
Bloomberg, the global business and financial information and news leader, gives influential decision makers a critical edge by connecting them to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas. The company’s strength – delivering data, news and analytics through innovative technology, quickly and accurately – is at the core of the Bloomberg Professional service, which provides real time financial information to more than 310,000 subscribers globally. Bloomberg’s enterprise solutions build on the company’s core strength, leveraging technology to allow customers to access, integrate, distribute and manage data and information across organizations more efficiently and effectively. Through Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Government, Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Bloomberg BNA, the company provides data, news and analytics to decision makers in industries beyond finance. And Bloomberg News, delivered through the Bloomberg Professional service, television, radio, mobile, the Internet and two magazines, Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg Markets,  covers the world with more than 2,300 news and multimedia professionals at 146 bureaus in 72 countries. Headquartered in New York, Bloomberg employs more than 15,000 people in 192 locations around the world.
CONTACT
Jill Goodkind
+1 212-617-3669
jgoodkind@bloomberg.net

As much is Greg is hungry for free stuff, I am hungry for new technologies that will help ease my pain relative to alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) and related, emerging legal project management (LPM) challenges. So I am pleased to announce a new option on the market that may ease that pain.
Back in the Fall, I had spoken with the ERM Legal Solutions Team and gave them some input on direction their product might take. They listened.
ERM announced their updated offering heading into LegalTech. As I was otherwise committed, I did not attend LegalTech this year, so I requested a web demo after the show. What I saw gave me hope.
One of the challenges of bringing project management (PM) concepts to lawyers is carefully and diplomatically inserting these ideas in to the ways lawyers already practice. I have previously noted that imposing PM at full-force on to a practice would likely end in failure. To that end, ERM’s product is both flexible and highly integrated with other firm systems. You can build highly detailed, hour-by-hour plans, or you can easily go with a fixed fee price, decide what leverage you will use, drop in some time keepers and have a plan in place. The system also connects with your DMS, time and billing, CRM and other applications. This integration is reflective of the thinking that went in to this application. The ERM system is not another silo of knowledge.
On the AFA side, the system can be a quick, easy way to develop a budget. And it can give you a high-level profitability analysis. It also has a template feature, which I typically view as a mixed blessing. Templates are great tools – it’s just that no one ever wants to be the one who builds and maintains them. However, over time, I would at a minimum expect templates to emerge from various budget building efforts.
Admittedly I only saw a brief demo of the ERM system. However, its direction is promising. I plan to keep an eye on this offering and hope to take a more in-depth look at it in the near future.
Note: Ron Friedmann also posted a review on ERM here.

It’s axiomatic that one learns more from failure than from success.  After all, success doesn’t immediately demand reflective analysis. If you are successful, it’s clearly because you were brilliant and made all the right decisions (just ask any bailed-out investment banker).  If, however, you fail, you are likely to go through a review of your own limitations and weaknesses and be all the better for it the next time.  Failure and perseverance is a recurring pattern in many, if not all, “successful” peoples’ lives.
What is true of successful people, is also true of successful companies, departments, committees, research groups, and teams.  No group of people gets it right the first time, every time.  They fail.  A lot.  Successful groups learn from their mistakes and try again, or they realize the folly of their endeavor and move on to something more productive, where they will probably fail yet again.
My goal is not to sing the praises of perseverance in the face of ineptitude, but to strongly advocate for embracing your inner loser.  Accept the fact that you stink, that most of your ideas are drivel, and that you are going to be a failure most of the time.  It’s not Sisyphean perseverance that sets the wildly successful apart from the rest of us poor shlubs — we all know people who are persistently bad at what they do, and have no hope of ever being successful – no!, what sets the successful apart is the remarkable speed at which they fail.  You see, the problem, my friends, is not failure itself, but Epic Failure.
The relevant definition of epic being “of unusually great size or extent”, however, in this particular case, I’m going to add “duration” to the definition.  Epic Failures are failures that take too long to happen.  Quick failures, on the other hand, are merely steps on the way to success.
Take for example, the IT project. A typical IT project begins with a dozen or more people in a room to discuss “the problem”.  Everyone in the room, entered the room, with a good idea of what “the problem” was already, but the first meeting is a lengthy discussion of the intricacies and various facets of “the problem”.  Invariably, the project team leaves that first meeting with a larger problem than they had when they entered and the long slough to finding “the solution” begins.
As an alternative, imagine a Skunkworks team – a small group of no more than four, technically capable, energetic, and empowered individuals, who are handed problems and asked to find solutions.  The primary goal of this group would be to fail quickly.  Find a solution, test the solution, present the solution to those who will ultimately use it, discover why their solution is inadequate, and then start again with knowledge gained from their failure.
In a month, the Typical Team will have determined in excruciating detail, exactly what they think they need to look for in a solution, while the Skunkworks team will have understood through a series of quick failures that they actually need something else entirely.  The Typical Team may come to the same conclusion in about six months if they hurry.
There may be projects that require large groups of people performing in depth analysis of the problem and every possible solution, but let’s be honest, this approach has less to do with finding solutions, than it does with avoiding the appearance of failure for as long as possible.  

Recipe for success: 1) Fail small.  2) Fail quickly.  3) Fail often.
image [cc] Mike Licht

In Part 7 of the series we noted the backward looking nature of the legal profession and how that handicaps lawyers needing to embrace change. In this final segment of the series, a bit of hope is brought to the table in the form of bars.

The Bar’s Role
Saving the best for last – bar associations are in the best position to drive change in the legal profession. Via their CLE groups, publications departments and member services options, bar associations are in a position to upend the Paradigm of Precedence. First and foremost, bars can lead by example.
Some specific examples of what a bar might do:
Actively adopt new technologies. Turn websites in to e-commerce, interactive destinations. Utilize cloud-based technologies in business operations. Enable mobile access to all services. Embrace social media platforms.
Partner with vendors who can bring technology and business knowledge to members in affordable ways. Be the one who stays on top of change on members’ behalf. Take some chances and invest money in technology relationships.
Include forward-thinking components in CLE programs and publications. Many topics can benefit by including forward looking technologies and business ideas. Ask speakers and authors to include those in their topics. Maybe require them as appropriate (e.g. Annual Conventions).
Provide CLE directly on adapting to change. With the right topics and speakers, CLE programs directed at meeting these challenges will have a strong appeal for members.
Provide practice management services to give members more direct advice and services.
Push to revamp the Bar rules. Too many rules are built on the billable hour model with a guild mind-set. Think about the innovators among the membership and make sure bar rules are not overly inhibiting them. As an example, check out the Legal Services Act in the UK. It goes so far as to allow non-lawyer equity participation in firms.
In Closing
Every facet of the legal industry is under intense pressure to change: every institution and every participant. No one is protected from the compelling market and technological forces. Surviving in this industry, let alone prospering, means shedding old ways and actively embracing new thinking.
I coined a second phrase in my 1999 presentation by applying precedence thinking to operating a ski boat. The phrase: We’re driving the boat by watching the wake. Our perfect storm presents an opportunity for the profession to turn around, look out over the bow, and face the future head-on.
So I’ll add yet another phrase to my holster: Precedence is a legal philosophy, not a business model.
My final suggestion: Become a voice for the Paradigm of Change.
Thank you all for following this series. It was fun and interesting to write. It made me think a lot about how all of the forces are coming together in a new picture. Although I can’t predict the future, this exercise gave me a less-fuzzy view of what’s in store for the legal profession.
Image [cc] Andrew Feinberg

In preparation for the ARK Group Conference on Best Practices & Management Strategies for Law Firm Library, Research & Information Services, we are conducting a survey on the topic of embedded librarians. This short survey simply asks the size of your firm and if you have embedded librarians, or if you do or do not plan on using embedded librarians.

Marlene Gebauer will use the survey for her presentation on February 23rd, and we will post the results here on the blog a couple days later.

If you’re a law firm librarian, please take a minute to fill out this survey.

image [cc] Flicker Clicker

Part 6 of this series demonstrated how the pressures for change are being felt by all corners of the legal market.

The Paradigm of Precedence
The name of this series is taken from a presentation I gave back in 1999 to a group of bar leaders. At that time I coined the phrase, The Paradigm of Precedence. To illustrate this concept, I suggested lawyers are driving the boat by watching the wake. Lawyers are deeply trained in looking at the past to determine the present. The future only becomes interesting once they know today’s precedence. A running joke in the industry is that whenever an innovative concept is proposed, the first question asked is: Are other firms doing this? This paradigm, this way of seeing the world in the rear-view mirror, has become a significant handicap for the profession.
Prediction
Lawyers left to their own devices will hold to the Paradigm of Precedence. They prefer to wait and see what precedents develop in the market and then attempt to copy them. The big problem with this tendency is that new breeds of competitors will take the opposite approach, preferring to innovate ahead of the market, actually setting the new precedents. And once these providers are established in the market, it will be very difficult for lawyers to displace them. Lawyers in this scenario will be forever playing catch-up in a market that is gaining speed ahead of them.
Attempts to fight this tide with lawsuits over UPL will have little impact. Fighting in court will further expose how lawyers are not actively working to lower costs and improve their services. The public (including legislatures) will see a guild fighting to retain its monopoly when other providers have come in and met the public’s needs at lower costs. For instance in the LegalZoom example, this company is getting legal help to thousands of people who were not getting it before. Lawyers will rightly argue some people will be harmed in this environment. These lawyers will essentially be arguing that it is better to not have this access to justice than to allow any potential for harm from non-lawyers. I think the recent success of LegalZoom demonstrate the likely outcome of such fights.
A Bit of Hope
As with any community, there will be some participants who shed the Paradigm of Precedence. After one or two times of being beaten in the market, these lawyers will embrace new thinking, employing new business structures and innovative technologies. Our best hope will be encouraging and enabling these agents of change.
Although my prediction is admittedly a bit of doom-and-gloom, I hope to be proven wrong. Lawyers are the best people to provide legal services. They have a noble obligation to protect the rule of law. If the provision of legal services primarily falls to those without this duty – the rule of law will suffer.
Part 8 – the final in the series – provides some hope and ideas for how the profession can embrace change, focusing on the role of bar associations as logical and likely agents of change.