Kevin O’Keefe, wrote about the dueling Lexis and Thomson Reuters blogger summits on Tuesday in his post, Who’s Influencing Who. He seems to be concerned that the big L and TR are trying to curry favorable blog content by lavishing a few bloggers with fancy perks.  I happened to stumble across his post as I was lounging on my pillow top King Size bed and perusing my Twitter feed on Tuesday afternoon in the St. Paul Hotel, in St. Paul, Minnesota.  I even mentioned it to my dinner companions later that evening at the St. Paul Grill, where I enjoyed a wonderfully buttery cream of mushroom soup, bourbon glazed Pork Chops, and asparagus with hollandaise, washed down with a very drinkable (and free flowing) Cabernet Sauvignon, all of which was kindly paid for by my very good friends at Thomson Reuters.  In return for this spectacular treatment, Thomson asked exactly two things of me: 1) venture to the Twin Cities in January! and 2) listen to five hours or so of the marketing pitches, development road maps, and executive presentations that they will be presenting at Legal Tech New York in a couple of weeks. The one thing no one ever overtly asked me to do was to write about the event or the product announcements.  Now, I’m not stupid, and they’re certainly not either.  If you invite bloggers to a summit, you’re looking to create buzz.  If you ply them with good food and wine, you’re hoping it’s really good buzz.  I’m sure the Lexis event was much the same.

Some of my colleagues who were in Eagan are, in fact, journalists as well as bloggers.  I’ll let them speak for themselves, but speaking only for me, I am not a journalist.  I do not have pretensions to be a journalist.  My lifelong friendship and goodwill can be openly bought for the price of a couple of rounds of drinks and a few hours of good conversation.  And I will gladly say nice things on this blog and elsewhere about anyone who wishes to purchase my friendship in such a manner. (BTW, Toby and Greg: really great guys.) That said, drinks, presents, perks, and “flights to Eagan, Minnesota in January” on their own, don’t buy much from me, it’s much more about the good conversations.  Please feel free to take that into account as you read anything I write.   Including the following.

Back to Thomson…

I came away from the excursion to Eagan having learned a couple of things.

1) Thomson has a lot of really smart, very interesting, and incredibly nice people working for them. 

2) Thomson now sees itself as primarily a software and solutions company, rather than an information and news provider.  Interesting.

3) Thomson is moving a number of their new and existing products to the cloud.  (I’m pretty sure Mike Suchsland, President of the Legal group at Thomson, paused momentarily after he said this as if  expecting a gasp of shocked surprise from the bloggers around the table. And he seemed just a little disappointed at the “yeah, we figured” response he got.)

4) Thomson has a “new class of products, tools, and technologies that [they] think will define the next generation of technology for the evolving legal marketplace”  Um… maybe.  We (the bloggers) didn’t get to play with any software. We saw a couple of demos and some screen shots.  Two new products, Concourse (for corporate, government, and large firms) and Firm Central (for small firms) are matter centric collaboration and communication hubs that nicely incorporate existing and future TR products into a single, simple, intuitive user interface, that can be customized to meet your firm’s needs.  My take is that these are pretty early products.  They could definitely grow into generation defining products, but I don’t think they’re there yet.  And I think Thomson would probably agree.  Concourse looks very much like a consumer, rather than enterprise, product. (Which is good thing.) It has larger fonts and plenty of white space. It’s designed to work on a tablet as well as a desktop.  I can imagine it would require very little user training and moderately savvy users who are familiar with consumer products like Dropbox and GoogleDocs will probably pick it up very quickly.

My big takeaway from the event is that in their new role as a software and solutions provider, Thomson is focused heavily on design, seamless integration between products, and overall ease of use. They are very much trying to bring the consumer experience to the enterprise, so I think they are moving in the right direction.

As I didn’t get a chance to use any of the software, I can’t say for sure whether the new TR products are any good or not, but I can say that the people working on them are pretty good conversationalists and they bought me a few drinks. So they’re OK in my book.  Does that impugn my integrity?
 

P.S.
Some of the more journalistic attendees at the Thomson Reuters event took copious notes and I’m sure some of them will post extensive “reviews” of the products we saw.  Rather than duplicate their efforts, I will take the easy (lazy blogger) way out and link to other posts below as I find them.

Monica Bay: Thomson Reuters to Debut Concourse at LegalTech New York

Jean O’Grady: Thomson Reuters Legal Announces New Strategic Direction: Content no Longer King, Shift to Client Centric Platforms

Bob Ambrogi: Thomson Reuters Unveils New Tools for Litigators, Corporate Counsel and Small Firms

Lisa Solomon: Thomson Reuters’ Firm Central doesn’t measure up to its small law practice management competition

image [cc] KevinLouage

Answer: Zero

An old economics adage is that the value of anything is the price someone will pay to purchase it. Therefore the market value of any large law firm will be zero.

When valuing a company for a potential purchase, buyers will determine the various assets held by the target,along with their brand value, customer base and revenues. Depending on the type of industry, each factor will carry a different weight. However, revenue tends to carry the most weight since that factor has a direct monetary value. So how would a buyer value a large law firm?

Assets:
Office Equipment: Fire sale value
A/R: Maybe 75% of face value
(Although this reflects a hard value, the cost will equal the value and therefore it is just the purchase of receivables and not of a functioning firm. The only way this might have value to a buyer is if they think they can collect more than the firm would have.)
IP: Knowledge base is poorly organized and partially owned by clients. Knowledge assets walk out the door every night.
Offsetting Liabilities: Expensive long-term office leases. Possible short-term debt.

Brand:
A large firm’s brand may have some value, but since any one player owns such a small piece of the market, law firm brands are not that distinct. So the real brand value comes from being classified as an AmLaw 100 firm, versus the specific law firm brand. Most clients these days view a firm as Top Tier or not. So the brand has value only in that classification and not as a separately valuable commodity. Result: BigLaw brands will not have much, if any, market value

Customer Base:
Definite value here.
Problem #1: Per ethics rules, the firm does not own the relationship, the individual lawyers do and the client has full authority to move its business at will.
Problem #2: A customer base is specific to the individual partners, and therefore ‘owned’ by the individual to a greater degree than the firm. Therefore these are not easily transferred in a sale.

Revenue (or multiples of revenue):
Per the customer base note, revenues are tied to individual lawyers, so a buyer would be valuing the revenue based on whether the lawyers with the relationships will remain as part of the entity. And why would they? They were just bought-out of the partnership.

When valuing a business on multiples (or fractions) of annual revenue, an obvious issue is how sustainable is the revenue stream? If only a portion of annual revenue will recur year-over-year, then the multiple is reduced. The problem for large firms is that a significant portion of revenue is episodic. Large cases or mergers come and go. Therefore not much of the revenue is reproducible year-over-year on a per client basis. Typically, the on-going revenue comes from other clients having large matters appear. Accounting practices, in contrast, have very sustainable revenue, since much of the work they perform is recurring. This suggests firms that strive for Tier One work will suffer in a valuation, since Tier One work is episodic and only sustainable over a larger client base. Or in other words, BigLaw’s phobia towards ‘commodity’ work reduces their market value, since commodity work is typically repeatable and therefore sustainable.

So on a good day, the best valuation of a large law firm will be a shrinking portion of their annual revenue. I say shrinking, since the market is currently redefining Tier One work and the competition for that work is increasing significantly.

But all of this analysis is for naught. Even if you could determine a reasonable purchase value, the only potential buyers will be other law firms, since ethics rules (in the US) prohibit ownership by non-lawyers. And other law firms have no capital or a real ability to raise capital to make such a purchase. So back to our economics adage – there is no one willing or able to pay any price for a large law firm, therefore they are worth zero dollars in the market.

Imagine a company with a billion dollars in annual revenue having a market value of zero. This might be one reason why large firms struggle to act like a business.

Last week while having lunch with a librarian friend, we wondered if associates schooled in electronic research were losing the serendipity of stumbling across new resources while browsing bookshelves.

But then I mentioned that I have seen serendipitous posts on social networks, like when two of my friends, unbeknownst to one another, post similar items back-to-back on my social feed.

I’ll give you a great example.

Last Sunday, January 4, 2013, a friend posted the Back to the Future meme that has swept through the social media sites.

Immediately below it, another friend posted a NYTimes aticle, “Why You Won’t Be the Person You Expect to Be.” Basically, the article was about a study that describes a phenomenon that demonstrates that we under-estimate our future selves. For example, when I was in law school, I could never imagined that I would be doing internet marketing for a law firm.

Ok, so that’s one serendipitous act. But it gets better.

So after sharing the meme to Facebook, I accidentally tagged the wrong friend for posting the NYT story. When I corrected the error in the comments of my Facebook post, the incorrectly tagged friend chimed in, saying “I was JUST looking for this online–I literally just clipped it from the paper!”

So if you can follow the spirality of all of this, basically I was having serendipity3 event.

And you want to know why I waited until now to post this? Well, I was reminded of the incident while  watching the “Bank to the Future” episode from Raising Hope on Hulu, featuring the famous DeLorean and Christopher Lloyd.

All of this just confirms that synchronicity is every where. I need not fear its demise.

And with that, I will leave you with this video …

image [cc] EJ Images

Bruce and Janet of AdamSmithEsq recently published an article on ATL about the reasonableness of firms providing PPMs to in-coming laterals. I believe the idea is sound. Since in-coming laterals are effectively investing in a privately held company, they should have access to the full financial picture of the company. A PPM is a classic tool for making such a disclosure to a potential investor, giving revenue numbers, forecasts, risks and other key factors that reveal the value of an on-going operation..

Yet I would extend or broaden this analogy (which Bruce and Janet may do in the series) and suggest the in-coming lateral arrangement might be better treated as a mini-M&A deal. In many respects a firm is acquiring the lateral (or laterals) just a like a business would acquire a smaller company.

So why shouldn’t the party being acquired also disclose a complete financial picture to the acquirer?

It’s the old story of the cobbler’s kids going without shoes. Law firms would never advise their clients to make an acquisition under such conditions, yet they do it all the time. These people have a deep understanding of due diligence, yet keep a blind eye to it in their own businesses.

Typically laterals provide very simple revenue stats about their book of business. There is no profitability disclosed or any other risks associate with their practice and their key relationships. Some firms may ask these types of questions of laterals on an ad hoc basis, but I am not aware of firms requiring something along the lines of a PPM to document such claims. And you have to assume most of the answers laterals give in interviews are the ‘sales pitch’ versus full disclosure approach, since they are trying to get the firm to invest in them. That is why PPMs exist – to make sure a sales pitch is balanced by an objective documentation.

Here we go again. Law firms need to adopt basic business practices in this new environment or suffer the consequences. Given the typical track record of success with laterals, you might think firms would have picked up on this by now.

 Here’s my advice: Both firms and lateral candidates need to, “Look Before You Leap.”

 Well done to Bruce and Janet for bringing this topic to the surface.

I think this is one of the best awards that AALL presents to an outstanding member. Actually, it just makes me think back to when I was within my first 10 years of the profession (really, not that long ago) and how eager I was to get into the association, be involved, and make a difference. Looking at the past list of winners, you can see how much of an impact they have had on the association already.

If you know of anyone you would like to nominate (or if you want to nominate yourself… which is completely fine), the deadline is February 1st, so you need to get moving!!

Here’s the instructions:

Help us honor AALL’s emerging leaders!

The Leadership Development Committee is now accepting nominations for the AALL Emerging Leader Award, which celebrates the contributions of newer law librarians. The award honors members of AALL who, in their first 10 years of law library experience, have made a significant contribution to the Association and/or the profession and who show outstanding promise for continuing service and leadership to AALL. The recipient will receive a certificate and a $500 cash prize.

Nominations should include evidence of the nominee’s contributions to AALL and/or the profession and may include up to 3 supporting letters.  (Petitions and letter writing campaigns, beyond those letters included with the application, are discouraged and will not be considered in the evaluation process — nor will they influence the Committee.)

Selection Criteria:

The nominee must:

·         be an AALL member in good standing
·         not have more than 10 years of law library experience
·         never have received the Emerging Leader Award
·         have made a significant contribution to the Association and/or the profession
·         show outstanding promise for continuing service and leadership. (Specific examples of continuing activities must be provided)

Self-nomination is acceptable.

If someone you nominated in the past did not win – but still satisfies the eligibility requirements — please consider nominating him or her once again!

Previous Winners:

Nominations and recipients come from all parts of the Law Library community. Take a look at our previous award winners:

2012:     Margaret Butler, Associate Director for Public Services, Georgia State University College of Law Library, Atlanta, GA

2011:     Kathleen (Katie) Brown, Assistant Director for Public and Faculty Services, Oklahoma City University School of Law, Oklahoma City, OK

2010:     Sarah K.C. Mauldin, Head Librarian, Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP in Atlanta, GA

Application Information:

Download Emerging Leader Award Nomination Form

Nominations:

Send the completed nomination form and all accompanying documentation to AALL by February 1, 2013.

American Association of Law Libraries
Leadership Development Committee Chair
105 W Adams Street
Suite 3300
Chicago, IL 60603-6225
Phone: (312) 205-8010
Fax: (312) 205-8011
Email: vcastillo@aall.org

The award winner will be announced in April, and the award will be presented during the AALL Annual Meeting. 

 

 

 

 
image [cc] jo.marshall

Legal Project Management (LPM), perhaps THE legal buzz-phrase of 2012 continues to increase in popularity. The basic thinking behind it is centered on efficiencies. Many clients are asking their firms to become more efficient. As I have noted in the past, they might want to be more specific about what they mean by efficiency. However, LPM will likely be an effective tool for firms to use in providing legal services for clients at lower costs.

Recently I met with some project managers (PMs) to learn from them and increase my knowledge on the subject. These were project managers involved in commercial real estate building projects. What is unique about their business is that they represent clients, versus general contractors or architecture firms. My first question for them was: Why Clients? I assumed the project managers working with the building contractors would be more than sufficient. Why would a client pay more for their own project managers?

The reason was made clear by some of their comments. They said architects were focused on building the most functional and attractive buildings. Construction contractors meanwhile were focused on delivering on spec and under budget. Neither of these goals were entirely focused on the client’s agenda. Therefore the role of the client-side PM has the potential to bring significant value.

I saw a direct analogy to project management in the legal space. Here the law firm functions as both the architect and the contractor. The law firm agenda is delivering the most effective legal service with the best possible outcome. Or in other words, they want to be the best lawyers they can be. It’s not that they don’t care about the client’s agenda; it’s just that they can never fully appreciate it. Added to that situation – the client’s agenda can shift over time.

As a pricing guy, I am always focused on developing fee options that align law firm and client interests. Yet even the best fee deal is not a full alignment of agendas. In fact that full agenda alignment is unattainable. Two people will differ on agendas, so we can’t expect two organizations to ever come close to that ideal.

The project managers shared with me a number of examples where their involvement increased value and lowered costs. One of their clients I know commented that they easily saved more on their project than the cost of the extra PMs. And the client was happier with the results.

Obviously not all legal matters will benefit from a similar client-side PM resource. However, there are likely savings for clients to realize in many practice areas. And beyond savings, the client will realize more effective legal services. (This comment should make Ron Baker happy.)

Of course I am crystal-balling here a bit. The LPM space is embryonic at best. I predict a bit more evolution will be needed before a client-side LPM option is embraced. Either way, it was interesting to learn from another industry and see that new ideas are being employed in other industries as well.

Cafe Press

I’m going to modify a quote from one of my least favorite politicians, Margaret Thatcher, and then apply it to something I’m seeing in the library profession:

Being valuable is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

The same can be said about being funny, or cool. If you have to explain why the joke is funny, it’s because it isn’t funny. At least not in the perception of the person you are having to explain it.

Now, this was a long introduction to something that tends to happen whenever there is an article, blog post, or public questioning of what librarians do and the value that they bring. The latest culprit? “10 Least Stressful Jobs for 2013” where Librarian fell between “Hair Stylist” and “Drill Press Operator” as one of the most stress-free jobs you can have this year. Of course, University Professors came in with the top honor. I’m sure as soon as the article’s author, Kyle Kensing, hit “publish” on the CareerCast  website, he stood up and shouted “Oh, It’s About To Get Real All Up In Here!!” as he waited for 10 different professions to start picking apart the metrics used in compiling this list and explain to him why he is an idiot.

Like clockwork, the comments started coming; the counter-posts started flying, and; the “who does this joker think he is?” tweets and Facebook updates hit the social media spectrum.  Perhaps my favorite (so far) was the tongue-in-cheek post by Andy Woodworth, “How to Troll Librarians and Make Money in Five Easy Steps.” In that article, Andy explains that if you want to make a lot of money off of the emotions of librarians, simply follow his five steps of baiting librarians with vague “best” or “worst” professions, add stereotypes, and surround the post with ads that pay you per visit. To modify another quote: “If you insult them, they will come.” Don’t believe it? Start your article with this phrase:

In a wool suit, nicely accessorized, sitting in the boardroom of the Hughes Main Library, she looks every bit the librarian she is.

and see what happens next.

Look, Librarians are just like every other profession out there. We have some really poor performers, and we have some really good performers. We tend to be seen as an easy way to cut the budget during hard times, yet we also tend to be seen as one of the most important pieces of our communities when we are under attack by those same budget cutters. In my opinion, we have a large percentage within the profession that are extremely valuable to their organizations, their communities, and to the profession as a whole. Those folks do not have to scramble during budget season to figure out how they need to prove their worth. They prove it everyday with their actions.

I’m sure that I will take a bit (or a lot) of criticism over this next statement, but here it goes anyway. If we, as a profession, jump down the throat of every writer that slights us with these “worst” or “best” job articles, then we, as a profession, look petty. If we, as a profession, have to teach each other how to be valuable, then we, as a profession, loose value. There’s a fine line between providing value everyday and having to explain to those we work with why they should understand why we are valuable. I’m afraid that we are nearing a tipping point where all this talk of value will turn against us.

Here are just a few of the conference I found that specifically mention “Value” in the theme of the conference itself. You can easily do a Google search to see there are many more out there with this same theme. I’m not trying to insult any of the conference listed below (as you may know, I’m on the executive board of one of them.) However, the participants (whether behind the podiums or in the audience) need to enter these conferences with the goal of recognizing how to better provide value and not the goal of being better at telling people how we are already valuable. Again, to modify the explaining a joke quote:

If you have to explain why the librarians are valuable, they aren’t. 

American Association of Law Libraries
Texas Library Association
Academic Library Association of Ohio
Association of College and Research Libraries

Many of us have a macabre habit of believing that famous people die in groups of three. Last week, when I saw that Thomson Reuters had acquired PLC, and then Lexis announced they had acquired Knowledge Mosaic, I waited for the third announce, which I assumed would come from Bloomberg. I was right about the acquisition, but not about the company behind it. Instead it was Thomson Reuters rounding out the tri-fecta with their acquisition of the Continuing Professional Education (CPE/CLE) product of LearnLive Technologies.

Although Thomson Reuters already has a similar program with West LegalEdcenter, it seems that LearnLive has been taking some of West LegalEdcenter’s marketshare away, thus Thomson Reuters reached for its checkbook and decided that if you can’t beat ’em… buy ’em.

As with both PLC and Knowledge Mosaic, LearnLive has quite a reputation for customer service and personal attention given to its customers. Just as with PLC and Knowledge Mosaic, there is a mild enthusiasm on behalf of the company being acquired that they will benefit from all the additional resources of the Mega-Company, while customers are once again left groaning that they will see pricing increases and service decreases. Time will tell to see if the acquired company’s optimism prevails over the pessimistic customers.

I had a conversation with a librarian last week about all the acquisitions, and during the conversation, he openly wondered if Thomson Reuters’ moves in purchasing some duplicative products could be to position the Thomson Reuters Legal (aka Westlaw) product to be spun off from the big TR franchise. That is an interesting thought.

Here’s a statement I received from Thomson Reuters on the LearnLive acquisition.

Thomson Reuters has acquired LearnLive Technologies, which provides a hosted solution for the creation, delivery, tracking and management of eLearning programs for accounting and law firms.

LearnLive is now part of the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters, which delivers a complete range of continuing education (CPE) to tax and accounting professionals under itsCheckpoint Learning brand. 

“This acquisition is beneficial for customers of both businesses, because it combines LearnLive’s best of breed technology and solutions focused on the needs of large accounting and law firms with Checkpoint Learning’s innovative platform,” said Steve Mendelsohn, SVP and general manager for the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters.

Image [cc] anti_christa

Friday morning I stumbled into an interesting Twitter conversation between Jeffrey Brandt (Pinhawk guru), Nicole Black (Mycase.com and Cloud Computing for Lawyers), and – I assume – Andrea Cannavina (LegalTypist), tweeting as @LegalTypist. As I often do, I jumped in mid-conversation, completely uninvited, and offered my opinions. The topic was Innovation vs. Security and the tweet that caught my eye was Jeffrey saying, “My biggest fear is that firms will relax their standards to support iThings, and some young lawyer will bypass more traditional tools causing their client to get hosed.”*

 Of course Jeffrey is completely right.  That would be a terrible outcome resulting from security standards being relaxed simply to support the latest and greatest new-fangled gadget.  However, as an hopelessly progressive technologist, who regularly finds himself in the midst of this very battle, I had to offer the counter argument.

“How about firms who stick to rigid, outdated standards and then fail to meet their clients’ needs?”, I asked.

The 140 character limit on Twitter is both it’s salvation and it’s undoing.  Nuance and subtlety are impossible and my comment got @LegalTypist a bit riled.**

“A firm that fails to use the latest and greatest technology does not automatically fail to meet their clients needs. But a firm that fails to protect client data…”* She left the sentence dangling there like a fish, but I knew what she meant, and she was also completely right.

Security, especially of client data, is always of the utmost importance.  You will get no argument from me.

BUT, (and this is not a new revelation) security is also always a trade off.  Your million dollar diamond bracelet is highly secure in it’s safe deposit box, but if you ever care to wear it you will be forced to diminish its security, at least temporarily. Data is like that bracelet. If you want USE it, you risk losing exclusive control over it. If you’re happy just knowing that you own it, you can leave it locked up somewhere safe and never take it out. Unlike the bracelet, however, if you don’t make your client’s data easily accessible to those who need access to it via the tools they are likely to have with them when they need to access it, then the value of that data diminishes for both you and for your client.

The assumption in Jeffrey Brandt’s scenario is that both traditional tools and iThings are readily available and the young lawyer chooses the less secure option. Leaving aside for the moment whether an iThing is indeed less secure than more traditional tools, the problem here is not the technology, but the young lawyer’s decision making skills.  If we change the scenario just a bit and suggest that the young lawyer is out and about spending his year end bonus when he receives an urgent request from a client, then what is the value of having client data accessible via iThings? The alternative is for the young lawyer to seek out a public library to log in to a remote portal, or to hunt down a colleague with immediate access to a computer, or to talk his secretary, spouse, or <shudder> child through the task of meeting the client’s needs over the phone. Any of these options would be more time consuming and  less secure (except maybe the colleague scenario) than simply accessing the client’s data securely through the iThing. The value to the client is much more concrete.  How much will the young attorney bill for his time and services in each scenario?

As I tweeted in response to @LegalTypist, “I am not arguing that ALL technology is good, or that we should ever put client data at undue risk, but we can’t fail to innovate the practice of law in the name of securing data.”*

It is a different technological world than it was just a few short years ago.  Today there are vendors providing consumer-like services with enterprise level (and beyond) security. You may have evaluated consumer technology options a year ago and decided that they were inappropriate for your practice, but that information is woefully outdated and you should probably re-evaluate.  I am ultimately arguing for broader, more flexible technology usage policies that incorporate the concept of “good judgment” (radical, I know) and can accommodate the rapid change of technology.  Or at the very least, I would hope for much shorter review periods for such policies.

And, as usual, this little rant probably has nothing to do with what Jeffrey, Nicole, and Andrea were actually talking about and I simply hijacked it to make my own point.

Sorry guys.


 *Twitter-ese translations are mine.
**Attributions of emotion are mine as well.

Image [cc] ByronNewMedia

While prepping for a workshop on this morning, I began to think about the types of business development, client relations and competitive intelligence questions that are commonly asked at law firms, and how they tend to almost always be reactive in nature. Take the question of a partner coming to the development/intelligence team and asking:

We are looking at bringing in Bob Smith from Mega-Firm, LLC, can you check him out for us?

What this question is actually saying is this:

We’ve already made a lot of decisions on bringing in this guy Bob Smith from Mega-Firm, LLC. We’ve done a bit of investigation (read: one of us worked with him a while back), but we thought we’d get a bit of verification that he’s an okay lawyer and will fit into the firm. That way, if he doesn’t work out, we can point to your report and cover our you-know-what and say that we “properly vetted” him. So, can you check him out for us?

Maybe that’s a bit over the top, but you can see that bringing in your development and intelligence (D&I) teams this late into the process shows that either your D&I teams aren’t part of the overall strategic goals of your firm, or the strategy wasn’t considered properly when the decision was made to bring in Bob Smith as a lateral hire.

So, what’s the proper question? Part of that answer isn’t so much about the question itself, but rather, at what point in the process is a question presented to your D&I teams? If the D&I teams are really a part of the firm’s strategic operations, the question needs to be asked before Bob’s name is even in the running as a lateral hire. If the D&I teams are part of the process, Bob may never have even entered into the equation at all. A more strategic question to ask might be this:

We are looking to beef up our IP Litigation practice in the Northwest United States, what potential clients are out there for that region, and who do we have within the firm to handle this initiative? If we don’t have someone in the firm, who would be the top five laterals we should be looking for to help us accomplish this objective?

One of the primary purposes of having development and intelligence professionals is to help put your firm on at a competitive advantage over peer firms. So, if the strategic goal is to “beef up” a practice in a certain geographic area, then the D&I teams’ purpose is to analyze the competition in that area, determine who are the main players, the trends forecasted for this type of legal practice, and what it would take to make our firm better than what exists in that region. This purpose cannot be obtained when they are left out of the intial strategy.