Image [cc] the|G|™

A friend from another firm recently told me a story that made me think about the way law firms are structured, the resources available, and whether or not attorneys actually take advantage of those resources. The story goes something like this:

A Practice Group Leader and a few other partners sat down with key people in the administrative departments (conflicts, records, library, marketing, business development, KM, document services, human resources, IT, litigation support, etc.) and started listing off the names of attorneys at the firm. The names were followed by questions like:

  • What is your opinion of this person?
  • How much do they use your services?
  • How often do they attend training provided by your team on relevant topics to their practice?
  • When they use your services, what kind of feedback do you get?

The idea behind these questions is actually pretty simple. The firm provides millions of dollars in people and products to support the attorneys’ functions at the firm… so, are they actually using it? Offhandedly, my friend said that for the attorneys where many of the admin people answered “Who?” or “Never seen or heard from them,” were suddenly missing from the ranks after a few months. Not to say that this was the sole consideration on the attorney’s value to the firm, but I imagine it was a factor.

Of course, there are many ways to evaluate talent within the lawyer ranks at a firm. Quality of work, relationships with clients, book of business, hours billed, are a few methods, so adding in the additional metric of “uses firm support departments” seems to me like a good idea. Polling the administrative staff may also raise some red flags in the way services are defined or distributed as well. If the same department answers “never heard of them” every time, then maybe the problem isn’t with the attorneys.

I am fantabulized by the vehemential angertude with which people have arguponded Greg’s post on the word “literally”.  I have no more amorosity to the upsidrong definition of literally than anyone else does, but language evolvopes.  The strength of the English language is its adoptationability.  Words have hardplace definitions, but they are at best temporational. In time, “literally” may instanbul into “not literally” and no amount of oenobitching will change that.

The real uberwow-whatnow is how to, or can you, write legal documents to account for the morphasticity of the language?

I spent most of my day yesterday at a J.Boye Intranet Strategy and Round TableMeeting. For those of you unfamiliar with J.Boye, the group facilitates closed-door, confidential, and vendor-free conversations between intranet managers and similar professionals across a wide range of industries.  They meet quarterly to have very open and honest discussions about intranet related issues, with the goal of helping each other to solve problems, discover new technologies, and to develop professionally.   

In most law firms, management of the intranet falls to either KM, IT, or the Library. My unique position is Manager of Intelligence and Intranet – is a combination that “geek extraordinaire” Ryan McClead recently pointed out is akin to being both an umpire and a hot dog vendor at the same baseball game. At the J.Boye meeting, I put my umpire gear away and focused on hot dogs, discussing the evolution of the intranet as a platform.  Lots of companies are implementing micro sites, social media tools, people directories, content management systems, and enterprise search solutions.  They are evaluating UX (user experience) and IA (information architecture) best practices. They are attempting to marry these concepts with robust, never-out-of-date content that people really want and will actually use, even  discussing strategies to encourage users to publish and own content.  There is discussion around monitoring metrics and analytics to determine how effective (or in most cases not) all of these tools are. Their analysis suggests that people are not engaged, user adoption is low, and they need new technologies to bring people in and increase usage across the site.  

Sometime before noon, nearly exasperated, I  tweeted:

By the end of the day, however, I was starting to think that maybe I had been too hasty with my tweet. The intranet isn’t entirely dead, though I can’t help but think that maybe, rather than greater evolution, the intranet needs to devolve a bit.  Let me explain. 

It seems to me, based on the general chatter at J.Boye, that intranets have not successfully evolved much beyond electronic HR manuals anyway. The most frequently used pages on most intranets are vacation request forms, benefits summaries, people directories, and general HR content.  Most other content either goes unread, or people are consuming it elsewhere – in emails, at team meetings, or on external social media platforms. There still isn’t a fool-proof, unvetted, and successfully integrated channel for “social” and the bulk of intranet content is the same sales and marketing content that is available on externally facing websites, in pdf media libraries, and stuffed in glossy brochure stands in reception areas.  

Although intranets were originally intended, as I understand it, to be a source for write-once content, to increase efficiency in the workplace, and to give people all the tools they need to do their jobs in an single, easily accessible location, most intranets have stagnated at this level of first generation “brochure-ware”.  

I would argue that our lack of intranet progress is not for a lack of trying, but because the majority of people currently consuming content on intranets are actually looking for “brochure-ware”, not internal blogging platforms, or collaborative workspaces. 

The concept of an intranet will undoubtedly change as the demands from users change, and as more and more firms start to make content available through mobile browsers, tablets, and the like. The question is not how we can make the current intranet more effective, or what direction we should take the intranet next, but what direction will its organic evolution take once it is driven by user demand and not by hot dog vendors?

Image [cc] Goldberg

As many of you who have read this blog in the past have come to realize… I am not one to let a few grammatical errors stop me from publishing a blog post. I have even come to expect the ad hoc editors out there to post comments correcting my mistakes, and virtually wagging your finger at me for my lack of proofreading. That’s fine. I get it. Grammatical errors are like nails on a chalkboard to some people, and I’ve even had one specific error that I’ve harped on for years… only to have the rug pulled out from under me yesterday by a Slate article. After I read it, my life literally turned upside down.

Turns out that the word literally has a second meaning:

2. Used to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feelings.

For the past few decades, I’ve been wincing every time I’ve heard my Mom say things like:

… and when she found out how much it cost, it literally killed her.
… my head literally exploded when I heard the news.
… that literally blew her mind!!
 

Sorry Mom!! Although, now that I think about it, my Mom does tend to be a bit morbid in her use of the word literally.

Not only does this news make me a bad son, it also makes one of my favorite quotes from the TV show Psych, slightly less funny:
Juliet O’Hara: Detective Lassiter is literally on fire today.

Shawn Spencer: “Literally on fire” as in Michael Jackson in the Pepsi commercial, or as in a misuse of the word “literally?”

Let this be a warning for all you grammar police out there (many of whom I apparently see on social networks pointing out the proper place to put an apostrophe on major holidays.) Be very careful on pointing out the grammatical errors of others. It could literally come back to bite you!
 

I was babysitting my 4 year-old nephew last night and we were playing with a German circle puzzle. The puzzle is very much like the Chinese Tangram puzzles that are popular now, where you take the geometric pieces and try to arrange them to match images published in a booklet.  The pieces of this particular puzzle fit into a circular arrangement for easy storage in the box.

When we were done playing, I told him to put the pieces back together to make a complete circle.  He worked diligently for several minutes and then suddenly announced, “I did it Ryan, I made a complete circle!”

I must have had a less than satisfied look on my face because before I could speak he added excitedly, “…with a hat!”

It’s hard to argue when you’re getting more than you originally asked for.

I have made the point several times in this space that failure, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.  Failure is typically the first step on the path to success.  Still, it can be hard to present failure to superiors and if you do it too many times it can be detrimental to your career.  The brilliance of a 4 year-old reminds me, that while it’s good to be open to failure, it’s not always good to call it that.  Sometimes you’ve got to look for the hat that makes a failure a little bit better than success would have been.

I now have a German Circle With a Hat puzzle that proves the maxim.

Image [cc] Daniel*1977

An article on a recent legal market survey suggested a new trend in legal pricing: a trend away from Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs). Trend may be too strong a word, but in any event, the survey results bear consideration.

Offline I received a number of reactions about the survey result. Most people were concerned it might be viewed as a sign things are returning to the Old Normal. Yet at the same time, no one suggested they were seeing signs of such a return.

So what does it mean?

I never thought AFAs were going to sweep through the market and eliminate hourly (a.k.a. time and material) billing. As much as hourly billing has been pilloried as the demon of the profession, it will retain a role in the market as along as clients find it useful. So it would only be a matter of time before some new equilibrium of pricing approaches was established. This new balance would likely include a greater variety of types of billing arrangements and over time the balance will always be adjusting to market conditions. But maybe we are reaching a point where AFAs have peaked in their natural share of the market?

In looking at various surveys and market data, I see a possible explanation. As clients continue to seek ways to reduce the cost of legal services, some surveys and commentators rightly suggest that clients have been asking for AFAs, and then settling for bigger discounts. Market data seems to confirm this, as rate increases are moderating and realization against standard rates continues to drop. As well market surveys show firms in the second and third tier of the market (AmLaw 200 and Mid-level firms) have been doing relatively well, compared to the top tier (AmLaw 100).

This all suggests clients are moving work to lower rate providers instead of embracing AFAs. So a survey stating AFAs may have peaked seems reasonable to me.

Looking past the various surveys, I see two other market movements afoot. The first is a growing recognition from clients that not all work needs to be handled by top tier firms. In the past, this was the classic “you can never go wrong choosing IBM” approach. Clients sent a vast majority of their work to top tier firms as a means to protect themselves. No one wanted to take the risk of a bad legal result. With cost savings pressure increasing, in-house counsel now have the cover they need to take those risks. Saving money takes precedence over legal risk. Or at least we might make that assumption based on the market behavior.

The second market movement I suggest is afoot, is yet to fully materialize. Moving work to lower rate providers may or may not save clients money. It is easy to claim credit on cost savings with a 10% reduction in billing rates, but does it actually save money? The answer is: we’re not sure. Which is not a great answer. We see a number of providers entering the market bent on helping answer this question.

Adding the two movements together results in clients taking on greater legal risk without a clear cost savings result. I think this issue will come into focus over time. At that point clients may do one of two things: #1 – They may re-engage on AFAs, or #2 – They may increase their attention to efficiency and effectiveness. With #1, clients will be shifting their focus to cost savings at the fee level over the rate level. This approach should result in more quantifiable cost savings. With #2 – clients will more deeply engaged with their law firms to focus effort on value. Of course some combination of #1 and #2 is even more likely.

At the top level, I sense the market is just trying to find its way to new ground. AFAs were originally held up as the best path towards cost savings. In reality, they are merely a tool. Achieving cost savings goals requires more than different pricing approaches. So the market will continue in its struggle to find the right mix of tools and approaches to meet that overriding goal. I suggest it is an overriding goal in the market, given the consistent focus on reducing legal fees across the market.

In the meantime, I predict we will continue to see such trends, within trends.

Image [cc] billychic

Usually, I ignore unsolicited emails that rant about a vendor or association or how I could benefit from having a real editor review my posts before hitting “submit.” Every once in a while, however, I do get some gems, and this weekend I got one I wanted to share with you. The email comes from someone named “Phil Batman” (which I am assuming is a pseudonym) and it was sent to me and 19 executives at Thomson Reuters. I guess Phil thought that I would appreciate the humor, even if some of it is ‘inside baseball’ and may not be understood by most folks that don’t have a good understanding of the current set of players at Thomson Reuters. Hint: a quick Google of some of these names may clear up why they are being mentioned.

So, straight from my in-box to your browser, I give you “Phil Batman’s Top Ten Items on the Reuters To Do List”:

10. Learn difference between a product and a hole in the ground
9.   Review pay package of CTO James Powell
8.   Rehire Tom Glocer to sell toasters door-to-door
7.   Lead story on every Reuters newswire: “Eikon products still dependable and affordably priced!”
6.   Three words: “Eikon With Porn”
5.   Find out who the hell this “Dave Thomson” is (Singers enter)
4.   Have Anna Nicole Smith keep marrying rival executives until they’re all dead
3.   See if Powell’s engineers can help Albert Lojko use his cache of iPhones, iPads, & MacBooks
2.   Assemble all employees for a huge party followed by massive layoffs
… and the number one item on the Reuters To Do List:
1.   The Late Show With Phil Brittan
 

My kids watching The Dollyrots’ StageIt Show

Evan Lowenstein noticed that the music industry had changed, and for musicians, that wasn’t a good thing. “It caused our industry to go from hundreds of artists making millions of dollars, to millions of artists making hundreds of dollars.” In fact, for a solo artist to just make minimum wage these days, they would have to have people download 12,399 songs, per month, from iTunes or Amazon, or their song would have to stream over 4 million times a month on Spotify to make the minimum wage threshold. (See the Information is Beautiful breakout, also see today’s report in The Atlantic which counters this somewhat.) Remember, those numbers are for solo artists, multi-member bands have to make three, or more times that to break the minimum wage barrier.

So, what should artists and bands do? Tour? Yes. Sell merch online? Yes. Run promotions on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or PledgeMusic? Yes. All of those make money, much more than the traditional selling of songs and albums does, but they are also very demanding and are either one-off type projects, or extremely expensive. Lowenstein has come up with an online alternative to touring, and you may see your favorite bands performing for you, right from their living rooms.

Lowenstein created the online concert platform called Stageit. The idea is pretty simple. Your favorite musicians perform live, usually from their own homes, and sell tickets to the show, usually at a “name your own price” amount. So, you can watch a live performance and pay 10¢ (if you’re a total cheapskate.) Most fans pay between $1 and $10, depending upon their own financial situation, and how much they like the band. In addition to the ticket sales, which the bands keep 60% of the sales, you can also “tip” the performers during the show. The tips go directly to the artists, and usually the artists will put an incentive for ‘big tippers’ by giving away some merch or singing a special song for the top tippers during the show.

During the show, you get to have an online chat with the band and they see your comments as you post them. Last month, I watched my favorite band, The Dollyrots, perform from Kelly Ogden’s living room couch, and I streamed the show directly to my big screen TV using the HDMI cable on my PC. As you can see from the picture above, my kids also joined in on the fun. What you didn’t see was them asking me to type in requests for the next song throughout the show. We enjoyed the show, it was cheap, it was intimate, and the band made a decent amount of money right from their own living room.

The Internet has been a double-edge sword for the music industry. It has allowed many bands that would never have made it under the old model to find a following around the world. However, it has become a driver in pushing musicians’ wages down. New resources, like Stageit, are helping reshape the way musicians can reach fans, and make money at the same time. If you’re looking for a Stageit show to attend in the next couple of weeks, I have a suggestion for you. Another one of the LA Pop-Punk Girl Bands that I like, Go Betty Go, is having a Stageit show on March 10th. If that’s not your type of music, then go search Stageit and search around. Even popular bands and artists are finding it to be a great way to reach out to fans, and make some money at the same time.

Perhaps Law.com was just fishing for traffic by choosing a controversial headline (something we at 3 Geeks would never condone!) but yesterday’s article, misleadingly entitled AFAs Trending Down in U.S. and U.K., got a lot of attention. To be fair, the data gathered in the 9th Annual Litigation Trends Survey Report, does indeed show a decrease in AFAs from 2011 to 2012.  And it gives some indication that those numbers MAY go lower again this year.  However, there is one big problem with the headline, the second word.  The appropriate headline would have been AFAs Down in U.S. and U.K. There is no trending about it.

 The survey has been asking “Does your company use Alternative Fee Arrangements?” since 2009.  If we add 2009’s survey results to the data published in this year’s report, we see a different story emerge. Plotting the percentage of positive responses to the AFA question over the last 4 years (solid lines), and then using handy dandy Excel to plot linear trend lines (dotted) over that time, you’ll see that even with last year’s drop in AFA usage, the trends are still pointing up.

Now, a relatively small drop in use of AFAs in the U.S. – from the current 51% to less than the 48% reported in 2009 – would turn the US trend line down over the five year period from 2009 to 2013. But, to do the same in the U.K. would require AFA usage to be cut nearly in half to only 32% this year. A very unlikely occurrence.  
The Law.com article correctly points out:

“…in 2011, some 52 percent of U.S. respondents said they intended to increase their use of alternative fee arrangements. But only 39 percent this year said they expect increased use over the next 12 months…”

But from this they conclude:

“…indicating the downward shift will continue.”

This is an example of statistics that seem meaningful until you tease them apart.  In 2011, at a time when AFA usage had just gone up 17% in the previous year, 52% of respondents said they would be doing more AFAs.  In 2012, when AFA usage had diminished by about that same amount, only 39% said they would be using more AFAs. This does not indicate that the downward shift will continue, it indicates that people tend to assume this year will be pretty much like last year.  Sometimes they’re right, often they’re wrong.

It will be very interesting to see the 10th Annual Litigation Trends Survey to see how the trends actually play out in 2013, but a single Year-Over-Year drop in usage, does not a trend make.

This post is the final part of a whitepaper written by Scott Preston and Ryan McClead. The full paper can be downloaded here.

Conclusion

Image [cc] – ANDRA Drag Racing

By now it is obvious there will be no return to the glory days of an ever-expanding legal market and steadily rising hourly rates.  Legal Project Management, in its earliest incarnation, awakened many firms to the need for better project planning and greater control over budgets. But it also put a heavy burden on partners to ensure delivery of services at an agreed upon price without providing them any mechanism to control the process.

The second generation of Legal Project Management, by incorporating task management and monitoring and control mechanisms, now gives the partner a more effective way to deliver services on time and within budget.  LPM 2.0 makes it possible to catch problems as they are happening not weeks after they’ve already occurred.  It improves communication with clients by being inclusive of the client and making the end-to-end process as transparent as possible. This gives clients an opportunity to have meaningful and contextually relevant discussions with their attorney, greatly increasing the level of trust between them.

In shifting from a time management paradigm, in which attorney hours are often captured days or weeks after the work has been completed, to a task management paradigm, where pre-assigned tasks are checked off as the work is done, LPM 2.0 leverages technology to provide contextually appropriate support resources to attorneys at the precise moment that they are needed. This leads to a better use of resources, time, money, and ultimately to a better understanding of the legal process for both the client and the attorney.

Legal Project Management in its more complete form, incorporating all three stages: Planning and Budgeting; Execution; and Monitoring and Controlling, provides many benefits to clients, to attorneys, and to firms. By far the most important benefit to everyone is a more consistent, repeatable, and continually improving practice of law.

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