I keep using the term “structured dialogue” to describe an important piece of my Service Delivery Review. I want to dig into what I mean.

I believe law departments, law firms, and individual legal professionals have an ethical obligation to do things Better, Faster, Cheaper wherever possible regardless of the economic incentives. But the trouble with incentives is that they work.

As businesses, law firms really do need to concern themselves with the return on investments in process improvement, training, or technology. If we do X, will we get more business? Will our profits increase? While it is relatively easy to make the case as to how a particular innovation might improve quality or reduce labor, it is less straight forward to demonstrate that clients will actually care. And clients are a rather important piece of the economic equation.

Clients are right to frequently give their firms low marks on cost-consciousness and innovation (see chart above from George Beaton). I am among those in-house counsel who have exhorted law firms to be more cost-effective, efficient, tech savvy, etc. But where I depart from many, but not all, of my former colleagues is that I recognize that adjectives like “innovative” and “efficient” are vague. Nebulous mandates to ‘do better’ fail to offer much in the way of concrete guidance.

If a law firm were suddenly to get 10% more efficient, would their clients notice? Would their clients reward them with more business? Or would their clients continue to demand the same discounts and cut invoices by the same amount? I don’t have the answers. But the problem is that no one else does either. This inability to project ROI is an obstacle to making the business case for investments in process and technology.

The presumptions against law firm efficiency are so ingrained that it surely not enough for law firms to simply say they are efficient (which all of them already do). And it probably isn’t even enough to be efficient (few are). It is likely necessary for them to prove they are getting more efficient. But how?

Law departments and their core law firms should engage in structured dialogue about what the efficient delivery of legal services looks like. This starts with an honest mapping of the value stream. Identification of areas needing improvement should be followed by prioritization and collective decisions about deliverables, timelines, and measurement. This should be a true dialogue in which both sides are accountable for achieving shared goals. Just as law firms can do better at delivering legal services, law departments can do better at sharing information and integrating their law firms into the client’s legal supply chain. System efficiency, rather than individual efficiency, should be the overarching objective.

Structured dialogue should be an iterative process focused on continuous improvement, not a discrete project. Previous initiatives serve as the baseline for subsequent discussions. Where have we improved? What difference did it make? What lessons did we learn and how can those lessons be applied in selecting new priorities and establishing new targets?< Law firms should be more than just participants, they should stand to gain from demonstrably improving their value proposition and fulfilling their commitments to better serve their clients. This may mean more work. This may mean higher rates. This may mean less pushback on invoices resulting in higher realizations and profits. Law firms must invest real resources to improve service delivery. As businesses, they should see a return on those investments. To be more concrete, below is some output from my Service Delivery Review. These are exemplar findings that seek to mesh what the firm is doing with the client’s priorities. (Click to enlarge)
Importantly, these findings are intended to be a starting point for dialogue. Once the dialogue is concluded, commitments, timelines, measurement, and deliverables will all be memorialized. Clear expectations follow informed, structured dialogue.

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Casey Flaherty is the founder of Procertas. He is a lawyer, consultant, writer, and speaker focused on achieving the right legal outcomes with the right people doing the right work the right way at the right price. Casey created the Service Delivery Review (f.k.a., the Legal Tech Audit), a strategic-sourcing tool that drives deeper supplier relationships by facilitating structured dialogue between law firms and clients. There is more than enough slack in the legal market for clients to get higher quality work at lower cost while law firms increase profits via improved realizations.
The premise of the Service Delivery Review is that with people and pricing in place, rigorous collaboration on process offers the real levers to drive continuous improvement. Proper collaboration means involving nontraditional stakeholders. A prime example is addressing the need for more training on existing technology. One obstacle is that traditional technology training methods are terrible. Competence-based assessments paired with synchronous, active learning offer a better path forward. Following these principles, Casey created the Legal Technology Assessment platform to reduce total training time, enhance training effectiveness, and deliver benchmarked results.
Connect with Casey on LinkedIn or follow him Twitter (@DCaseyF).

I received a press release from Lexis this morning with this eye-catching headline: “Recent LexisNexis Survey Uncovers Gap in New Attorney Readiness for Real World Practice.”   The first thing the whitepaper mentions is that 95% of hiring partners and associates believe that recently graduated law students lack key practical skills.  The deficient skills include “advanced legal research, writing and drafting skills, practical application and an understanding of how litigation or transaction occurs in real life.” 

Duh. 

Any law firm librarian who works with summer associates and recent law school graduates can tell you how ill-prepared they are for the “real world” in a firm.  And, as fellow Geek Casey Flaherty will tell you, clients don’t want to pay for this group to learn to these skills.  Nor should they have to. 

Part of the problem is the law school system itself.  Looking at just these examples you can see why:

Litigation:  The focus is primarily on Federal Litigation.  The problem is that only a small percentage of graduates are fortunate enough to practice in this arena.  When the graduate gets into practice, they are likely to end up dealing with a myriad of state and local court systems that have very little in common with what they learned in school.  Even if they were fortunate enough to spend time in a legal clinic, that experience will not help much if they leave that jurisdiction. 

Legal Research:
This is the Google Generation.  For this group, Google is the first place they turn for legal research (Regular readers of 3 Geeks know how I feel about that).  They are comfortable with Google and are freaked out by the idea of incurring charges on the paid services.  I’m not aware of a required course of study that adequately covers the professional responsibility dangers of inadequate (and inaccurate) legal research.

I don’t fault our law school brethren.  They are genuinely concerned about this problem.  Each AALL meeting for the past 4 years has featured conversations between law school and law firm librarians about how to address these issues.  The conclusion that I have reached is the best way to address these issues is to make a “prepare to practice” curriculum a requirement for graduation.  This curriculum would address variances between jurisdictions in style and practice as well as the business of law.  The latter should include coursework designed to emphasize the importance of good, efficient legal research in a professional responsibility context.

Thank you Lexis for quantifying what law firm librarians have known for years.  I hope this serves as a wake-up call to the legal industry to fundamentally re-examine the legal education system.  Of course, change is hard.  I think it will happen only when the Clients and the Malpractice Insurers demand that their lawyers know what they’re doing when they enter the marketplace.

Who knows, there may be an opportunity out there for a CLE provider to offer this training to law firms.  Hmm…maybe Bigweld was right when he said “See a need, fill a need.”

Now…back to your normally scheduled programming.

Clients are not the only ones who act as if outside lawyers are inefficient. Individual outside lawyers censor themselves for inefficiency. Their firms then cut their time for perceived inefficiency before sending it to the client. The clients cut their time even further. Everyone seems to agree there is considerable waste that must be excised from the bill.

The existing economics of law are such that it is easy to reconcile improved quality and lower costs for clients with better realizations and higher profits for law firms. Five years ago, I did not know this. I thought we were playing a zero sum game. Nor would I have cared if anyone had told me. As detailed in previous posts, I’ve evolved in my thinking about coprosperity. This change in perspective means I have to work at trying to understand what makes for a prosperous law firm. In helping me appreciate how realizations and profit differ from raw revenue, I have to thank Toby and our mutual friend Vince Cordo of Shell. Please do not blame them, however, for the simple-minded drivel that follows.

Understandably, we lack hard data on time that lawyers decide not to record (let alone how this practice may have changed over time). But my anecdata (frequently, a lawyer who performed poorly in Basic Technology Benchmarking would inform me that I need not worry because they cut their own time) lines up with the few bits of empirical speculation I can find. These surveys suggest that 33% of worked time is not billed. The primary culprit is identified as administrative tasks but another factor is individual lawyers deciding “to purposely ‘discount’ the actual number of hours worked in order to keep clients happy.” Similarly, back when firms reported such things to NALP, the average associate at DLA Piper, for example, worked 2,462 hours to bill 1,831 hours (74% of worked time was billed). To use round numbers then, let’s assume for discussion that an exemplar lawyer works 2,500 hours and bills 75% of it (1875 hours). Let’s further assume (I’ve got no statistics on this) that a minority—say 20%—of the unbilled hours are due to self-censorship.

Lawyer Janes works 2,500 hours of which 2,000 are eligible to be billed. She bills 1875 hours.

The 1875 hours is what the firm sees. But 1875 hours is not what the firm sends to its clients. We have good data that billed realizations—the percentage of the 1875 hours billed to clients—have dropped from 93.5% to 86.7% in the last decade. But the data does not tell us how much of the recorded-hours-not-billed-to-clients are due to writedowns versus pre-negotiated discounts. The concept of standard rate, on which realization figures are based, is a maddeningly vague, used differently in different reports, and often reliant on self-reporting (Toby will have to explain). Because I can find it with Google, I will just accept previous findings that pre-negotiated discounts account for about half of the spread (this, admittedly, remains a crude exercise) between time recorded and time billed. Thus:

In 2004, Lawyer Janes works 2,500 hours of which 2,000 are eligible to be billed. She bills 1875 hours. The firm has already negotiated discounts that bring her total down to 1813 standard hours. In addition, the firm writes down her time to 1753 hours actually billed to clients.

In 2014, Lawyer Janes works 2,500 hours of which 2,000 are eligible to be billed. She bills 1875 hours. The firm has already negotiated discounts that bring her total down to 1746 standard hours. In addition, the firm writes down her time to 1625 hours actually billed to clients.

That is not the end of the story. Clients have grown much more aggressive in cutting legal invoices since the Great Recession. Or so the story goes. The story is true. Comparing collected realization pre- and post-Recession, clients increased the average amount they cut from bills by 500%. That’s a big jump. But this framing obscures the low baseline. In 2004, the average client was paying 99.1% of their billed invoices. In 2014, the average client is still paying 95.7% of their billed invoices. So:  

In 2004, Lawyer Janes works 2,500 hours of which 2,000 are eligible to be billed. She bills 1875 hours. The firm had already negotiated discounts that bring her total down to 1813 standard hours. In addition, the firm writes down her time to 1753 hours actually billed to clients. The firm collects 1738 hours.

In 2014, Lawyer Janes works 2,500 hours of which 2,000 are eligible to be billed. She bills 1875 hours. The firm had already negotiated discounts that bring her total down to 1746 standard hours. In addition, the firm writes down her time to 1625 hours actually billed to clients. The firm collects 1555 hours.

I’ll go Excel on the 2014 numbers and add a $400/hr billable rate with some additional crude data on the cost of an associate. And we’ll spread the billed work evenly among 4 clients.


Now, let us imagine an alternative scenario where some initiative (e.g., a Service Delivery Review) leads both to (i) actual improved integration of process and technology into the workflow producing modest BFC (Better, Faster, Cheaper) results and (ii) a structured dialogue between the client and law firm that convinces both sides there is less waste in the delivery of legal services. In this hypothetical, the law firm lawyers, who are closest to the improvements, are more convinced of the gains than their clients. Because of the increased efficiency, the law firm can serve more clients in fewer hours. 
 
These are modest gains. Yet, the client is spending 15% less, and the law firm is profiting 16% more, while the individual lawyer spends 50 less hours in the office (an hour per week or a real vacation). The foregoing exercise also drives home one of Toby’s favorite points: discounts and writedowns come entirely at the expense of profits. What may only be a small percentage of raw revenue can be a substantial percentage of total profit. The margins are where the magic happens.

The above assumes that the law firm has picked up a new client. It is nice to believe that improvements in quality paired with reductions in cost would result in additional work and new clients. But even if the total work is finite, the law firms can still increase profits without charging their clients more. This, however, means fewer lawyers. While subsisting with fewer lawyers may sound like a post-apocalyptic hellscape straight out of Mad Max (water, gas, bullets, and lawyers all in scare supply), it is the world in which we have lived for the last half-dozen years. Using the preceding scenarios, compare how many lawyers are required to collect on 200,000 hours of time and the attendant impact on profits:

The gains can still be shared. The finite client base can spend appreciably less (i.e., save money) on legal services while the law firm profits more:

The foregoing is an admittedly crude explanation of why we are not necessarily playing a zero-sum game, even in an environment still dominated by the billable hour. Client cost reductions need not come out of law firm profits. Increased law firm profits need not come at the expense of clients. Structured dialogue between the two can result in Better, Faster, Cheaper benefiting both parties. 

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Casey Flaherty is the founder of Procertas. He is a lawyer, consultant, writer, and speaker focused on achieving the right legal outcomes with the right people doing the right work the right way at the right price. Casey created the Service Delivery Review (f.k.a., the Legal Tech Audit), a strategic-sourcing tool that drives deeper supplier relationships by facilitating structured dialogue between law firms and clients. There is more than enough slack in the legal market for clients to get higher quality work at lower cost while law firms increase profits via improved realizations.
The premise of the Service Delivery Review is that with people and pricing in place, rigorous collaboration on process offers the real levers to drive continuous improvement. Proper collaboration means involving nontraditional stakeholders. A prime example is addressing the need for more training on existing technology. One obstacle is that traditional technology training methods are terrible. Competence-based assessments paired with synchronous, active learning offer a better path forward. Following these principles, Casey created the Legal Technology Assessment platform to reduce total training time, enhance training effectiveness, and deliver benchmarked results.
Connect with Casey on LinkedIn or follow him Twitter (@DCaseyF).

If you follow the automotive industry (I was in-house counsel at a car company), you follow Toyota (usually the top selling automaker in the world). If you study process improvement (I am a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt), you study Toyota (the Toyota Production System is the precursor of Lean). If you are interested in sourcing (like Toby, I wrote a chapter in the Legal Procurement Handbook), you are interested in Toyota (posterchild for deep supplier relationships). I do not pretend to be an expert on The Toyota Way. But I have been convinced that a strong-arm approach to strategic supplier relationships is a sub-optimal strategy over the long term.

I already told the story of how experience with stellar outside counsel changed my outlook on the inside/outside counsel relationship. But the most influential narrative in the evolution of my scholastic understanding of supplier relationships comes from automotive industry after the SUV bubble popped in the late 90’s.

For the first time, the Big 3 experienced the Japanese automakers as an existential threat. In studying their competition, the Big 3 found that the supply base was a substantial source of the Japanese cost advantage. The Big 3 sought to mitigate this advantage by leaning on their own suppliers for cost reductions, which they got—just not enough. The Big 3 also had to deal with the fallout from the rapid transformation of their supplier relationships. This fallout included inferior quality parts and a depleted, antagonized supply base, many of whom went bankrupt in the Great Recession.

The Big 3’s cost savings were insufficient because the Japanese automakers responded with cost reduction targets of their own. In addition to lower costs, the Japanese also mandated quality improvements. The Japanese automakers achieved both reduced cost and improved quality while emerging with an engaged, profitable supply base, which included many American suppliers. The distinguishing feature in the Japanese approach is that the Japanese assisted their suppliers in hitting their targets.

Consulting teams were dispatched to strategically important suppliers with the sole purpose of helping the suppliers achieve the twin mandates of cost reduction and quality improvement. The effort was not only about developing better processes at the suppliers but also better integration of the suppliers into the overall economic value chain. The objective was more than just better performing suppliers, it was deeper supplier relationships, which are founded on a commitment to coprosperity.

(Source)

It is hard to imagine a well-regarded law firm run by smart lawyers going bankrupt (well, not that hard to imagine). And not even I am arrogant enough to entertain the notion of inside counsel telling outside counsel how to run a law firm (which has always struck me as akin to herding drunken cats). But I have first-hand experience with how structured dialogue, clear expectations, and collaboration can benefit both sides of the relationship. Law firms can do better. So can clients. It is much easier to pursue better together.

In my next post, I will discuss how, even in an environment still dominated by the billable hour, improved quality and reduced costs for clients can result in higher realizations and profits for law firms.

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Casey Flaherty is the founder of Procertas. He is a lawyer, consultant, writer, and speaker focused on achieving the right legal outcomes with the right people doing the right work the right way at the right price. Casey created the Service Delivery Review (f.k.a., the Legal Tech Audit), a strategic-sourcing tool that drives deeper supplier relationships by facilitating structured dialogue between law firms and clients. There is more than enough slack in the legal market for clients to get higher quality work at lower cost while law firms increase profits via improved realizations.
The premise of the Service Delivery Review is that with people and pricing in place, rigorous collaboration on process offers the real levers to drive continuous improvement. Proper collaboration means involving nontraditional stakeholders. A prime example is addressing the need for more training on existing technology. One obstacle is that traditional technology training methods are terrible. Competence-based assessments paired with synchronous, active learning offer a better path forward. Following these principles, Casey created the Legal Technology Assessment platform to reduce total training time, enhance training effectiveness, and deliver benchmarked results.
Connect with Casey on LinkedIn or follow him Twitter (@DCaseyF).

In the last two weeks, the MLB’s Toronto Blue Jays have made trades and acquisitions from all over the U.S.  The team is on fire, the Rogers Centre is selling to its 45,000 person capacity and there is a winning energy in the air.  But the Blue Jays,  their fans, and their latest string of new players are not the only ones who are noticing this great city.  Yesterday, Littler Mendleson, the Bay Area Headquartered AmLaw 100 Labour and Employment boutique opened its doors in Toronto and Canada.  Aside from the new spellings it will need to adopt, the opening signals what I have always held true.  Toronto is a world class city, with opportunity for the legal market that expands beyond the “6”.  I could be lamenting the consolidation of the industry and pain of the current exchange rate or the price of oil, but today, I am (possibly naively), buoyed by the energy of the announcement and the paradigm shift it represents for this legal market.  All eyes are on Toronto and thankfully this time, it’s not because of our drama generating former mayor but because of the vitality of the city and the country.  There is no doubt that the legal industry is changing, if you only ever read 3 Geeks, you’ll get a pretty good sense of the angst and possibility of the current climate, and moves like this one, remind me that not all change is bad and in fact change is the necessary evil that forces us to grow and evolve.  So, as the Canadian “Geek”, let me welcome you to Toronto.  May you enjoy the city and its energy as much as I do and Go Jays Go!

I’ve been labeled a Legal Rebel, an Innovator, and a “humorless moron.” The last one I understand. But the first two have always struck me as a slightly silly. I feel like what I am best known for—the suggestion that legal professionals should get slightly better at using the machines they’ve been staring at eight to eighteen hours a day for the last twenty years—borders on banal. I took a while to realize that the innovation was not in the call for increased proficiency but in the approach.

Instead of throwing work over the wall and then reactively complaining months later about inefficiency while reviewing information-poor invoices, I tore down the wall to proactively address root causes. I defined the problem. Measured it. Analyzed it. Then I sought to improve on the status quo and maintain control of the improvements. One would think some form of this methodology would had have been in use for the past 60 years, at least. Unfortunately, in the legal market, any disciplined approach to process improvement is somewhere between innovative and revolutionary.

What was once the Legal Tech Audit is now the Service Delivery Review (“SDR”) because (a) the word “audit” makes people uncomfortable, (b) the audit concept is too one-sided, and (c) a comprehensive vendor management program has become confused (my own fault) with its most well-known component, Basic Technology Benchmarking. While the lack of basic technology training garnered the headlines, it is only one out of ten categories in the SDR. The categories are:

  • Hardware/Software
  • Mobility
  • Training
  • Staffing
  • E-Signatures
  • Document Assembly
  • Process/Project Management
  • Knowledge Management
  • Data/Analytics
  • Billing Hygiene 

Each category is supplemented by an onsite review. I will discuss each category and the onsite review in subsequent posts.

The conceptual foundation of the SDR is this: with people and pricing in place, process offers the most levers to drive continuous improvement. When deployed correctly, the SDR serves as far more than just a finger-wagging exercise. 

The SDR is the initial step in an ongoing structured dialogue. As inside counsel, it was my responsibility to set priorities and communicate clear, achievable expectations for my outside counsel, rather than just complain in vague terms about inefficiency. It was also important for me to listen and understand how my internal team and I could assist outside counsel in achieving their objectives.

To take one example, my first SDR was of a firm that preceded my tenure in-house and, no matter what happened, was going to be there long after I left. They were the quintessential sacred cow. And for good reason. They turned out to be some of the finest lawyers (and people) I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. Not only were they true substantive experts in a rather niche area, but their institutional knowledge of our mutual client was also unparalleled. While I do not think incumbency should be unassailable, it does confer legitimate advantages, which this firm had earned.

But to say that they were the very best at what they did is not to say they were perfect (no one is, author included). To their eternal credit, this group of domain experts was genuinely interested in improving the more generic aspects of their legal service delivery. They greeted the SDR with open minds (despite being professional issue spotters). When the SDR was complete, the relationship partners and I had a frank dialogue about what the findings meant and the concrete steps that should be taken as a result. They committed to a number of process improvements, which they delivered. These included better associate training on basic technology. But that was only one aspect of the review and one area in which they measurably improved.

It is worth noting, however, that, beyond their substantive expertise, these long-time incumbents also had the best knowledge management practices I ever reviewed. While, like every other firm, they got dinged where they performed below expectations, the SDR also resulted in them earning substantial goodwill in the many areas where they excelled. Combined with their commitment to, and subsequent delivery of, process improvements, the end result of the SDR was a deeper, more collaborative relationship.

Collaboration runs both ways. I, for example, needed to get more disciplined about putting new matters into the system earlier (most matters were initiated with an email, and the matter management system was updated later) in order to facilitate better accrual practices and quicker turnaround of invoices. We also developed a secure file sharing protocol that meant they had ready access to the regular reports, rather than waiting for my paralegal or me to respond to an email request. This firm was a critical piece of our workflow and better integration benefited both parties.

In short, without yet knowing the term, I had adopted a strategic sourcing perspective on supplier relationships:

All this was a bit of a surprise to me. I moved in-house with the attitude that many of the problems with the legal market are result of inside counsel being too soft on outside counsel. I still think that is true to a certain extent. But, as I will detail in my next post, there are different approaches to taking a firm line with long-term suppliers. My initial impulse to rely solely on strong-arm tactics was misguided. I owe a debt of gratitude to the law firm partners who showed me a better way. Commitments to collaboration and coprosperity were important evolutions in my thinking about the relationship between inside and outside counsel.

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Casey Flaherty is the founder of Procertas. He is a lawyer, consultant, writer, and speaker focused on achieving the right legal outcomes with the right people doing the right work the right way at the right price. Casey created the Service Delivery Review (f.k.a., the Legal Tech Audit), a strategic-sourcing tool that drives deeper supplier relationships by facilitating structured dialogue between law firms and clients. There is more than enough slack in the legal market for clients to get higher quality work at lower cost while law firms increase profits via improved realizations.
The premise of the Service Delivery Review is that with people and pricing in place, rigorous collaboration on process offers the real levers to drive continuous improvement. Proper collaboration means involving nontraditional stakeholders. A prime example is addressing the need for more training on existing technology. One obstacle is that traditional technology training methods are terrible. Competence-based assessments paired with synchronous, active learning offer a better path forward. Following these principles, Casey created the Legal Technology Assessment platform to reduce total training time, enhance training effectiveness, and deliver benchmarked results.
Connect with Casey on LinkedIn or follow him Twitter (@DCaseyF).
Regardless of whether you love this concept, or hate it, the University of Michigan’s Medical School may have just laid out the future of the Librarian as “Informationist.”

In its announcement regarding the opening of the new A. Alfred Taubman Health Sciences Library (THSL), U-M Med School removed all of the books, and bookshelves, and created a 137,000 square foot “natural light-filled medical education hub that supports in-person, collaborative, active learning.”

Books are off-site and available via “rapid delivery upon request.”

The Library is staffed by “Informationists” that serve the University and general public to access the “stored knowledge of medical and health science.”

Space is for learning, training, teaching, connecting, simulation, and collaboration. Not simply for housing “stored knowledge.”

I, for one, like this concept. I like the idea of having Informationists. I like storing massive amounts of books off-site and focusing more on digital access, and quick retrieval of information from a stored location. I like the idea of using the space for hands-on training, collaboration, and interaction.

I know that there are some things that are missing. The happenstance of browsing the shelves and coming upon the one book that has the answer that you would have missed online. The ability to sit in the middle of a quiet area of the library and study without people having a disruptive discussion. The ability to find a spot deep in the shelves and hideaway from the rest of the world.

All of that has been replaced with digital catalogs, and study rooms (probably with big glass windows and lots of outdoor lighting.)

Despite this, and other things that may disappear with this style of library, I think this is the future. If we do not embrace this, or something similar that creates a more interactive space, then libraries will not evolve, they will shrink and disappear. Traditional Librarian roles will struggle to maintain, but Informationists or the next iteration of engaged and interactive Librarian will thrive and innovate their way into the future.

Watch the video of the ideals behind the new library design. As you are watching it, think about how the concepts apply to your library space and service strategy. Replace “medical” with “legal.” Replace “school” with “court” or “firm.” Think big and imagine what you could do beyond storing and retrieving knowledge in your own library.

When students come to the University of Michigan, they don’t just think about becoming a doctor, a medical scientist, or a health professional; they think about making the world a better place.

Now we’ve created a better place for them. A place to learn, to connect, and to grow.

Welcome to the new, vastly improved Taubman Health Sciences Library.

What was once a traditional library has been transformed into a light-filled, technology-driven, dynamic learning space. Our students envision a future where learning, technology, and passion combine to help patients, and enhance the public’s health. So we designed the renovation with those same ideals in mind.

Now students and their professors can connect and learn in dozens of classrooms, small group rooms, simulated patient care rooms, and an all-digital library environment. 

The building allows students from different health profession programs to come together in new ways. To learn how to care for patients as a team. To problem solve. And, to learn from one another, as well as faculty. 

For our medical students, the renovation means a quantum leap – as big as their innovative new curriculum. Here, they will learn the core principles of doctoring to prepare them to become members of outstanding patient care teams at the University’s nearby hospitals and clinics. The walls and tables will become canvases for their ideas and questions. They can even spend time in the new medical student lounge. 

Rows of bookshelves may have vanished from this library building, but the vast holdings of one of the nation’s best medical libraries are still available for rapid delivery upon request. 

The Library’s Informationists are still here to help the university community and the general public access and use the stored knowledge of medical and health science. For those who learn and those who teach it’s all about making the world a better place, one place at a time. [emphasis added]

Long-time reader. First-time poster.

Does the following resemble anyone you know? “Far too many people—and especially people with high knowledge in one area—are contemptuous of knowledge in other areas or believe that being ‘bright’ is a substitute for knowing.” Peter Drucker’s biting observation is likely familiar to anyone who has spent time working in the legal market. We have an abundance of well-credentialed domain experts with little interest in areas outside their comfort zone no matter how important those areas might be to their success or the success of their organization. Suggestions that legal professionals—lawyers, in particular—should concern themselves with pricing, marketing, technology, project management, etc. are often met with some blend of confusion and disgust.

And so begins another installment of lawyer bashing. But not this time. Or, at least, not yet. I want to thank the Geeks for providing me a platform. I hope to deliver more nuanced thoughts on the legal profession than may have previously been associated with me. When The American Lawyer introduces you to the world with the headline “Big Law Whipped for Poor Tech Training”, it is hard to break out of the mold of inside counsel berating outside counsel—especially when there is some truth to it and playing the big bad is so much fun. 

My first couple of posts will serve as an introduction to who I am but also highlight many of the ways in which I have been wrong–the ways in which I was the person described in the Drucker quote above.

I am former BigLaw lawyer turned corporate counsel turned consultant. The reason people might recognize my name is coverage of my tenure in-house where I subjected my outside counsel to what was then called the Legal Technology Audit (now called the Service Delivery Review because the word “audit” makes some people uncomfortable). I visited my law firms to examine how work was handled. The focal point of the review was how the law firms integrated process and technology into the delivery of legal services—rather than  substantive legal acumen, a threshold requirement the firms had already satisfied. I investigated hardware, software, project management, document automation, knowledge management, staffing, etc. But training on the basic technology is what got everyone’s attention (including Greg). The Washington Post, for example, was intrigued that (a) someone had the audacity to test legal professionals on their proficiency with common desktop software (e.g., Word, PDF, Excel) and (b) legal professionals fared so poorly. So I became the guy who bashed outside lawyers for not knowing Word, and I relished it.

At a recent meeting with a prominent law firm, one of the partners confessed at the end, “I expected you to have horns.” That’s great fun. But it is also a problem. The big bad persona obscures a more constructive approach to what it means to be sophisticated providers and consumers of legal service. As Connie Brenton of NetApp and I wrote in a recent column, “Law firms are easy targets. But law departments are the largest impediment to change in the legal marketplace. We set the incentives.” An antagonistic posture runs counter to my thoughts on the ways in which inside and outside counsel should collaborate, as well as my evolution on how that collaboration should occur and why it matters. More on that in my next couple of posts.

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Casey Flaherty is the founder of Procertas. He is a lawyer, consultant, writer, and speaker focused on achieving the right legal outcomes with the right people doing the right work the right way at the right price. Casey created the Service Delivery Review (f.k.a., the Legal Tech Audit), a strategic-sourcing tool that drives deeper supplier relationships by facilitating structured dialogue between law firms and clients. There is more than enough slack in the legal market for clients to get higher quality work at lower cost while law firms increase profits via improved realizations.
The premise of the Service Delivery Review is that with people and pricing in place, rigorous collaboration on process offers the real levers to drive continuous improvement. Proper collaboration means involving nontraditional stakeholders. A prime example is addressing the need for more training on existing technology. One obstacle is that traditional technology training methods are terrible. Competence-based assessments paired with synchronous, active learning offer a better path forward. Following these principles, Casey created the Legal Technology Assessment platform to reduce total training time, enhance training effectiveness, and deliver benchmarked results.
Connect with Casey on LinkedIn or follow him Twitter (@DCaseyF).

Some are saying that President Obama’s choice to fill Dr. James H. Billington’s position at the Library of Congress could very well define his legacy as President. If you’ve paid any attention to this discussion, the common theme is that, while Dr. Billington was a good leader, he lagged behind in positioning the Library of Congress for the 21st Century and the digital age. Now is the time to change the direction of the Library, and the American Association of Law Libraries is adding its voice to what Law Librarians would want in the 14th Librarian of Congress.

The letter below was sent to the President today recommending that he nominate a candidate who will provide strong leadership on issues affecting libraries in the digital age.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Cara Schillinger
Director of Membership, Marketing, and Communications
312.205.8020
cschillinger@aall.org

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF LAW LIBRARIES
SENDS LETTER TO PRESIDENT ON QUALIFICATIONS
OF NEXT LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS

CHICAGO, August 3, 2015 — The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) today submitted a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama recommending he nominate a visionary leader with a deep commitment to preserving cultural memory as the new Librarian of Congress to replace Dr. James H. Billington, who is retiring from the position effective January 1, 2016.

The Librarian of Congress heads the Library of Congress, recognized as the United States’ de facto national library and the largest library in the world. The librarian also oversees the U.S. Copyright Office, Law Library of Congress, and several other service and support units. Dr. Billington, the 13th Librarian of Congress, has served in the role for 28 years, after being appointed to the position by former President Ronald Reagan in 1987.

AALL’s letter asks President Obama, during his search for the next Librarian of Congress, to consider qualified candidates, including law librarians, who will provide strong leadership on issues affecting libraries in the digital age — such as preservation of and permanent public access to born-digital and digitized materials.

AALL believes the next Librarian of Congress should have a transformative vision of a strong, responsive, and modern Library of Congress for the 21st century and beyond; possess a sophisticated understanding of how technology can improve library operations and promote access and reservation;
and display a commitment to transparency, public participation, and collaboration.

The full text of AALL’s letter to the president is available at bit.ly/AALLlocrec. For more information about AALL and its other advocacy efforts, please visit www.aallnet.org.

About AALL
The American Association of Law Libraries was founded in 1906 to promote law libraries’ value to the legal and public communities, foster the law librarianship profession, and provide leadership in the legal information field. With nearly 5,000 members, AALL represents law librarians and related professionals who are affiliated with law firms; law schools; corporate legal departments; courts; and local, state, and federal government agencies. For more information, visit www.aallnet.org.

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In his post the “Great Google Debate“, Mark Gediman suggested I was wise to not touch the debate on Google, and while I am happy to take the compliment, it also makes me wonder if somewhere down the road we (and by we, I mean those industry insiders, you know who you are) can’t create a Google equivalent to support the Legal industry. Imagine a single source that allows researchers to bridge the chasm between the business of law and the practice of law.  Let me explain.

On that same panel at AALL, I was asked where CI should report, my reaction drew a chuckle and was rapidly tweeted and retweeted. It was something to the effect of “I am tired of having this debate”. And I am, for a variety of reasons.  Where any of the research types or “information and analysis brokers” – Library, CI, KM, Research etc. – report is in my opinion, irrelevant and but an administrative imperative. How and where we add value to the firm and most importantly its bottom line/top line is what matters. I tweeted yesterday that information, intelligence, analysis when used effectively and systemically by firms could be the next disruptive factor, akin to the AFA.  Research, and the information professionals who undertake these tasks are embracing technology and are “to be congratulated for navigating really difficult times in the industry” according to Aric Press.  Big Law Is Here to Stay, and if its information professionals are going to continue to step up their game in this rapidly changing industry, they need proper tools, a collaborative environment and a checking of the proverbial egos (and related reporting structures) at the doors. 

Throughout the day, information professionals on the business side of the equation, search Google, subscription databases (what’s your favourite??), social media feeds, securities filings, traditional and  new media outlets and should be doing some kind of primary research i.e. talking to people and working the network (that’s a blog post for another time). On the practice side of the equation, legal researchers search corporate precedents, case law, filings, treaties, judgments, dockets, summaries, briefs, memos and other subscription databases. Imagine if you could put it all together, search one platform – a Googlesque type platform minus the paid SEO and get whatever research you needed in one place. How much more efficient, smart and focused on client and legal service could we and our firms be with one magnificent tool at our finger tips. 

Its pie in the sky, but that’s where dreams live, right? Here’s a use case. A proposed change in legislation relating to construction zoning in a particular jurisdiction is announced.  You  – Research Warrior/Maven/Guru  access the details of the proposed changes, and are able to fire it off to the relevant attorneys for an opinion, a LinkedIn Post, or a Client Update, while at the same time researching the number of public (and private, it’s a dream database, right?) companies in the jurisdiction who will be affected. You can also access which of those companies are your clients, your competitor clients, or prospects, and you can analyze the text of the proposed change to determine what the percentage of prior proposals with similar language were accepted, or rejected. With this data in hand, you can do a historiographic or timeline analysis to determine the likelihood of the proposal becoming law and using the same magic portal you can determine which other jurisdictions may adopt similar changes based on a cursory review of relevant local media and social media reactions and commentary.  And let’s not stop there, with a few clicks, you can output all the data into neatly branded reports complete with charts and graphs – a data visualization panacea. At that point, who really cares where you report? You just saved lawyers time, developed new leads, created an opportunity to demonstrate the firm’s value and demonstrated the information professional’s propensity for serial innovation.  Not bad in a day’s work!

Yes, there will be those that suggest it can’t be done, or those who won’t trust the data in a single platform even if it is pulling from multiple (triangulated and vetted) sources.  And course there will be a myriad of UX considerations, search/browse convergence discussions, taxonomy whoas and other finicky things to figure out.   But it would stop the where should we report and should we use Google debates….