[Guest Blogger Emily Rushing]
I made a (very) quick stop through a record heat wave in New York for a short CI conference presented by the Ark Group. (For y’all Yankees, when a Texan says it’s too hot…it’s really too hot.)
A link to the conference agenda can be found here (PDF).  My notes from the great panel discussion are below. The panel included:
  • Jennifer Manton, Chief Marketing Officer, Loeb & Loeb LLP
  • Jean P. O’Grady, JD, MLS, Director of Research Services and Libraries, DLA Piper LLP
  • Philip Bryce, Director of Professional Support, White & Case LLP

Panel Q&A

Where is CI in your firm?
  • Some firms have library and CI integrated in an overall “Knowledge Department”.
  • Knowledge Depts can include Project Management (PM), Library, Knowledge Management (KM), Docket maintenance and research, CI, BI.
  • BD is among the users of the CI services but not always the owner of the CI function.
  • Sometimes the Library and BD overlap, with both doing analysis and research, although library typically does more research.
What are CI services and tools do you offer?
  • Law firm industry newsletter to firm mgmt, topical monitoring and alerts, docket monitoring, group by topics of litigation and then ID relationships in the firm to either side parties
  • Rankings, Capital IQ, MergerMarket, OneSource, Thompson, Lexis.
  • Specialty journals
  • Standardized CI report templates
  • Client briefings, mainly in support of proposals or targeting. Looks at competitors, relationships, past work, about the company and news.
  • Weekly industry newsletter on top clients and industries
What has changed for CI services in the modern law firm?
  • Increased availability of accurate information. That used to be hard but now that’s an easier part of the CI process.
  • The average user’s research skills have increased as has their sophistication.
  • Firm management is increasingly professionalized and accountable.
  • Library, KM, BI, CI, IT increasingly have a set at the strategic table.
How do we standardize content and licenses?
  • Firms are trying to get more proactive and strategic, less reactive. KM and library need to be at the acquisitions table, not just to buy what attorneys ask for.
  • Firms are using OneLog to calculate cost per product and cost per use.
  • Moving to library help desk software to help determine amount of time and primary users of CI work. Also how often specific content is used and how.
  • Some libraries/intel groups are hiring project managers and practice managers.
Jean O’Grady reminded attendees that libraries have to continue to adapt and learn new skills, become more efficient, and find new ways to add value. This “Future Ready” attitude is also the theme for the #sla2011 conference this year in Philadelphia. I look forward to continuing the conversation about the future of information/intelligence roles in law firms – preferably in the a/c with a nice glass of iced tea! 

As I was writing a piece on the partnership of BigLaw firm White & Case and Indian Law School Jindal Global School a couple weeks ago, I thought that this is one of those posts that will get a lot of reaction from our readers. We all know that the world is flattening, but to see a firm step out there and build a tight relationship with an Indian law school seemed to really display just how flat the legal market is becoming. I was expecting a reaction that ran somewhere between “OMG!! How greedy can BigLaw Partners be that they are now actually planting the fields of cheap lawyer labor” to “get ready… India Law Schools first, China next, then on to any other cheap market that will pump out lawyers willing to do work for $10 a day.” Instead, what I got was the loud sound of crickets chirping in the background of the blog.

So, that didn’t get your attention?? Well, maybe a little article in the ABA Journal posted on Friday afternoon might pique your interest in what the Jindal Global School is aiming for. Seems that Cornell Law School is following White & Case’s lead and has signed an agreement to establish a collaboration between Cornell and Jindal Global. Just what exactly is the Jindal Global School’s objective?? Some would speculate that they are aiming at eventual ABA accreditation, and State Bar acceptance for their graduates to take the bar and practice law within the United States.  The ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has kicked this issue down the road for the past few years, however, it seems that they will eventually have to issue a statement of allowing foreign law schools full ABA accreditation. With the world’s economy becoming so intertwined, it would seem inevitable that foreign schools will eventually receive accreditation.

Although the Cornell/Jindal Memorandum of Understanding is labeled as a way to “promote global legal education in India”, it seems that this is just one more step in the direction of breaking down barriers placed by the ABA and the individual state bar associations. BigLaw Firms and Ivy League law schools see the writing on the wall… how long will it take for the Bar Associations to join in on the collaboration movement?

Eventually I will blog on my Case Study on The Evolution of Pricing in the Patent Litigation Market. One reason I keep putting this off is that this topic continues to evolve – quickly.
Over the past few weeks a number of news items on this topic caught my attention. Adding them together highlights how pricing and competition is evolving in the market for patent disputes. I chose that market for the case study as I believe it is an indicator of things to come in other markets (which I am already watching happen). My thesis is that the market is searching for pricing mechanism to determine fee-level pricing. One consequence is that in markets with imperfect pricing, new competitors will likely emerge. The recent news items highlight some disruptive players entering and expanding in the market.
RPX is a patent aggregator focused on serving the defense side of the market. I have previously posted on this player, noting their innovative model and the fact that they are taking market share from law firms. They went public at $23 a share and are now trading at about $28 a share with a market cap of $1.3B. I would call that a market force.
“These new agreements are specifically designed for companies currently in litigation with Walker Digital and provide the purchaser with the ability to eliminate the uncertainty inherent in litigation and to effectively manage their corporate risk.” “The sale of the Round Rock Research Covenant Not to Sue demonstrates a need for operating companies to efficiently, and anonymously, eliminate the risk of patent litigation,” Another reduction in market share for lawyers.
A judge ordered IV, considered to be a “non-practicing entity”, to reveal the names of its investors as they are “interested entities or persons” in an ongoing case. To give you an idea of who is on the list, both Apple and Google are there. Further market encroachment.
“Through the new service, Article One identifies pre-litigation patents and distributes requests to over one million scientists and technologists to research the validity of the patents.” This is a crowd-sourcing approach to finding prior art in order to invalidate others’ patent claims. The term “litigation avoidance” clearly identifies this provider as a disruptive player encroaching on lawyers’ services.
When I started writing this post, I had a general impression of how things are changing in the patent disputes market. After researching the information behind the press releases and articles, I am truly impressed by the speed of change occurring. Brings to mind the classic farewell words of the roller coaster operator, “Keep you hands and arms inside the car at all times.”
[Image CC by nhanusek]

This week’s Elephant Post question on Project Management (PM) centers around the concept of is PM conducted in a law firm setting significantly different enough from PM conducted, say in a Fortune 500 company, that it deserves its own classification? Is it Legal Project Management (LPM)? Or, is it simply Project Management conducted within the confines of a law firm… and the “Legal” prefix is simply a marketing ploy to get lawyers to buy in?

Some of the top people in the PM/LPM field chimed in this week, and I think you’ll enjoy the banter that goes back and forth. We thank all of those that contributed, and we’ll do this all over again next week with a new question that asks if law firms should just give up on Client Relationship Management tools (like InterAction), and just outsource the CRM using social media tools like LinkedIn? I actually know of some that are… but I imagine this question would cause minor strokes in some law firm Partners and some of you that actually manage your firm’s CRM tools. So, if you have a perspective, scroll down to the bottom of this post and fill out the handy-dandy form we’ve set up for you.

Steven B. Levy
Author, Legal Project Management

There absolutely is a difference. Traditional project management is designed for construction, aerospace, manufacturing, and other such areas with horizontal and vertical task stability — you know in advance each of the tasks (vertical) and you know in advance how long each will take within a narrow range of variability (horizontal). Legal does not meet either of these requirements. The profession is getting noticeably better on the vertical axis, clear identification of all of the tasks along with clear separation of them. However, in legal, as opposed to construction, say, you have a human adversary expending considerable effort to disrupt your plans. (E-discovery is a special case that comes closer to mapping to traditional project management techniques and tools.)

That said, the principles are the same.

Thus Legal Project Management is the application of the principles of project management to legal cases or matters (a/k/a projects).

Also, consider that there are three levels of “project management” — project administration, project management, and project leadership. Project administration isn’t much different in the legal world, and need not be done by attorneys. Project management currently, where it’s being practiced, is usually done by attorneys, but over time there’ll be a balance between attorney and non-attorney PMs. However, project leadership, the most critical aspect of PM and LPM, will remain an attorney role for the foreseeable future.

Legal Project Management makes a difference in the practices that adopt it. Project leadership can make an even bigger difference — for clients, for the team, and for profitability.

Jeffrey Brandt
CIO/CKO/Consultant

There is absolutely no such thing as ‘legal project management.’  You can start with my post here!

Project management is project management.  To label it with the industry it is being used in hyperbole.  Good project management adapts to the project at hand.  How much and what kinds of project management tools you use are as varied as the nature of the projects themselves.  Legal has nothing unique in it that would require a special prefix on project management.  While project management may have had its start in heavy industry and manufacturing, progressive service industries have also engaged and used it.  Have you ever heard of a small company called PricewaterhouseCooper?  What about another small company called Bank of America?  Of course you have.  Have you ever heard of FPM or financial project management?  What about BPM or banking project management? I doubt you have.  I certainly haven’t.  PwC and BoA have been using PM for ages on their projects.  Is it the exact same kind of PM that law firms use or that NASA uses to build the next generation space shuttle?  No. Does that mean they need to prefix PM in order to make it relevant?  No. The basics processes and benefits of project management are solid without being dressed up.

Toby is right that there has been progress on the PM front in the legal vertical and that is great news.  I look forward to more and more PM processes and tools being used in legal.  The bad news is that either legal feels the need to engage in self-aggrandizement, or the industry vendors or consultants feel the need to prefix plain, old PM in order to sell it or charge more for it.

Thanks for listening.  I’ll let you go now.  You probably need to get back to check your legal email on your legal mobile device or your legal PC running your legal Windows 7.  Or maybe you need to make a legal call on your legal telephone.

Sorry folks but the Shark Repellent Bat Spray is just plain, old shark repellent.  And that’s ok, because shark repellent is great!  It can come in very handy when you accidently get dumped in the water and no amount of fisticuffs (or booticuffs?) will get that shark off you before it explodes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_B_n-Rbros

Eric Elfman
LPM Vendor

I think that LPM exists and is different than PM, but not for the same reasons as Steven.

Although Steven is on to something in his reference of who PM was designed for and where it came from. If you are building freeways or nuclear submarines, then you need PM the way that Microsoft Project defines it: top down, rigid, hierarchical and complete. LPM is not that.

I believe that LPM is closer to a “lean” project management that we use in the software industry. In lean PM, you can’t plan to the end of the project, you have to be flexible (or iterative), status meetings and updates and collaboration is key. I believe that LPM is really “Lean Project Management,” but from my experience, the legal market doesn’t receive that message well.

Ben Wightwick
“Legal” IT PM and BA

This will be a short post to the previous additions, as I’m no expert.

You don’t hear BPM (Banking project management) or IPM (Insurance project management). I think (an this is where I get myself into trouble) lawyers like labels, and need something that uniquely defines them/firm/program of work. The fact it’s based on facets of existing solid and sensible project management practices is neither here nor there.

LPM or PM (with a legal component slant) – it’s the PM that’s important and it’s not rocket science.

Toby Brown
AFA

Is there really such a thing as Automotive Design?  Isn’t it really just “Design?”

My point is that if an industry needs to add its name as a prefix to a valuable idea in order to adopt it, then go for it.  Legal Project Management may just be a flavor of PM.  So what.  If adding the “L” gets law firm partners on-board, then it makes sense to me.

David Whelan
Manager of Legal Information

Project management is project management.  There are going to be nuances depending on the organization and the type of project but I don’t think there is a fundamental need to call it “legal” project management.  Law firm IT already does project management and, while the subject matter is different, I’m not sure that the project management concepts are.

However, the legal world seems to have two recurring themes.  First, in order to sell the lawyer (partners, faculty, members), you need to have a lawyer doing the work.  Calling it Legal Project Management will make it feel better for the audience and for the lawyers who are going to do it.  Second, we like to create silos.  Calling it Legal PM enables  the creation of a second project management nexus (PMOffice, whatever) in organizations that might already have the basic infrastructure, if not necessarily the right knowledge base, to provide project management support.  The upside is that creating a new silo is probably easier and the downside is that, in about 3 years when this has proven itself as either a fad or a staying trend, you may need to figure out how to merge multiple project management units.

Timothy B. Corcoran
Legal Technology & Marketing Executive

Legal Project Management is the application of standard project management concepts and techniques and tools to a legal practice.  Simply re-labeling or packaging the core concepts differently doesn’t change the discipline, but it may make it more palatable to lawyers.  Having spent several years conducting LPM trainings and workshops, I can confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that lawyers will not embrace concepts and techniques that appear to be designed for other disciplines.  On multiple occasions a law firm hired a “specialist” from another discipline, only to reject all the examples and case studies that were culled from industry, so I was asked to deliver a version customized to the legal field, and all of my anecdotes and case studies were from actual matters at actual law firms… so same concepts, different context.

I’ll also add that while lawyers generally “get” the analytics that are so important to good project management, they embrace this only after they’ve understood the underlying business concepts.  For example, diving right into process mapping to inform budgets will falter unless the lawyers first understand the critical importance of predictability to clients.  Also, lawyers often don’t readily acknowledge that there isn’t infinite variability and “art” in their legal work, and much of what they do in matter A is applicable in matter B, and so on.  They tend to equate repeatability with commodity, and few lawyers believe s/he practices commodity law.  So one area where LPM must be adapted from general PM concepts is to differentiate between those processes that are “routine” and those that are truly innovative and creative.

Pam Woldow
Lawyer

As a lawyer who has used LPM in her own legal practice, and in the last four years has taught it to thousands of lawyers in law firms and corporate legal departments, Legal Project Management is a significant and independent variant of standard PM due to the legal environment in which lawyers operate.  Equating the two would be like saying that since a horse has four legs and a dog has four legs, a dog is a horse.

One of the primary goals of PM is to reduce variation.  That’s perfect for turning out car fenders on an assembly line.  PM is also aimed at collaborative efforts to achieve goals set forth in a Project Charter.  So, it is excellent for planning linear processes, like software or systems development, where a team is working toward a singular goal.

For those of us who have practiced law, those PM goals don’t work in real-world legal trenches.  Law is inherently different from manufacturing and IT.  In litigation, for example, you have an opposing counsel whose efforts, intellect and time are spent trying to frustrate, defeat, and unseat all your efforts.  There is no single team all working to create a fender or a software installation.  Instead, you have clashing, opposing forces that are paid (handsomely!) to think of and effect ways to undo the gains of the other side.  In a software installation, for example, this would be like having someone erase programming code and toss the computers out the window every night after a day’s work.

And, transactional work has the same tensions.  In mergers and acquisition deals, there are fleets of brainy folks trying to move the price point in favor of their client.  All the while, business folks, shareholders, the press and others are bringing unique pressures to bear on the chess pieces that the lawyers are moving on the board.

Moreover, the players – the lawyers – have very specific personality traits that have been tested and written about many times.  They tend to be extraordinarily autonomous and non-collaborative – markedly more so than the general population and other professionals.
Lawyers work very independently.  In fact, we’re trained to do so from law school onward, and the compensation structures in law firms intensify and reinforce that tendency.  So, in law firms you have a boatload of autonomous, intelligent folks engaged in ritual warfare on behalf of clients who pay them to achieve certain goals.  This is not an environment where standard PM is going to play well.

That said, there are processes that can be improved and made more efficient.  There are patterns in matters or parts of matters that can be flow-charted and for which some parts of traditional PM approaches make sense.  The push towards sharing information and collaborating that LPM supports absolutely enhances the efficacy of strategizing, staffing and managing legal matters.  But, a dog is NOT a horse.

Next Week’s Elephant Post:

Is It Time To Outsource Client Relationship Management Tools to Products Like LinkedIn?

Perhaps your firm is the exception and you have somehow got your CRM tool to work properly and get everyone in your firm to share their contacts, and keep all that information up to date. For the rest of the world, however, it seems that no one has a success story to talk about when it comes to the data found in their CRM. Is it time to just give it up and admit that CRM is a pipe-dream? Can the information that is found in external products like LinkedIn actually work more effectively than trying to keep up with all of those relationships internally?? Let us know your perspective.

[Image (cc) quinnanya]
I don’t know who coined the term “Social Media” but I’d love to wring their neck. I think the name single handedly prevents widespread enterprise adoption of powerful tools. In common parlance Social = Party and Media = Entertainment. You might as well be asking your Executive Officer for 200 grand to pay the clown making balloon animals by the buffet. On the other hand, if we call it what it is, “Modern Communications Infrastructure”, suddenly 200K sounds like a bargain!
I know! I know! It is what it is and we’re stuck with the name. I’ll get over it, but here’s the problem. We’re running out of time. More specifically, companies are running out of time. In my first few posts on 3 Geeks, I wrote about the End of Corporate IT or as I called it the CorpTechPocalypse. Two of the reasons I gave were Software as a Service and the Consumerization of IT. These two factors have come together in the phenomenon of Enterprise SaaS companies marketing directly to end users. Their marketing plan goes something like this: 1) Give 80% of your product away for free. 2) Get employees inside the firewall to start using it. 3) Wait for the IT guy to call to find out how to administer/control your product. 4) Charge him a nominal fee for the admin console.
Now, I’m not bemoaning the practice. In fact, I think it’s rather ingenious. Enterprise adoption of software is a huge endeavor requiring a committee of people to develop an RFP, evaluate responses, pick a solution, work with operations and development to incorporate the product, train the users, etc. etc. It can take years to get a new software product up and running. The SaaS Trojan technique completely bypasses the typical corporate BS and goes straight to the people who will ultimately benefit from the product. And It’s WAY more efficient than the traditional process. Within the next few years your company will probably adopt at least one SaaS product this way simply because this is the future of enterprise software. Aaron Levie, CEO of Box.net, a file sharing solution, stated this approach explicitly in an interview with Fast Company last week.
FC: So someone in any department within an organization just decides they need help sharing files, they sign up on Box.net, then that spreads virally for the organization–and then once it gets big enough, you monetize that with premium features?
AL: Exactly. Once there’s a significant population of users in an organization, we’ll usually get a call from the IT buyer. He’ll say: We have all these services. Now, I want a secure way the people can use these tools, I want oversight across the network, I want people to authenticate in ways consistent with other authentication processes we use.
And Box.net is not alone, Yammer and Present.ly do essentially the same thing with enterprise twitter type clients. 37Signals doesn’t have the exactly the same model, but they make enterprise quality software cheap enough that a department head can decide to bypass the IT department and deploy new software to all of her people for the cost of a couple of martinis per month.
I know what you’re thinking. “Man the barricades! Batten the Hatches! Block those sites, we won’t let our users get to them!” Unless you’re going to take the nanagement approach of my alter ego and whitelist your internet access, it simply can’t be done. It’s a losing battle. As soon as you block one, ten more will rise up to take it’s place. This is happening now and you can’t stop it. But there is one way to counteract the SaaS Trojan, at least in regard to social SaaS – get ahead of it. Adopt the tools now. If you provide approved alternatives to your employees, then they will likely use those instead of finding their own solutions behind your back.
I’m not suggesting everyone needs to run out today and spend a fortune on Social Media tools. What you need to do is evaluate and approve a 21st Century Communications Infrastructure, which includes employee profiles, blogs, wikis, micro-blogging, collaboration tools, and whatever else that comes along in the near future. Email and telephone does not constitute a Modern Communications Infrastructure anymore.
Here’s the kicker – and lot’s of people will disagree with me here – you don’t need to decide exactly how you’re going to use the social tools before you adopt them. You need to make them available to your employees, and let your employees decide how and when to use them. Because, once your employees make the decision to use social tools, they want to start using those tools immediately, not in 6 months or a year. The traditional enterprise project based approach to software acquisition takes too long. SaaS Trojans will provide the tools immediately and you will have lost the ability to choose what software is appropriate for your company. The beauty of a SaaS solution is that for a very low cost you can make all of those tools available now, if the usage increases, then and only then will your costs increase. So stop worrying about how to explain “Social Media” to your 63 year old Managing Partner, it’s just a “Modern Communications Infrastructure”. He’s not likely to ever start blogging or wikiing anyway. The kid you hired last week, however, will one day be your MP. He tweets 150 times a day, and he blames the IT department for making it so difficult to communicate at work. He’ll be the first one to sign up for a SaaS Trojan. In fact, he probably already has.

We have previously mentioned on 3 Geeks the need for effective pricing mechanisms in the legal market at the fee level, versus the hourly rate level. One possible tool to achieve this is using an online reverse auction tool.
We have also noted the increased involvement of the Procurement Department in selecting outside counsel. In following this subject, this blog post popped up on our radar. The blog is a straight-up procurement blog for all sorts of corporate procurement types. This specific post focuses on the use of reverse auctions. The post is actually skeptical of using them as they can focus evaluations of vendors “almost exclusively on price.”
This somewhat harsh evaluation focuses too much attention on the technology and not enough on the procurement process. Like any technology, if used in a vacuum without good process and procedure, of course it will generate less-than-ideal results.
The post generated a number of thoughtful comments, including one from Justin Ergler. Justin has a job title that includes. “Legal Services Procurement,” a unique role for sure. He notes that “Typically, reverse auctions have been thought of as a tool that is only applicable to commodities, but this is not the case.” He goes on to note “that cost should not be the only factor in a sourcing decision.” He describes how Procurement’s job is making sure the right suppliers participate in an auction. “Once you have these defined you can use an auction to get the best price the market will bare from the most qualified suppliers.” And there you have your market pricing mechanism.
Reverse auctions are nothing new. However, online technologies make them simple, accessible tools. From a law firm perspective, such tools will seem scary and intimidating. Will they take hold on a larger scale? It’s too early to tell. My advice: Be proactive. Even if your clients embrace these tools, having deep trusting relationships with clients will continue to be key to a successful legal practice. If you fail on that front, then online reverse auction rooms will indeed be a troubling development.
In any event, at some point law firms will be faced with competitive, fee-level market pricing mechanisms. Online reverse auctions are just one potential iteration to consider.

[Please Welcome Guest Blogger Jeremy Byellin from Westlaw Insider Blog]


Recently, Greg asked me to write a guest post in his 3 Geeks and a Law Blog about my approach to blogging on Westlaw Insider.

Specifically, he wanted me to talk about my process and methods for the blogs I write, which tend to include more legal opinion and analysis than other posts on Westlaw Insider.
So, here goes.
I started writing for the blog back in February of this year.
At the time, the only regular posts were the “Hot Docs” post on Thursdays, which is about recent legal filings found on the Thomson Reuters News & Insight page, and the “Today in Legal History” post on Fridays, which discusses a legal event that occurred on that same date sometime in the past.
Up until I started writing them, the posts more resembled a factual narrative, and didn’t typically include any legal analysis or opinion.
The blog’s Managing Editor, Larisa Tehven, wanted me to take a different approach to the posts.
Namely, she wanted me to integrate more legal analysis (after all, it is a legal blog), and more opinion into them.
In addition to making the posts more interesting to the reader, some sprinkled-in opinion was intended to encourage dialogue with the blog’s readers, and make a shift away from a one-way communication channel.
I was happy to oblige, since I enjoy writing, legal issues, and giving my thoughts and predictions on them.
A few weeks into my writing tenure, Larisa encouraged me to expand to additional topics, and, again, I was happy to oblige.
In addition to posts about hot legal topics and fresh lawsuits, I started doing monthly theme posts, which are a series of weekly posts that share the same theme throughout the month.
In regards to my approach on writing individual posts, there are several important points that I keep in mind while writing.
First, while these are typically posts geared toward a legal audience, the subject matter may not be something that is particularly well-known to many readers, and there are still many readers without any legal background whatsoever.
As such, I include pertinent legal concepts as much as possible and try to simplify those concepts while not doing it so much as to insult the reader’s intelligence.
Next, I try to make anything I write about as pertinent to the reader as possible. 
While I can’t know exactly how every individual reader will find it significant, I do know that the reader is engaged in the contemporary world, at least to some extent. 
Thus, I always try to tie in whatever I write about to something relevant today.  This is harder for some posts than others (i.e. the Today in Legal History posts), but applying this principle to every post also steers me away from going too deeply into legal theories.
Lastly, understanding that readers would attend class if they wanted a lecture, I try to make it as enjoyable a read as possible. 
This translates into making discussion and analysis of the issues the central point of any post, and making these portions, in addition to the facts and law portions, as interesting and easy a read as I can.

And that about sums it up.  
Thanks to Greg for asking me to write this post!”

[Image (CC) by Kevin Dooley]
In recent years our formerly robust micro-management movement has come under attack. We have seen business-as-usual nearly destroyed within so-called “forward thinking” companies like Google, with their 20% time and free food and laundry. Sure, you and I know those things are just a ploy to keep their sheep-loyees smiling and in the office for long hours, all the while paying them less than the competition. But let’s face it, 21st century office workers are stupid. I meet lots of mindless cube dwellers who think they would love to work in a Google type of environment. They dream of flexible hours, open spaces, and free communication throughout the enterprise. They just don’t get it. Hello?! Little internet startups, like Google, have to do those things because it’s the only way to get neo-hippy California surfer dudes into the office. BUT REAL BUSINESS DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY!
I’ve been in business a long time. I have lived through the touch-tone revolution, the fax machine revolution, the PC revolution, the Email revolution, and the internet revolution. I am so sick of “revolutions” that don’t amount to any more than just another “thingy” on your desktop to learn. Wake up! It’s not a revolution, people! It’s just NEW technology that helps you do the same OLD things faster. But, with each new “revolution” we have to work harder to keep our workers focused on the business at hand. That’s why we invented micro-management in the first place. How do you keep your employees from making personal phone calls? You stand behind them and tap your foot each time they pick up the phone. Basic MM 101. But now the forces arrayed against us have unleashed their greatest weapon to date, the “social” revolution. This one is sneaky. There’s no particular “thingy” to ban from the office. Defense of the Standard Operating Procedure requires a new kind of management. We must go beyond Micro-, all the way to Nano-management, or Nanagement.
As part of the Nanagement Productivity Initiative in my office we worked closely with the technology nerds to whitelist the internet. Employees are now only able to access the sites that we explicitly allow them to access while in the office. There were some concerns that whitelisting might curtail employee access to information, slow down transfer of knowledge, and inhibit communication, but I am confident that any slowdown will be fully offset by increases in productivity, since employees are no longer able to waste time shopping or talking to friends. Part two of the productivity initiative involves employees relinquishing all Personal Electronic Devices upon entering the building to be returned only at the conclusion of an 8 hour shift. (The lunch hour is time set aside for the employee to eat lunch quietly, not to use PEDs.)
Nanagement is more involved than micro-management. It requires that nanagers control all access to employee knowledge and that every moment of the employee’s time while in the office be supervised. The first steps of nanagement are simple things like whitelisting the internet and banning personal electronics, but the future is bright for nanagers. I foresee a time when every position will have one worker and one nanager who supervises the worker, reporting any lull in activity or non-productive use of the workers’ time to senior nanagement, who will then determine an appropriate punishment for the employee.
There are those who think my vision is draconian and counter-productive. They feel that by limiting my employees access to information and communication, I’m destroying creativity and innovation. And that the true path to worker productivity is through open communication at all levels and freedom to experiment with different technologies and new methods of collaboration.
What a crock of horse crap that is! I pay my people to work not to talk to each other.

In a recent blog post, Jeffrey Brandt makes the point that we should drop legal from legal project management (LPM) because it is driving him batty (or something like that).  In the end, we all agree that project management is a proven discipline that adds a lot of value.  I’d like to thank Jeffrey for continuing the legal project management dialogue.  I find it interesting that he focused on semantics when talking about prefixing legal to project management.  After spending nearly half of my life working in the legal industry, I believe that much time is spent in legal dealing with semantics, so it seems fitting here as well.

Legal project management is a subset of project management, and yes, LPM is a “marketing” ploy to get better adoption within the law firm.  In other industries, we do not see such prefixes.  For example, I’m not aware of a push for the term software design project management (SDPM) in order to gain adoption, because the owners of the software design companies already understand the value of project management and have already embraced it.  In this case, adoption is not optional.  Within the legal space, this is not the case.  We are seeing some adoption, but it is slow. 
LPM is a label we use to describe a defined process.  This is very similar to the way that law firms use areas of practice to market expertise.  This practice is not unique to law firms, it applies to most businesses.  Call it marketing or labeling, in the end it is an effort to distinguish your product or services from others.  If adding legal as a prefix to project management creates a tipping point for adoption, then I’m all for it.
[Ed. Note: This question is the subject of the next Elephant Post. If you have an opinion, then share it with us!!]
photo credit: Travis S.

For this week’s Elephant Post, we dive into the core issue of how law firms (mainly BigLaw) are starting to split the Associate ranks into a “Partner Track” and a “Permanent Associate” track. Many of us have heard Associates talk about something like this for years… where they want a challenging work life, but they don’t want to necessarily be on a Partner track and wind up with ulcers by the time they are 40. At least some of the big firms seem to be dipping a toe into that water and setting up a non-partner track Associate tier and paying them less than half of their Partner track peers. The trade off seems to be less stress, less hours, but they still end up with highly complex legal work and find the job to be challenging, but not overwhelming.

You don’t have to be an economist to understand that there is a glut of quality lawyers on the market right now, and many of the top jobs that where there when these lawyers were in law school, are simply not there any longer. Should the law firms take advantage of this glut and hire 2 1/2 quality lawyers for what they were previously paying for 1 top lawyer? Well, that’s what we asked for this week.

For next week’s Elephant Post, we’re going to jump back in on the administrative side of the law firm ledger (kind of) and talk about a subject that Jeff Brandt brought up about the issue of Practice Management. Is there such a thing as “Law Practice Management” or is it simply just “Practice Management” in a law firm setting? Scroll on down below this week’s perspectives and share with us your thoughts on LPM… or is it just PM?

NJ lawyer
Government Lawyer

Done deal. This sounds like an expanded, repackaged, and better publicized reiteration of the big firms’ positions of “counsel” or “staff attorney,” which have been around for years.

Toby Brown
AFA
Yes.  Or – only if a law firm wants to remain profitable.  I never understood why firms hire every new lawyer with the intention they will become partners when only a fraction of them do.  It makes more sense to hire some as “staff” lawyers or whatever you want to call them, with that intention up front.  Then you train and reward them in a more appropriate fashion and frankly, you are being more honest with them.

Some firms already have staff lawyers or some variation, but these are people who have fallen off the partner track.  Why ever put them on it?  Too many of these people fall off into other firms.  So after getting them profitable, they leave.  Why set yourself up for that?

Smart firms will look at this idea and any others that allow them to provide good services and competitive prices.

Lihsa
Internet Marketing Manager
Absolutely.

These types of tracks are great for establishing alternative careers for lawyers in the legal industry.

As a lawyer-turned-legal marketer, I can attest to value of this kind of legitimized track.

However, there will always be that hierarchical attitude between the lawyers on the front lines and those that aren’t.

But if a lawyers’ ego can stand it, it is a viable business solution for law firms to ensure that they have quality work from someone who knows how to act, talk and think like a lawyer.

But, hey, I think I just made the case for why NOT to do this.  😉

Ayelette Robinson
Knowledge Management

I completely agree with Toby here. A non-partner track is a win-win for the law firm and the attorney who fits that role.

However, I think a key question is whether the third point in the triangle – the client – will buy it (literally and figuratively), or will they perceive non-partner-track attorneys as providing lower quality work. We, and many clients, may know that not to be true, but I suspect the alternative title could influence some clients’ choices.

Next Week’s Elephant Post:

Is It Legal Project Management or Just Project Management Within a Law Firm?

Toby Brown talked earlier this week about there being “More Progress on the LPM Front” (LPM = Law Project Management), and on the same very day, our good friend, Jeff Brandt, wrote an article claiming “There is not such thing as ‘legal project management.‘” Jeff pointed out that placing “Legal” or “Law” in front of business processes like “Project Management” is essentially the same type of hocus-pocus that you saw on the old Batman television show where everything had “Bat” as a prefix, thus made is somehow more special than its original name.

What’s your take on this? Is LPM actually the same as PM or is there fundamental difference in how Project Management works in say a Hospital or a factory versus how it works in a law firm? As someone that conducts Competitive Intelligence (CI) within a law firm – notice we don’t call it Law Competitive Intelligence or LCI – I will say that when I talk CI to someone that works at a Fortune 500 company, their response is usually, “That’s not real CI.” I wonder if those conducting PM in law firms get that same response from their Fortune 500 peers as well??

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