Image [cc] außerirdische sind

A recent question about implementing Legal Project Management (LPM) at law firms brought my thinking into focus. Although I had generally been approaching LPM this way, I had not articulated quite as clearly … until now.

The usual questions I get center on my advice for how a firm should roll out LPM. Should they hire certified project managements? Should they train associates on LPM? Should they train all lawyers on LPM? Should they invest in legal specific PM technology?

My new answer is  … Yes.

Which is the short answer for … It Depends.

And what that really means is that LPM will take a different shape in different circumstances. For one practice embedded certified PMs will make the most sense. In another practice it might be training senior associates.

The real point here is that a firm should be cautious about narrowing its LPM approach at the macro level. It should let the needs of the practice determine how LPM evolves. Different practices and even different clients will have unique needs. This means firms will need to be flexible in their approach to LPM. They will want to have doors open to each approach and not commit entirely to one or another. Perhaps over time one approach will surface as the standard, but until then I suggest firms not impose what could potentially be a a litigation solution on a transactional practice.

This is my standard theme: It’s about the conversation. Just as I suggest talking with clients about their fee needs, I also suggest similar conversations with practice group leaders to determine their needs. We better make sure we understand the problem before we propose a solution – or more appropriately in this case – solutions.

Image [cc] Chris Makarsky

There were a couple of incidents I read about over the weekend of government officials destroying unreplacable historic documents. The reasons for the destruction are not exactly clear, but it gives conspiracy theorists some interesting ideas of why officials would destroy the archives of which they are supposed to be caretakers for the next generations to come.

First there is the matter of the 100+ year old Franklin County, North Carolina documents that Diane Taylor Torrent of The Heritage Society of Franklin County, NC discusses in her Facebook post of Timeline of the Destruction of 100 Year Old Franklin County, NC Records. This involved the uncovering of a room in the Franklin county courthouse basement housing records going as far back as the 1840’s. It is a facinating read of the difficulties that many archivists have to deal with when it comes to historical documents and the issues that come with time, water, mold, storage, and worst of all, government bureaucracy. Please take the time to read the story, but I’ll be the spoiler here and let you know that the documents were all incinerated after the state archives stepped in and took control. I’m sure the state will eventually come back and say that the records were destroyed for “safety” concerns over mold, but one blogger has her own ideas on what may have occurred.

The other story came from Boing Boing called Canadian libricide: Tories torch and dump centuries of priceless, irreplacable envionmental archives. The Canadian govenment had made promises of selling or digitizing materials from the St. Andrews Biological Station in New Brunswick, as well as the Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg and the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Instead, the records were simply destroyed. Sent off to landfills or burned. Some copies have been found overseas, according to an update, but the fact that no records were kept of what was destroyed leaves many pieces of the collection lost forever.

I have never been one of those fanatics that believes that everything should be kept forever. However, government archivists are caretakers of our past so that it may be passed on to those that come after us. There is a reponsibility for these caretakers to be both responsible in their actions, and to think beyond the needs of today. I sincerely hope that both the North Carolina Archives, and the Canadian governments have solid reasoning for their actions and publically disclose what they destroyed, what was kept through digital or other means, and specific reasoning for why they decided to burn or bury these historic documents.

Image [cc] Austin Kleon

As I caught up on my professional reading through the slow week between Christmas and New Years, I came across a Forbes article by Ruth Blatt called The Remarkably Simple Technique Behind These Innovations In Music and In Business. To boil the article down to its core concept, businesses and music bands created innovative ideas and practices by removing something that was essential to the product. Blatt pointed out a few examples of where companies or music groups succeeded by stripping out something essential:

  • Southwest Airlines removed seat assignments
  • The Beatles stopped making music based on the need to play them live
  • Removing the backup battery out of an Emergency Room piece of equipment
The idea of removing something deemed essential and discovering something unique dovetails with with my article from 2012 where I asked “Now, Why Am I Still Doing This?“, but it goes further by not just removing processes that are no longer needed, but by eliminating critical (or at least what we think are critical) components of our overall processes, products, and services. In the firm law library world, some of these ideas are already happening:
  • Remove the researcher from the library (embedded librarians)
  • Remove the books from the library (virtual library)
  • Remove the word “Library” from the service description (notion being discussed by PLL)
 Perhaps there are other things we could do as well. How about:
  • Shifting minor routines to Secretaries or Word Processing departments (pulling cases, statutes, Shepardizing, cite checking, monitoring dockets, etc.)
  • Stop setting up alerts
  • No more clipping services (or whatever you call it these days with the online variations)
  • Stop billing researcher time
  • Stop providing personal copies of books to lawyers
  • Rotate Associates into the Researcher role

Again, these are more than the typical “Sacred Cows” that are brought up at budget time each year. These are essential services that are typically provided by the law library and should cause a collective gasp whenever discussed. Sometimes it is only by turning ideas and processes on their heads that you can see things differently and come up with unique innovations.

I’ve challenged some of my friends in other departments to think of ways they can add to their own team’s value by subtracting essential services. I’ll extend that challenge to the 3 Geeks’ readers as well. Think of something essential in your process… and remove it. What would happen?

It has been a busy time for our illustrious Mr. Toby Brown over the past few weeks. In the past few weeks, he has co-written a book with Vincent Cordo on Law Firm Pricing: Strategies, Roles, and Responsibilities, conducted an interview with Bloomberg Law’s Lee Pacchia about the challenges of implementing a pricing strategy at a large law firm and the recent efforts to utilize Legal Process Management software, and last, but not least, been named as a Trailblazer and Pioneer by the National Law Journal (pdf, page 16). The only thing he failed to do this month was be named People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive… (maybe next year, my friend.)

Congrats, Toby on being recognized for all your hard work and forward thinking.

Image [cc] Scazon

The year started out with a trio of mergers in the legal information field when Thomson Reuters announced it was acquiring PLC, and Learnlive, and LexisNexis announced it was acquiring Knowledge Mosaic. The activity tappered off a bit after that initial first week flurry, but there have been a number of mergers, acquisitions and partnerships throughout 2013 and we thought we’d review what has changed this year.

I’m sure we’ve missed a few other activities that happened in 2013. Feel free to add those in the comments.

Let’s see what 2014 brings in the great shrinkage of legal information providers.

This is the time of year when we reflect on all that has happened over the past 12 months; the successes, the failures, the moments of epiphany, the stumbles, the growth and change, basically everything that makes us human. That is why I was so struck by the timing and subject of Seth Godin’s recent post about vampires (and he’s not talking about Team Edward or reviewing the latest True Blood episode). Seth explains that these metaphorical vampires are “people that feed on negativity, on shooting down ideas and most of all, on extinguishing your desire to make things better.” What is so striking to me is that Seth says that these vampires cannot be cured; they cannot be shown the error of their ways. Trying to change their minds and get them on board is a waste of time. Seth explains that all we can do for these people is pity them.

Our profession is undergoing a time of great change, one in which we are examining everything that we do and looking for new opportunities. One in which we cannot afford any vampires. However, we have taken to trying to “cure” the vampires in our midst with education and programs like the recent PLL Summit offerings of “Get out of your Comfort Zone and Lean Up” and “Changing Perceptions” and last year’s SLA conference sessions like “Just say NO to Aimlessness” or “How to Re-energize your Library”. I’m not saying we shouldn’t continue to encourage, educate and collaborate with the non-vampires, but maybe we should take Seth’s advice and stop trying to “cure” those among us who have gone over to the dark side.

We have some amazing evangelists for our profession. One of whom is constantly trying to shake things up with his provocative posts. Yes, I’m looking at you Greg Lambert. Greg consciously tries to poke the hornet’s nest in an effort to generate conversation and, hopefully, real change. But ask yourself this, when you read a provocative post or hear a controversial idea discussed, what is your first reaction? Do you immediately try to shoot it down or poke holes in it? Do you meet it with negativity or an open mind? Do you attend the above mentioned types of sessions at conferences and think of all the ways the ideas “won’t work for you”?

Maybe during this upcoming time of reflection, we should also be asking ourselves: have we turned to the darkness or are we still in the light?
Colleen Cable is a Library Consultant for Profit Recovery Partners bringing the “consultant angle” to Three Geeks.

One of the most challenging and rewarding achievements in my professional career was being elected to the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Executive Board. It is rewarding because I get exposure to a number of aspects of the profession that I would normally not find in my day to day work activities. It is challenging because the Association is very diverse and serves the needs of Information Professionals ranging from small county law libraries to multi-billion dollar law firms. From small law firms with a single librarian to Ivy League Colleges. Everyone has personal needs based upon their individual company, firm, court, or school mission, and the membership as a whole has a need to promote the profession and raise standards and awareness in order to display the total value the profession brings to the entire community. As a member of the Executive Board, the challenge can be in striking a balance between individual goals and overall professional goals.

That being said, the Executive Board welcomes four new members:

Vice President/President-Elect: Keith Ann Stiverson

(July 2014 – July 2015)

Secretary: Katherine K. Coolidge, Esq., MLIS

(July 2014 – July 2017)

Executive Board: John W. Adkins and Donna Nixon

(July 2014 – July 2017)

As I end my term at the July annual meeting in San Antonio, these four will add their names to the ranks of the many volunteers that dedicate a three-year commitment to the Association. My advice to them, and to anyone that desires to run for a position in AALL is that they listen to the needs of the membership, observe the current actions of the Executive Board, ask questions, speak frankly, respect the membership and the other board members (even when you disagree), and act in a way that you believe is in the best interest of the profession.

Good luck. I will see all of you in Chicago soon.

Bully
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When I was a kid, I used to believe that everyone was nice, and that there was no such thing as a purposefully mean person… then I met my fourth grade teacher and my bubble of niceness quickly popped. Although I still believe that 99% of people out there are well intentioned, good mannered, and overall easy to deal with, there are still those that have none of those traits. Some of whom are in positions of power, and we all end up having to deal with them from time to time.

Yesterday, I ran across an article written by Marc Chernoff entitled 7 Smart Ways to Deal with Toxic People, and it described a number of the traits that most of us hate dealing with in what he labels as “Toxic People.” The basic advice is to not let Toxic People get into your head and stay there. My favorite is #5: “Don’t take their toxic behavior personally.” It’s probably the hardest thing to do, but it is also the most liberating when you can remember that the person you are dealing with treats most people this way, and that it must work for him or her because they continue to act the way they do. To modify a common meme I’ve seen on Facebook, “Love your enemies… it really ticks them off.”

Being in the legal field, it seems that we may be subject to a greater share of Toxic people. Whether that is actually true or not is probably up to your individual situation. However, whether it is a Partner in a corner office, or a Secretary down the hall, or a mean Librarian, this article walks through a number of ways to deal with these Toxic people and gives some really good advice that I think most of us could use in our day to day lives. Mean people exist, but as Chernoff rightly puts it, you don’t have to allow them to take up space in your head… “raise the rent and get them out of there.”

Reading about big data seems to be a daily exercise. So lately I have been putting a few brain cells on the subject of new ways of applying data analytics to the legal market.

And here’s today’s idea: The Analytics of What Clients Reject.

What if you take the emerging tools for analyzing billing data (ala Tymetrix), but instead of analyzing what is in client billings, focus the tools on analyzing what is being rejected in the billing process. We have all read about clients’ unwillingness to pay for online research or first year associates, but wouldn’t it be interesting to see if and how that truly plays out?

For instance, maybe clients reject first year associates on M&A work, but actually encourage them for labor litigation. Or maybe financial services clients pay for paralegals but not e-discovery project managers. You could also start to pull out trends and spot issues before they become problems. Imagine a firm planning to hire a pool of staff lawyers finding out their primary client market is trending away from their use.

Part of this thinking came about based on an eBillingHub seminar I saw that opened my eyes quite a bit. One stat they gave was that 44% of law firm ebilling invoices are rejected on the first submission. This of course means there are a lot of time entries and other billing entries the get rejected.

Basically these rejections are feedback on the various Outside Counsel Guidelines in place. Beyond avoiding billing rejections that may harm the client relationship, having this type of information would allow law firms to proactively avoid “stepping in it,” and to adjust their strategies at a market level instead of client-by-client.

Of course this thinking is predicated on the idea that law firms have such strategies. Well …. maybe they would if they had this type of information. At its simplest level it would lead to faster payment of bills, which on its own has value.

And now back to your regularly schedule program …

Gendarmenmarkt - Glaskugel
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Many of you may have seen Jeff Bezos’ interview this weekend on 60 Minutes where he discussed the next phase of Amazon’s delivery process is looking to using drones to deliver products and remove third-party delivery services altogether. It is an interesting concept, and one that focuses again on streamlining the process of moving physical products from the manufacturing process to the consumer in the most efficient (cheap and fast) way. This will put a scare in the UPS and Postal Service delivery people. I guess the next progression in the Amazon process will be to sell consumers devices that will simply manufacture the desired product directly in the consumer’s home. That will scare the Foxconn folks. Like it or not, the whole business model is to remove the human from the process as much as possible, and link the customer with the product as quickly, often, and cheaply as possible.

Information Professionals like Librarians, Analysts, and Researchers are very familiar with this process because the information we deal with everyday has already gone through a transition that Bezos is attempting to do with physical products. So, for us, what is the next step? What is the equivalent to Amazon’s drone that will be the next driver in information delivery? I think the answer to this question lies in the advancements we see taking place in e-discovery products, specifically in the predictive coding methods that are becoming common place in that market, and using those tools along with research savvy to create products/results that are much more analytical.

For Information Professionals, we will need to start pivoting away from being the ad hoc researcher and shift over to more predictive analysis processes. In fact, as I was drafting this post, I serendipitously received an invite to a training conference specifically on “Predictive Analytics & Business Insights.” Within the description of the training are specific concepts that we should begin assembling into our customer service models:

  • Predictive Analysis – harnessing predictive capabilities to optimize business operations and develop an analytics culture
  • Risk Analysis – leveraging the wealth of organizational data, in real time, to predict risk and respond accordingly
  • Marketing Analytics – how analytics impact and optimize marketing planning, operations and performance
  • Customer Analytics – customer-driven analytics that encourage innovation, enhance engagement capabilities, enhance retention and loyalty, and promote growth

The past twenty-five years of information has produced a process that has removed much of the human from the process. Lawyers directly receive their information from the producers of that information. The Information Professional’s job has been more and more of vetting all of the different products out there and helping to make sense of it all. The value has shifted away from our ability to find the golden nugget of information within a mountain of data, and has been focused on getting our customers access to the best products, in the most efficient manner, all while maintaining costs. This will continue to be a valuable service, but we have a strong talent pool of researchers, analysts that we need to transition away from the traditional research model and over to areas of predictive analytics to help drive new business to the firm.

Predictive Analysis may not be as cool or flashy as Amazon’s drone idea, but for those of us looking for the next big idea in the Informational Professional market, this may be what helps keep us relevant in a market that is needing us to step up and fill this need.