Interesting topic going on over at the Hildebrandt blog on whether it is time to develop new ideas for measuring performance at law firms. In Lisa Smith’s post “Time for New Metrics“, she lays out some interesting new categories that law firms should develop to show how they are managing their business:

  • Firm Performance – what are the relevant measures of firm performance, including the profit margin idea above?
  • Expense Management – how do we measure the impact of changes in staffing models, leveraging technology in delivering services, outsourcing?
  • Practice Management – how do we compare the performance of practices who may have very different profit drivers and pricing models?
  • Partner Performance – how do we move from a billable hours and originations driven approach to measuring partner performance?
  • Client Development/Market Strength – how do measure success in strengthening client relationships?
  • Balance Sheet/Risk – can we assess the strengths and weaknesses of a firm’s financial practices?
  • Management and Leadership – can we measure the effectiveness of strategic, talent management and other initiatives? 
I’ve seen a lot of talk lately about how firms and clients are wanting to find ways to improve overall efficiency effectiveness of how matters are handled, and I’ve seen a lot of charts from consultants on methods to follow to improve efficiency and effectiveness. However, it doesn’t seem that anyone is putting these ideas into motion.
It reminded me of a story that a secretary once told me when I worked at a law school. She said that the people she worked for were very good at “getting their ducks in a row.” Unfortunately, they were not very good at “kicking the last duck in the ass to get them to go into the water.”  When that happened, she took it upon herself to do a little kicking to get things moving. 
Once again, someone has come up with a new method of looking at measuring performance, but it doesn’t look as if anyone is lining up to put this type of tool into action. If law firms don’t kick themselves in the rear and get moving… then they might find their clients putting on their boots and getting ready to do a little kicking in order to get their firms into the water.

I am so excited! I found a way to have someone read my emails, texts and voicemails to me while I am driving 🙂

Last Wednesday, me and @sapreston were discussing how to configure my Outlook to get it to use a voice command. All were too complicated and NOT EASY TO IMPLEMENT.

So me and the two other geeks were discussing this on our way to SBOT. They didn’t have a solution either.

So geeky me spent my Friday evening trolling through all the free Blackberry apps available on my phone.

To my delight, I found drivesafe.ly, a free app available to Blackberry, Android, iPhone and Windows Mobile users.

I just have the basic plan, which reads the sender’s name, time and 25 words of the message. I did run into problems if the message was formatted in a table and it read the HTML code instead.

But I have been really, really happy with it.

There is about a 30-second delay between delivery and reading but that’s cool.

You can, of course, upgrade to a paid version that will give you Caller ID, more words read, ability to change the voice and the reading speed, plus the creation of an ad-free auto-response. The price is $3.99/mo. or $13.95/yr.

They also have an enterprise solution that gives SSL encryption, allows you to download through mobile browser or push through BES. Plus, multi-user discounts and HIPAA compliant versions are available. The price for this is $7.99/mo. or $79.90/yr.

Like I said, I have been really pleased with drivesafe.ly.

By now you may have heard about the 24-year old “blonde beautician from Essex” who won an appeal against one of England’s largest property developers, Bellway Homes back in November, 2009. Georgina Blackwell, a woman with no legal training, faced down a English courtroom full of barristers, presenting her evidence and cross-examining the Bellway solicitor. At the initial case, Bellway won right of access to the Blackwell property to tear down a wall between the two pieces of land. Blackwell was also ordered to pay five-figures in damages, £22,000 in legal fees as well as cover her own £3,000 in legal costs. Facing bankruptcy, Blackwell’s daughter stepped in. She had just turned down a position to study law at Kingston University, choosing instead to help out in her mother’s salon after her mother broke her wrist. Reviewing the legal documents, Ms. Blackwell discovered that the the right of access pertained to only one wall. She reopened the case, went before the court and won the day, reversing the previous decision and earning a £75,000 judgment. Today, Ms. Blackwell is studying law at BPP Law School after the dean of the school learned about her win and offered her a scholarship. She will continue to work part-time at the salon to cover the cost of transportation between home and school but she is determined to make it. I write this blog to tell any male lawyers out there who still think that “women have no business being lawyers”–a fellow law school classmate said this to me in 1990–that we are here to stay. Do not underestimate us. We may not be able to physically best a man but we can emotionally and intellectually stand shoulder to shoulder. You wonder why the previous generation of female lawyers were called “pitbulls with lipstick” or “bi*ch on wheels”? Because they faced actual and passive discrimination when trying to get a seat at the table: Being called “little lady”, being ogled in the courtroom, being physically threatened, being excluded from the good old boy network. They paved the way for women like me. This a post for all the female lawyers: Illegitimi non carborundum.

Well, the 3 Geeks had a fine time this afternoon. After being up before the crack of dawn, @glambert, @gnawledge and I drove up to Ft. Worth and got there in time to hear Susskind, Jeff Carr and Rocky Dhir.

Then it was our turn.

I have to say I had a great time and I think Toby and Greg would agree–a great crowd. And then to be able to actually have us 3 Geeks really walk into a bar afterward was hilarious …

SIDE NOTE: Joe T. Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant has some awesome margaritas and fajitas. I’m just sayin’.

Here is our presentation if you’d like to take a peek.

Geeks Do Ft. Worth – Texas State Bar 2010 – So What Do I Do Now?

View more presentations from Lisa Salazar.

… Association Meeting.

The “3 Geeks” hit the road tomorrow and head up to Ft. Worth to present at the Texas Bar Association Annual Meeting.  We’ll be part of “The Adaptable Lawyer” program on Thursday discussing how the business of law is in transformation. Lawyers and firms who do not adapt to this changing world risk being left in the dust. Those that embrace creativeways to practice, network, and manage business have a great opportunity to set  themselves apart.

We’ll be following a number of great speakers such as Richard Susskind, Jeffrey Carr, Kevin O’Keefe, Judge Susan Criss, and more (no pressure there!!)

Our presentation, entitled “That’s Great, But What Do I Do Now?”, where we are hoping to share our experiences and give examples and suggestions on how to actually implement some of the ideas presented that day. If you’re not able to attend the meeting in person, you can follow the twitter stream through the Texas Bar Association meeting hashtag “#sbot10“. More importantly, there will be a “Tweet and Greet” from 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM. We hope to see you there — either virtually or in person!

I had lunch yesterday with a some folks from outside the legal industry where we discussed issues of making existing knowledge more readily available to others within our companies. I was taking my own advice and discussing the issues of libraries and knowledge management with those outside of law firms to see if there are different approaches that they are taking that we may not have thought of. Unfortunately at this meeting, it turns out that we in the legal field may be further ahead on KM/Library issues than those sitting at the table with me. I was both proud of that, and a little saddened that it turned out that I would be the one doling out the information at this session.

One of the issues we addressed was the fact that the employees of the company were creating documents that would actually benefit others within the same company, but that the departments were so siloed that currently there was no logical way that employee ‘X’ could even find a document written by employee ‘Y’ because X was in Houston, Y was in Dallas, but no way to search each others documents. It’s an old problem, and one that they know needs to be fixed, but they’re not sure where to start. They asked their existing library for help and their answer was for the authors of the documents to send their ‘important documents’ to the library and the library would catalog and store them in their Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC). This is where someone in the group said, “this is what we call ‘Legacy Thinking’.” Legacy Thinking is where you’re trying to make new problems ‘fit’ into existing solutions, even if that solution isn’t practical or effective in solving the existing problem.

Now it was at this point when the same person then told a great “geek” joke that I’m going to share with you:

Q: If God is all powerful, why did it take 6 days and one day of rest to create the heavens and earth?
A: Legacy Systems

Ha… that still cracks me up! Okay… back to my story.

Legacy Thinking doesn’t mean that new problems can’t be solved using existing resources. What it means is that you’re trying to solve all problems using one of the resources that you know, rather than thinking bigger and perhaps determining that there are other, and perhaps better resources for solving this issue. Perhaps those resources already exist in other parts of the company, or it is time to search for an external solution by bringing in a new tool to solve the problem. In this case, the traditional library answer of “put it in the catalog” was Legacy Thinking. Perhaps you could get everyone to send their ‘important’ documents to be cataloged by the library, and perhaps you could train all the employees to search the library catalog for important internal documents, but, that’s asking a lot of your employees to change their basic habits of how they collect and search for existing knowledge. Quite frankly, I don’t know of a lot of places that do very well at this type of collection process.

When I heard this story, I immediately told them that this was a “Knowledge Management” problem and that they need to go to their KM department (which they immediately said didn’t exist), or their IT department (which they said didn’t seem to want to address the problem), or hire a KM consultant (which they finally nodded and said they had the money to do) to come in and see what could be done to solve this issue.
So everyone walked away with their ‘next steps’ in the process, and I left feeling that the library at this company missed an opportunity because they were stuck in Legacy Thinking mode. It is like the old saying of “if your only tool is a hammer, then all problems look like nails.” Same with this situation, if your only solution is the catalog, then everything looks like a MARC record.  (Look it up!)

Over the weekend I had to come up with an emergency presentation on marketing. I serve on the Board of the Houston AMA Chapter and was tasked with serving as a back-up speaker. Then reading Steve Bell’s post on Client Satisfaction Lessons prompted me to capture the main ideas in this post.
My presentation idea: Staying Relevant. I borrowed this idea from a presentation I gave way back in 1996 to a group of bar association leaders on the same topic, only applied to lawyers (Lesson – write a book this time).
The Staying Relevant concept is to:
1) Examine the core changes occurring in a market,
2) Understand the impacts of the changes, and
3) Figure out how to adapt and stay relevant.
The first core change to consider – a shift of power. The shape of this shift is a bit unique. In the 60’s, when marketing was born, there was scarcity of marketing channels (i.e. 3 TV stations) and an abundance of customer attention. Now there is a infinite number of marketing channels (for TV think Hulu.com) and a scarcity of customer attention. So there has been a shift from marketers controlling the flow of information to customers controlling it.
The second core shift comes from the power of Web 2.0. Customers are sharing product and service opinions with each other on a very grand scale.
Results of these shifts:
1) Marketing messages pushed out the old fashioned way don’t hit their targets or at best have a declining rate of return.
2) Customers prefer to get their product information from other customers since these opinions are not paid for and therefore not biased by the provider.
The Moral of this Staying Relevant Story: Happy, informed customers will bring you more customers.
So for the practice of law, the best marketing advice may be: Promptly return phone calls from your clients. As the perennial #1 complaint of clients, this simple effort could become your best marketing tactic.
Now quit reading this and return some calls.

Someone left a copy of the Robb Report in the library over the weekend, and just flipping through it and seeing ads for Prada sunglasses, $90,000 wrist watches, and learning that I could be golfing in Bermuda in just two hours made me remember that there are people out in this world with more dollars than sense. When I flipped through the magazine, I found a great ad on page 253 for Avantair (also here on page 22-23), a private aircraft provider, that featured a plaintiff’s firm of Robb & Robb, LLC out of Kansas City and with perhaps one of the most outlandish reasons for hiring a firm ever…

“Avantair allows us to be more productive and efficient as a law firm.”

Now granted, this may work as a selling point for a plaintiff’s firm, and this firm probably doesn’t bill back this cost directly to its clients, but could you imagine a BigLaw firm putting this claim in their response to an RFP?

“To improve efficiency and productivity, we have our own fleet of private aircraft standing by so that we can be more responsive to our client’s needs.”

Imagine a GC choking on that response! I know of firms that won’t allow their partners to accept free upgrades to first-class because they might accidentally be seen by clients that are sitting back in coach. And, firms where even business-class is discouraged for domestic flights. In BigLaw, the ads would read something like:

“Flying Southwest and Jet Blue may mean we can’t get to you in an hour, but you’ll love our bill at the end of the month!”

Although, the next time I present at a conference that discusses how to make law firms more efficient and productive, I’m bringing this ad as one potential method that probably no one in the room had thought to try.

We’ve all probably received those “continuation notices” or “reminder notices” from vendors that look amazingly like an invoice statement. After a while you get used to seeing them, and quite frankly you just get a little numb to the practice. It isn’t until you see someone else’s comments after they were confused by these ‘notices’ that you remember what a slimy advertising stunt these notices are. Take this comment from yesterday by a public librarian who came across a notice from West:

Our little public library received what seemed at first look to our accounting clerk to be a bill from WEST entitled “reminder notice – library update – – action required” complete with what initially seemed a customer number – but closer inspection showed this was “not an invoice” & the customer number was accompanied by an “offer #” It was for Quinlan’s Zoning Bulletin.
If memory serves me right from my law library days, this was originally a Callaghan publication that was at one time part of the subscription to their Zoning & Land Use set.
Our little public library never owned that publication nor had our Town in the past decade.
What’s most amusing is the “reminder – new edition” part – West has recently released an updated edition of the title below… Hmm, isn’t that what a “newsletter, twice monthly” does … twice monthly?
The “reminder notice” looked so hokey, that I initially considered it was a scam company posing as the West Publishing I remember – (w/ some very wonderful Reps back then I might add) but a Thompson Reuters tm at the bottom assured me this was in fact THE West Publishing Co…
I hardlyyknew yer!

To be fair, West puts in big letters that it is “not an invoice”, and there are some other publishers out there that are much worse about this type of marketing of their products. The fact that it seems that West is expanding this practice to public libraries seems to be a little strange, but not all that unexpected (one commenter wondered if vendors were going to start sending these to High School libraries next.) These types of ‘confusing’ (I’ll stop a little bit short of ‘deceptive’) practices are probably going to be more the norm in the future, especially with the fact that print subscriptions are being cut in significant amounts by law firms and even at academic libraries. So, once again, be vigilant in reviewing your invoices. I’ll warn my kids’ elementary library to be on the lookout for any strange looking “reminder notices” from certain publishers that are looking to expand their client base.

Ready or not… the folks at WestlawNext seem to think that the iPad and other touch-based, tablet-style computers are here to stay and will be making a significant impact in online usage in the next 18-24 months. Mike Dahn, WestlawNext VP of Product Development, gave a few snapshots to a group of Houston law librarians yesterday of the upcoming WLN App for the iPad, and it looked pretty good. The app is supposed to be out in the Fall of 2010 and offer a lot of the functionality (touch, scroll, flip, and rotate) that the iPad users see in other products.

Mike admitted that the iPad isn’t really a great platform for “creating content” (such as writing a 20 page brief), but that it is a great platform for conducting legal research and reading the material. Some of the screenshots we saw show a dual-column format that is set up to mimic how you would read the text in a book. Unlike the web-browser version of dual-column (where you might have to scroll up and down each column because it ran off the bottom of the screen, the iPad version should format exactly to the screen and allow you to then turn the page using your finger.

It seems that more and more programs are going to be “app-based” (what we used to call software), and if we’re going to get into the same issues that caused us to get off of Westlaw and Lexis’ software based programs. I’d bet that some of those legacy software programs are probably still on the base PC install at some firms. (Go check your “Research Applications” tab on your Windows “Start” menu to see if they’re still there!)

Time will tell if the coolness factor, and the usability factor make this a long-term situation, or if we are seeing a flash-in-the pan type products that will loose their shine the first time that the IT department tells the user that they’ll have to fix the problem with the iPad themselves because the iPad is not supported by the firm. WestlawNext seems to be betting that the iPad and other tablet-based devices are here to stay. I think they may be on the right side of that bet. I wonder how long it will take Lexis and Bloomberg to also place a bet on iPad apps??