Image [cc] schoeband

Recently I participated in a think-tank discussion about how the law firm business model is broken. I kept quiet for the first part of the discussion (for those who know me, this was not easy). People in the room attacked most aspects of how law firms are run, which is popular and fun these days. Truth be told – I partake in it as well on this blog. But at a point I couldn’t hold it in any longer and blurted out: The business model is not broken.

Everyone turned and gave me the ‘who farted’ look (HT to Lincoln Mead for that descriptive phrase).

Which brings us to the question: What is the law firm business model? As I see it, it’s a
professional services firm in a partnership (or partnership-like) model where the owners actively participate in the delivery of services. Law firms sell the time and expertise of their people at a profit. Firms utilize various pricing approaches, more heavily focused on a time and material approach (a.k.a. the billable hour).

So in the conversation, I put forth the statement: What is broken about that?

One example thrown out was how the billable hour was broken since it motivates bad behavior. As in it motivates lawyers to spend excessive time performing various tasks.

My counter: the billable hour motivates hard work. What is wrong with that? Last time I checked, most ‘business models’ reward hard work, whether it’s spending extra time working or driving more value through creativity.

I suggest the billable hour is not a bad or broken aspect of the business model. But there is something missing: Leadership and Management. By this I mean that firm management has not done a good job of setting expectations around how hours can be accumulated. At the truck assembly plant, workers can increase their comp by taking extra shifts. However they are not the ones deciding how much effort they can apply to each task. If they take twice as along to install a wheel, instead of getting twice as much work credit, they probably get a reprimand since they are slowing down the assembly line.

Law firms need to adopt such an oversight function into their processes and practices. Many firms are pursuing project management as a means to accomplish this.

The point here is that although law firms are under increasing pressure to lower the cost of delivering their services, the basic business model is fine. What is needed is adoption of more business-like practices within that model. In the 70’s and 80’s the business model of American car manufacturers was not ‘broken.’ Instead they needed to adapt the practices and process to an increasingly competitive market. They installed automated assembly equipment to cut their cost of producing cars. They did not change their basic business model. They are all still corporations, designing, building and selling automobiles.

I’m not sure exactly what type of business model law firms would adopt if the current one is broken. Maybe we should set up a dealership network and offer incentives at the end of the year to clear inventory. Or not.

The model is not broken. Firms just need to evolve into a mode where they continually adapt to a changing market.

And if you are wondering; No – I did not break wind.

In Part One of this series, we talked about how pricing is pulling towards the compensation challenge for law firms, based on how pricing is interwoven with profitability. In this next section we put forth a “Straw Man” for how compensation might change to better motivate profitable behavior by law firm partners.
Part Two
A Modest (and High-level) Compensation Proposal
What follows is a possible approach to developing a next-generation comp system for a law firm. This approach breaks down comp into a base, plus three different reward or bonus buckets, allowing a firm to reward all types of profit enhancing behavior from partners. The challenge for this system, and any system like it, will be striking the right balance between the three reward options. As previously noted, the balance will need to protect current revenue along with encouraging new revenue. And it will need to properly reward key partners, to retain them within the firm.
Baseline Worker Comp Reward
First – law firm partners need to continue to function as workers. Clients hire them because of their expertise. So any comp system will have to first account for that worker aspect. This proposed model sets a base level of billable effort (a.k.a. work), that all partners should reach. The exceptions (there are always exceptions) might be partners with leadership and administrative responsibilities.
Further refining this concept, we might divide the base level of compensation into two or three levels, where partners are rewarded as workers. This reflects the value of partners as workers and should likely reflect their experience levels. For argument’s sake, let’s set this threshold at 1000 hours. And for their 1000 hours, a firm would set base comp of at three levels (recognizing junior, mid-level and senior partner experience), so if all the partner does is bill (and collect) on the 1000 hours, they will be paid the base amount relative to their assigned level. This base level might be treated as a “labor cost” in a firm’s profitability model.
Of course, firms will set expectations that the base is not enough. Any partner functioning only at this level will likely be let go in short order since they would be only be a worker performing at a substandard level of effort.
Above the Base
Our theoretical firm has three options for a partner to increase their income (and keep their jobs).
Reward Option #1 – Be a better worker.
In this option, the partner would increase their billed and collected hours well above the 1000 hour mark. Our future firm might set a per hour ‘bonus’ for each partner level. Partners who fit solely into this category for comp might be high-level subject experts, such as first-chair trial lawyers, high-value niche regulatory experts, or others with higher effective billing rates.
There will be long-term challenges with partners who only function in this role, as they are truly serving in just a worker role. They may be highly specialized, high-demand workers, but they are not actively expanding the business. Consider a star player on a NFL Team. They will be paid very handsomely, but they don’t make decisions about the business.
Reward Option #2 – Maintain an existing, valuable client relationship
Many partners at firms inherit institutional clients of the firm. Keeping these clients happy has tremendous value. Although in a new model, keeping this client work profitable will be equally, if not more important. A client that brings in $2mm in fees might sound appealing, but if it cost the firm $3mm to serve that client, there is an obvious problem. So the compensation rewards for this option will be tied to maintaining revenue levels and improving the profitability of the revenue.
Here the comp reward can be tied to revenue and profit levels for existing clients. A partner pursuing this comp option will want a happy client and well-managed work. They will be concerned about practice management resources such as project management and practice innovation, and will be pushing for greater efficiencies and new value propositions in service offerings.
Reward Option #3 – Bring in new work
New work will come from both existing and new clients. From existing clients, this might be cross-selling new types of work or significantly expanding work in a given practice. In both circumstances, the revenue will need to be profitable or have the potential for profit. New work may initially be profit-challenged, but ultimately must fall within a firm’s acceptable level of profit. Of course, adding new, profitable revenue to a firm will have the highest value and be reflected in the comp systems as such.
Partners pursuing this option for comp will demand business development resources and differentiated service offerings. They will want to see efficiency enhancing efforts implemented to keep the services cost competitive, although they may not be the ones personally driving those innovations.
Combinations
Depending on the type of practice, a partner might enhance their comp through a combination of the three options. For instance, they may choose to bill a lot and bring in new work. In any event, partners who work hard across any of our options can be properly rewarded. But those that expand the business and enhance profit will be rewarded at the highest levels.
Note: For those partners still living in the old world (e.g. Tax lawyers), this new model will still be able to properly reward their efforts. Those in the old world can still be getting rate increases and still be getting work by being high-level subject matter experts. They would see rewards from all three options and thus be properly compensated.
This reward schema is different from many current law firm comp systems, as they tend to place first emphasis on a partner’s “worker” behavior at the highest value. “Hard work” is primarily perceived as having many billable hours. As billable hours is only one driver of law firm profit, the new models, like the one proposed here, will need to move away from that narrow thinking. Hard work comes in many other ways than just billing time. This new approach recognizes and rewards all of those efforts.
The Leap of Faith?
Regardless of the changes firms make to their comp systems, they will need to find some way to balance out how they reward various profit enhancing behaviors by their partners. They may choose to place greater emphasis on one option or another, but to have an effective comp system, they will want to include all three. Leaving one out and assuming or hoping their partners will still engage in that type of behavior is ill advised. Current comp systems reward “worker” behavior at a high level and as a consequence, partners will focus on that effort to the exclusion of most of the others.
As a former Knowledge Management (KM) professional, from personal experience I can tell you that partners (and lawyers in general) will not engage in efforts that do not impact their comp. One example is CRM. Law firms installed expensive enterprise software systems expecting lawyers to take the time to utilize them, adding valuable client data and leveraging that to bring in more work. Lawyers, for the most part, did not participate. The moral of this story is firms should not expect changes in behavior from lawyers unless they create a clear economic incentive for that change.
Where does that leave us? First – the traditional law firm compensation systems reward behavior that is outdated. They focus on rewards for hours and revenue. They tend to reward partners who bill a lot of hours, along with partners who bring in revenue, regardless of how profitable that revenue is. In today’s market, those rewards are not sufficient to drive profitable partner behavior. Innovative firms will start altering their compensation systems to reward partner behavior that drives a profitable practice in this changing, competitive market.

In this two part series, we will look at how the legal pricing role has been drawn into the profitability role and is now being pulled towards the compensation side of law firms. From there we will apply the knowledge being gained from pricing and lay out a possible future compensation approach focused on motivating profitable behavior by law firm partners. Throughout this discussion we will look at the pitfalls of making such a change, and not making any change.

Part One

As the pricing role has been pulled into the sphere of law firm profitability, many times that pull continues on over into the compensation arena. As noted in the recently published The Law Firm Pricing Report, pricing is a role that takes center stage for profitability, such that the pricing function many times becomes the voice of profitability in a firm. And once profitability is understood within a partnership’s ranks, questions quickly rise about its potential role in compensation.

Discussed at length in the Report is the broader challenge of law firm profitability. The challenge arises since law firm partners (in the general use of the term) are both owners and workers. Any profit methodology needs to tackle the issue of how you treat partner compensation in relation to profit. Is it treated as all profit, or entirely as a labor cost? Or is it split between the two in some fashion? Whichever approach a firm takes, this first pass highlights the relationship between profit and compensation, which in turn makes it clear how pricing will be drawn into the compensation dialog as it evolves.

And the dialog about profit and compensation will definitely be evolving – and as importantly, ongoing. The underlying goal of most compensation efforts, especially outside of the legal market, is driving value and profitability. Compensation should motivate profit enhancing behaviors and should always be adapting to changing market conditions. Therefore a prerequisite for firms is sending a clear and consistent profitability message to its partnership. Without a clear understanding of profitability, a firm cannot expect any compensation system to properly motivate profitable partner behaviors.

This law firm profit message centers on a shift from the old to the new. The old profit discussion was about hours and revenue, since that was effective at increasing profits. However, the market conditions have changed, as in there is no longer increasing demand and low price sensitivity. Under flat demand and growing price sensitivity, the new discussion needs to be a broader conversation about revenue and profit. Prior to 2008, hours and revenue were enough to drive profits. But since then rate increases are down, realization against those rates has dropped from 94% to 84% and the utilization of law firm lawyers has also dropped (increasing the cost per hour of lawyers to the firm), ‘hours and revenue’ is no longer effective in driving profit.

When developing a “revenue and profit” comp system, one should keep in mind the Law of Unintended Consequences. Comp motivates behavior, which means there is always the problem of unintentionally motivating counterproductive behavior. Whenever a system is created, you immediately create incentives for people to game the system to their individual benefit. Although a scary prospect when changing comp systems, firms should realize this ‘gaming’ is already happening under current comp systems. It’s just that the firms are accustomed to the current gaming efforts and have in place checks and balances for tempering those efforts. New comp systems will need to evolve to develop another set of checks and balances to keep ‘gaming’ efforts under control.

The Legal Twist

In many respects, next generation comp systems will need a component that functions along the lines of traditional sales comp systems. This aspect will need to carefully balance protecting current revenue and profit, alongside encouraging new revenue. For those who have been involved in designing sales comp systems, this is no easy task on its own. But here’s the Twist – law firms have an added a degree of difficulty, due to their owner / worker conundrum. Sales people are rarely also front line workers. They do not build the widgets they sell. In contrast, law firm partners need to be rewarded as both workers and salespeople. Both of these efforts have value for firms, but they have a different kind of value. Comp systems will have to balance how each behavior is rewarded.

Caution

Lawyers, being Type-A personalities, tend to see things in black and white. Profit lends itself to such viewpoints. Under this thinking, profit is seen as an absolute. Practices and clients are either good or bad. As an example, a partner might see all profit below average as bad (or even failing). But profit is a mental construct and can be viewed in many different ways. For instance, costs can be calculated on either a budgeted level or an actual level. Which approach used depends on the circumstances and goals. So firms also need to take into account how they communicate profit in relation to comp. Instead of being a black and white issue, profit should be communicate as having a healthy range and that the goal is increasing profits across that range. In other words, instead of using profit as a stick when it comes to comp, it is better used as a carrot.

Of course firms should fully expect some bumps in the road as they begin to transition to different compensation systems. Effective change management will be a necessity, since changes in comp impact the wallets of those involved. When wallets are involved, firms should expect strong reactions and proactively move to address those. Firms should also be ready to make thoughtful adjustments to comp systems. I say “thoughtful” and not reactionary. Be prepared to adapt to core concerns, but be very careful about reacting to individual partner complaints.

Oh yeah – and one more challenge – some practices still function just fine in the old world (e.g. tax and bankruptcy) so new systems will also need to account for that.

In Part Two of this series, we will explore a possible next-generation law firm compensation methodology. 

Inspired by recent events.

Dewey said to Cheatum, “What ever shall we do?
Our book is getting slimmer and I haven’t got a clue
How to run a proper business, you know, one that still makes money?
We can’t just raise our rates… stop your laughing. It’s not funny!”

“Silly Dewey, how you worry!” chortled Cheatum through his drink.
“There’s no problem we can’t tackle with a good and proper think.
We’re the brightest and the smartest and by far the best paid too,
We’ll just put our heads together and we’ll figure what to do.”

From across the polished table Old Man Howe rose to his feet.
Which caught them by surprise, as he never left his seat.
This they knew was bound to be one of his classic epic speeches.
Howe began with, “Don’t ya know the depths t’which ethics reaches?”

Dewey stared into his glass and Cheatum smiled broadly.
“One tool my friends will always save the righteous and the godly!”
Howe barked his words with fervor and a bit of indignation,
“There’s no problem can’t be solved with just a tiny publication.

Let me see here, what’s the trouble causin’ you boys such distressin’?
You’re belly achin’ and wallerin’! It’s downright darn depressin’!”
“You see, sir,” started Cheatum, in his smarmy weasel voice,
“There’s all these people coming by to tell us we’ve no choice

But to change the way we’ve done things since time immemorial,
And frankly, sir, some of them’s becoming dictatorial.
How dare these non-attorneys tell us how to run our firms!?
Since when do JD Yale-ies take advice from State School worms!?”

“On the other hand,” said Dewey, “There might be something to it.
The world is clearly changing and maybe we should do it…
Change… I mean,” choked Dewey as Howe’s gaze began to burn
With the fire of holy terror at his colleague’s faithless turn.

“Noooooo!” roared Howe, “Cheatum’s got the right idea!
No non-attorney’s ever gonna call the shots ’round he-yah!”
Some staff began to cower and back away from all the clamor.
This attorney wields his ethics, like a carpenter, a hammer.

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do, to keep the riff-raff in their place.
Just change a little rule, and then we’ll throw it in their face!
We’ll say WE can’t be trusted not to cheat our own clients
As long as non-attorney staff oversee our non-compliance!”

With a gasp and sickening thud Old Man Howe collapsed and died.
Cheatum quickly grabbed his wallet; Dewey shook his head and sighed.
Before the body was even cold they’d divvied up his clients.
Dewey got the big ones, but Cheatum took the giants.

That very day they wrote the rule that Howe had recommended.
Though sometimes even good ideas have pieces unintended.
Their non-attorney staffers all packed up and walked away.
Leaving Dewey alone with Cheatum to await their dying day.

Part 2 of the The Legal Intelligencer’s ongoing series on Law Firm Competitive Intelligence came out on May 13th.  The author, Gina Passarelli, makes a few points that, well, let’s just say I have a different perspective on. 

Let’s start with the firms that were interviewed for this article.  They are AMLAW100 firms with resources and budgets (personnel and otherwise) not found in the vast majority of firms.  Their experiences and opinions are not the norm for the legal industry.  I have found the norm for most firms to be a collaborative process between Marketing and Research Services (aka the Library).  This allows for the use of staff in multiple capacities without incurring the additional personnel cost of a dedicated CI analyst.

This also allows the Marketing Department to take advantage of the unique skills and internal knowledge of the research professionals. These professionals are skilled at finding information efficiently, analyzing it to meet the attorneys needs and packaging it for their consumption.  Despite the implications of the gentleman quoted from Duane Morris,  researchers (aka librarians) are not as a rule “faithful compilers of phone books.”  Merely handing off reams of information (otherwise known as Data Dumps) are not a work product that attorneys have the time or inclination to review in any context, be it legal research or CI.  This understanding of not only what attorneys need to see but how they want to see it adds to the value of the research professional in conducting CI.

It is no accident that many excellent CI professionals have a background and/or training as a librarian. I found it striking how uninformed the author appeared to be regarding the involvement of law librarians in the Competitive Intelligence analysis process.  The inclusion of sweeping stereotypical statements such as “[Librarians] gather the info and the marketing team makes it presentable” and the implications of a Chief Marketing Officer that the Library produces academic studies are not accurate depictions of how this works in the Legal Industry.

Here are three prominent examples of CI professionals missed by Ms. Passarelli:

  • Zena Applebaum, who was quoted prominently in the first article of this series, is not only the Director of Competitive Intelligence for Bennett Jones but is also the award-winning Chair-Elect of the Competitive Intelligence Division of the Special Libraries Association.  Not to mention the excellent post she wrote on CI on Thursday.
  • Jan Rivers, who wrote an article on CI for the National Law Journal, is the Director of Information Resource Services at Dorsey and Whitney LLP and is a well-known CI professional.  
  • Emily Cunningham Rushing, Competitive Intelligence Manager at Haynes and Boone, LLP, has her Masters in Library and Information Science and is also a well-known CI professional

The list above does not include the many other talented research professionals acting in the same capacity for their firm.  In my previous post on the first article of this series, I pointed out that there are over 300 librarians in law firms nationwide currently practicing the art of of CI.  This does not include the members of the CI Division of the Special Libraries Association or the law firm members of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.  Full disclosure here:  I have been a law librarian for almost 25 years and have been practicing CI for 20 of those years. 

The information presented above shows the skills that librarians have in their toolbox .  Of course, this doesn’t mean that every librarian will make a good CI professional or that only librarians can be CI professionals.  However, when looking for someone with the requisite skills for this type of task, the Library (or Research Services) is a good place to start.  By using these atypical examples and statements, Ms. Passarelli paints a misleading picture of how to operate a successful Competitive Intelligence operation.  I guess my question really is…why weren’t mid-size firms that are more representative of the industry (and, yes, as a result rely more on librarians) consulted as part of this article?  They aren’t hard to find.

I recently returned from the 29th annual Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) Conference in sunny and warm Orlando.  The conference was a terrific networking event as per usual. I am constantly impressed, and inspired by the professionals who work in CI across a variety of industries every day.  But I am also intrigued by the questions and concerns that underlie so many of the sessions and the hallway talk afterwards. It seems regardless of the industry, CI professionals share common issues, even if the language or descriptions of the challenges are nuanced.  As a known entity within the CI community, I am often asked for my advice on helping to solve practitioner challenges and rather than answer them one at a time, I thought some 3 Geeks readers might also benefit from the answers and/or be able to contribute and add further suggestions.  To that end, below are five of the more interesting questions that were bantered about throughout the conference and my attempt to answer them.  The questions are in no particular order and my answers are a combination of my own thoughts as well as some of what I heard while at the conference.

1 – Where in an organization should CI sit?

Everyone has an opinion here. Some believe that CI should always and only report to Marketing, others to the CEO, others to finance.  Research &Development was another reporting option, and I even heard one practitioner suggest that sales was the only appropriate place for CI to report.  Since law firms don’t have sales departments I think we can safely rule sales out. But lawyers, specifically partners who interface with clients on a regular basis are similar to sales people in many respects. As CI practitioners in firms, its important to always maintain a good rapport, even develop close relationship with partners to keep the lines of communication open.  It will aid with HUMINT collection, but it will also provide a window into the issues facing lawyers and clients in the course of daily business.  But CI in a law firms can’t report into the partnership at large, so the function does need a home.  Some law firm CI practitioners report to Marketing, others to the Library, KM or some hybrid of the above just as our colleagues in other industries.  The bottom line is:  it doesn’t matter much where you report, so long as you are providing excellent service in meeting intelligence needs in anticipating surprises for your firm and its clients.  In ideal world, a law firm CI function is so highly collaborative between the various administrative groups the reporting becomes only a formality for booking vacation (what is that?).

2 – Do hiring managers prefer CI practitioners with CI certification, or industry knowledge?

This one’s a bit trickier. I heard Directors of CI two Fortune 500 companies say the opposite where this issue is concerned. Its seems the response is both culturally and hiring manager specific.  But one element of the hiring process was clear:  soft skills are as important as the hard skills.  For those of you looking to transition into a CI role, or increase your responsibilities in a current one, brush up on your networking skills, practice your elicitation, develop your analytical fitness and never stop being curious or creative.  These are the essential qualities to a perfect CI practitioner – certified or otherwise.

3 – How do I merge a competitive intelligence practice with a Library function? Or a KM function?

See the note above about collaboration. In the three short days of the conference alone, I saw the “C” of CI referred to as Collaborative, Cooperative, Collective, and I am sure if I attended a few more sessions, I am certain I would have seen a few other permutations.  CI is at its root an information-based vocation. Information needs people. People need a great many things, you can look to Maslow’s hierarchy or the more recent 10 Demandments from Kelly Mooney to understand people what people need and getting various information brokers together – whether from the intelligence community, the KM community, the Library, Marketing or anywhere else requires a nurturing of those same needs.  Get people engaged and interested by gaining their trust, but giving them the space to control how they contribute at the same time. It’s a fine balance but if you can manage to work to individual strengths in both the hard and soft skills of CI (which ever “C” you choose) the end result will be better than the sum of the parts.  After all, intelligence comes from the interpretation and analysis of information and what better way to analyze a situation than with multiple perspectives, educational backgrounds and strengths attacking the business problem.   

4 – How do I market the CI services within my organizations?

First of all, this is a great question, posed the right way.  Its not asking “do I need to market my service”, or “why do I need to market”, but rather “how”. The question assumes that the person/people asking already understand the need for Marketing, and so the battle is at least half won. 

The easiest and best way to market the CI services within your organization is to do great work, amazing work and then get repeat clients.   I remember an old boss of mine suggesting that I need not hang out a shingle and wait for people to come, because once I started to provide value, it would be a bouncer I needed not a shingle. Three other easy and quick ways to market the function are to:

  1. Tell people about it. Sounds simple enough, but it means that the CI team needs to be visible and participate in organized activities like product launches, social events and just get out of their offices/cubes/ or libraries and walk around to meet the people they are serving.
  2. Prepare and practice your elevator speech so when you get asked what you are up to in the elevator or waiting at the coffee machine, you have a 30 second sound bite ready to roll.  You can talk about a project or the impact you are making and thereby selling your services.  Remind potential clients within your organization that CI is an active for both tracking future engagements and helping to set strategy or plan for the future.
  3. Be consistent with deliverables.  This need not mean a template approach, but make sure that what you deliver to all clients, at any level of the organization is polished, proofed and perfect.  Consistent work product will go a long away to promoting the function and helping it appear as professional and needed service. Once you have a key process for proofing and polishing down among your CI team, you can start to explore the notion of marketing your function with a brand and series of on going reports. But that’s a blog posting for another time.

5 – How can I evolving a competitive intelligence practice to become even more relevant, useful and perhaps add some measurable ROI-type “returns”.

Measureable returns can be hard to define.  Especially if the CI function is removed from the decision making process and your reports/suggestions are taken but results are never returned.  First and foremost, where you can, establish open lines of communications with Partners so that you can ask the difficult questions around whether or not a new file was opened or a new client retained. Then, track the client matter number as it goes through your firm.  While you may not be able to directly attribute that new client directly to the CI that was provided, you can indicate that CI had a role, perhaps a 5% or 20% role in helping to secure that new client.  Use this information as an ROI for the service you provide.  Other forms of measurable ROI come not from new engagements, but from time saved or efficiency increased. Start to think about the CI function in terms of how having a CI team or individual contributor of CI added to the bottom line by taking research and analysis off of someone else’s plate and/or provided a service that wasn’t there before that allows for better use of time, smarter client engagements and a well turned out organization.  It may not be measurable in the truest sense, but certainly it add to the relevance of the function and of the firm in the eyes of its client.  Client surveys time and time again suggest that firms are chosing outside counsel based not on fees or expertise alone, but that clients want to work with firms who understand their buniess, their risks and their challenges. Who better to keep your lawyers and other practitioners informed than a CI?  Relevancy is CI currency.
 
So that’s my five question, answer and response from the 29th annual SCIP conference & trade show. I encourage anyone else out there who wants to take a stab at answering to please leave a comment.  As I gear up for the Special Libraries Association 2014 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO June 8-10th in Vancouver, I can’t wait to see what the questions around CI and its role in and with the Library might be. I suspect many of the same themes will be repeated and I welcome the discussion.

For those of you who have been under a rock for the past few weeks (like me), you may not have heard of the changes that Lexis Advance is making to the look and feel of the product next month. Lexis is calling this a “New, Cleaner Look” that doesn’t change the steps you take to research, but changes the way the results appear on the screen and how you navigate those results.

The biggest change is that the results are now “Tab-less.” If you have used Lexis Advance in the past, you know that the tabs that ran across the top could quickly become unwieldy. In fact, I asked one of my research staff last night to jump out of Lexis Advance and into another Lexis platform in order to do some fact finding for me. This created an immediate plea for me to wait until they were completely finished with their current project because they would lose their – and this is a quote – “precious tabs.” This immediately made me think of Gollum, and a few images later, I sent the researcher back the picture to the right.

Here’s a video that just came out for the Academic users, but it shows some of the streamlined changes, and the new tab-less results. The new look is to launch next month, so start getting the word out now.

I found the story in today’s Legal Intelligencer on Law Firm Competitive Intelligence interesting. 
I noticed a few points (yes I know, surprising isn’t it?) after reading this that I think bear a bit of discussion.  Here are my perspectives, which are based on 20 years as a CI professional as well as the Co-chair of the CI Caucus of the American Association of Law Libraries.

First of all, CI in law firms is not dumpster diving or spying.  Anthony Pellicano did not practice CI.  The art of CI (and yes, I consider it to be an art form) is to find available information, analyze it based on the strategic and cultural context of the firm and provide conclusions that enable the firm to be successful operationally as well as in acquiring new business.  Since this context can vary between firms and from moment-to-moment, the same information can have different meanings in different circumstances.  It’s up to the CI professional to provide the interpretation.  Information can be obtained in many legal ways, ways that don’t require wiretapping or reconstructing shredded information from the trash.  It is, first and foremost, an ethically driven process.  In fact, the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) emphasizes the ethical nature of CI here.

Second, CI in law firms is not new.  As I said at the beginning, I am proud to have been a CI professional for about 20 years, 14 of them in the law firm environment.  In 2006, an article discussing CI in law firms was written and published in the National Law Journal by my colleague Jan Rivers.  The over 300 members of the Competitive Intelligence Caucus also indicates that this is much more established in the legal industry than is commonly thought, at least as indicated by the Legal Intelligencer article.

Third, CI is often confused with Business Development or the acquiring of new business.  However, this definition ignores the most important part of CI, the competitive in Competitive Intelligence.  CI is the part that focuses on identifying your competition and determining how best to position the firm to compete with them.  Without this piece, the firm cannot ultimately be successful in acquiring new business.  As ably pointed out in the Legal Intelligencer article by my colleague Zena Applebaum, CI in Law Firms became more important in 2008 when it started to become obvious with firms that they needed to compete to survive.

There were also concerns expressed in the article about the quality of the legal industry data available.  The fact that this was expressed concerns me.  In my experience, the data quality isn’t any different from the data relied on by corporate decision makers.  As I mentioned above, the CI professional’s role is to evaluate and interpret the available data.  All data, regardless of quality, can provide useful indicators and should not be written off.  Robust and useful CI is not dependent on data quality.  Rather, it is dependent on analysis and interpretation.

CI in law firms is an established part of the operation of the law firm business.  As in most business, the importance of knowing your competition and industry at more than an anecdotal level has made CI integral to this business. 

Jacked In – You have to look serious
when exploring the Matrix

So, I’ve had a lot of people asking me about Glass over the last few weeks.  How is it?  What do you think?  Should I get one?  My answers have generally been: It’s interesting, I think I like it, and No, you definitely should not get one. There is one caveat, however.  If your idea of an enjoyable Saturday morning is firing up a new LAMP Stack, pouring over GitHub to find new Open Source packages to install, and troubleshooting them for hours, then you might be interested in Glass.  If that doesn’t sound like fun, hold off for a little while longer.  If you don’t know what any of those words mean, then any time someone mentions Glass, stick your fingers in your ears and hum The Battle Hymn of the Republic until they are done speaking. Listen very carefully and take this to heart…Google Glass does not yet exist in your world.

From a geek perspective there is something undeniably cool about putting on Glass, plugging one end of the USB cable into the earpiece, and the other into the back of my computer. This creates the physical sensation of jacking in to the Matrix. I feel powerful and connected. My wife, on the other hand, says it reminds her of a scene from Douglas Adams’ and Terry Jones’ novel, Starship Titanic.  The characters of Lucy and the Journalist are trying to get amorous as the Yassaccans are invading the ship, but third-wheel Dan keeps interrupting. The Journalist hands Dan a virtual reality helmet and tells him to put it on.

“Wow!” he exclaimed. “I see what you mean! I’m right in the ship… Hey! This is great! I can get into the consoles! Wow! Now I’m running along the wiring! Hey! The circuit boards are like vast cities!…”

Meanwhile, the Journalist and Lucy go at it.

…then she suddenly pulled away, and glanced anxiously over at Dan, who was climbing some invisible stairs in his virtual reality and then turning around and handling invisible objects and letting out delighted yelps.

“Oh, don’t worry about him!” panted The Journalist. “He can’t hear or see us. We’re still MatterSide.  He’ll be totally absorbed in that thing – it’s always the same – first time you put on one of those you’re usually off for five or six hours!”

I’m not sure whether I should be concerned about what my wife is up to while I’m exploring the Matrix, or just be extremely proud that I married a woman who effortlessly references Douglas Adams and Terry Jones.

After mining the Glass forums, and Googling for APKs that have been updated to run on XE16 (See, doesn’t that sound like fun!), I have found a few apps that, if not yet consumer ready, at least point to the promise and potential of Glass.

Word Lens translating a French sign.

Word Lens – This app is truly awesome, in the “worthy of awe” sense. Word Lens is one of the apps that is available through the MyGlass site, so no need for side loading .apk files, and I think it is the closest that Glass gets to a killer app. You look at a sign in a foreign language, and the app manipulates the pixels of the image to rewrite the sign in English. The translation is only as good as Google Translate, and it’s a little slow, but… Holy freakin’ cow, man! That’s awesome!

PhotoGlassic Memory – This app allows you to say, “OK Glass, Remember where I left my keys.” Glass takes a picture of the keys in their current location, grabs GPS coordinates and stores that information. Later when you’ve completely forgotten where you left your keys, you say, “OK Glass, Recall where I left my keys.” The picture and a map showing the location of your keys pops up.  I’m sure there are better uses for PhotoGlassic Memory than the keys example and I only have an 850 square foot apartment, so the GPS coordinates don’t help much.

Viewing the PhotoSphere Demo as I edit this post.
(That’s Sergey Brin in the blue shirt in front.)

PhotoSphere Demo – There is an “Easter Egg” hidden in the Glass settings that displays a 360 degree picture of the Glass team.  You can turn your head all the way around to see all of the people developing for Glass at Google. Some enterprising developer has made it much easier to access that picture, and to upload your own PhotoSpheres (360 degree pictures). People using this app for the first time closely approximate Dan’s experience in the Starship Titanic excerpt above. They immediately become oblivious to anything around them and are transported to the world of the picture. They spin and contort their bodies to look up at the ceiling and down at the floor, and strangely enough down under their armpit. ?? Unfortunately, if you run this app for more than a few minutes, Glass gets hot and you get the “Glass must cool down to run smoothly.” message.  There is another Google application that uses PhotoSphere technology, it doesn’t take a genius to see where that is going.

Glass Calculate– This is a Glass implementation of Wolfram Alpha. There is nothing really Glass specific about it. The amazing part is Wolfram Alpha itself.  I hesitated to mention it at all, except it’s really cool to ask your glasses “OK Glass, Calculate how many teaspoons are in Lake Michigan?” and have it come back to you in seconds with an authoritative answer, including charts, graphs, and comparisons to other bodies of water.  (A: 988 quadrillion.)

There is a well documented tendency for human beings to over-value things that they pay way too much for. With that in mind, take what I’m about to say with a huge grain of salt. I like Glass a lot. No, it is not ready for the consumer market, and after having spent time with it, I think a consumer version is further off than most people think. A friend of mine said he was waiting to get Glass until they released the $500 version this Holiday season. It’s not going to happen. Maybe next Holiday season, in 2015.  Maybe. I think a real, viable, easy to use, and affordable consumable product is 3 to 5 years off. But I’m keeping mine. It’s not going back to Google for a refund, unless I find out my wife is up to no good while I’m lost in the Matrix. Thankfully, there’s a very good chance she’s busy re-reading one of the five books in The Hitchhiker’s Trilogy. I’m a lucky man.

[Ed Note: Terri Gavulic, Director, Legal Support at Fisher & Phillips, is our guest blogger today.]

The ABA recently published “The Power of Legal Project Management,” a robust how-to guide for firms looking to implement project management programs. I’m leading that effort at my firm, and have already found this handbook to be more useful than anything else out there on the topic. What this “practical handbook” (as the cover touts) has that some other LPM guidebooks lack, happen to be the exact kinds of things I was beginning to research for our program.

When the book arrived on my desk, I realized it was going to save me scores of hours of research. Specifically, the book includes 17 case studies that are written almost like stories, and share each of the profiled firm’s paths to their LPM programs. This is helpful to avoid some of the same pitfalls they experienced and to leverage their successes, as well as to give me an idea of which firms are similar enough to my firm that I might contact them with questions.

Everyone in this burgeoning space seems really willing to share information and advice, but sometimes it’s not relevant if the firm is significantly different in size, scope or practice than ours. I also appreciated a section of interviews with the top LPM technology companies. We’ve been meeting with many of these companies, and the profiles in the book have been great preparatory reading for our firm’s management.

Also in the book, there’s a unique discussion about lawyer personalities vis-à-vis LPM, by the always-insightful Dr. Larry (Richards) of LawyerBrain. So far, in the two weeks that I’ve had the book, I’ve turned to it multiple times a day – I’m really grateful. We have an internal LPM blog as part of our training and education efforts in this space so we’ll be using the ABA handbook to help keep our blog current and practical.

Kudos to the authors, Susan Lambreth of LawVision Group and David Rueff of Baker Donelson, as well as their many experienced contributors, for writing the definitive handbook on developing and implementing successful LPM programs.