As the International Legal Technology Association conference kicks off in Nashville this morning I’m sad to miss it. From what I’ve seen, there are some great speakers lined up and innovative products being rolled out. I look forward to following as much as I can from afar. With all of the great software and helpful advice being presented, however, I offer two suggestions: ... (Keep reading)
The Agile Attorney Blog
I saw an interesting bit go by on Twitter this morning regarding the trend of in-house law departments conducting technology audits on their law firms. This started about a year ago with an ABA Journal blurb reporting that 0 of 9 law firms had passed Kia Motors GC Casey Flaherty’s basic technology test. If you missed it (like I did) at the time, Flaherty elaborated on his program on the ABA Legal Rebels Blog, and his guest post links to other discussions about it. ... (Keep reading)
Since my post on legal project management, I’ve heard a lot of stories about LPM initiatives that didn’t deliver as promised. Because I argue that Agile project management is superior to traditional (or waterfall) project management for legal work, much of the discussion has focused on whether a switch to Agile techniques would improve adoption and outcomes. This basically comes down to a “you’re doing the thing wrong” argument, and I hold to my assertion that if you plan to implement legal project management in your law department or practice, Agile is a superior option. But it also occurred to me that there is another, possibly more likely explanation for ... (Keep reading)
Legal Project Management is quite the buzzword these days. Of course the concept has been around for years, but the recent publication of the ABA's The Power of Legal Project Management has renewed the push for lawyers to adopt the project management techniques that have been used in the business world for decades. Here's the problem: the project management methodology being marketed to lawyers—whether by the ABA book, an upcoming ALI CLE, or any number of consulting firms—is outdated. Not only that, it isn't especially well-suited to the dynamic and sometimes volatile nature of legal work. Before I go further, let me first say that I think that legal project ... (Keep reading)
My thesis so far: You have a greater opportunity to increase customer Value by delivering more Benefit than by lowering customer Investment. If customer Value = Benefit – Investment (my original theory), then it is easy to see that lowering Investment (cost control) can have a noticeable impact on Value when the initial Investment is large. But you can also see that the opportunity for Value improvement through cost control diminishes as the Investment shrinks. I’ve also discussed the usefulness of Lean tools for cost control, especially identifying and eliminating Waste in your legal workflows (I even made a handy poster). But I cautioned that eliminating Waste for the sake of ... (Keep reading)
[getty src=”95179659?et=pdLBI-0S70-vA0TN1qmISQ&sig=R7XtPLT8YecFRUyFkQrSiPdCiRmLrgWRDZtPkXG9Kcs=” width=”507″ height=”407″] A few weeks ago I delivered a guest lecture at the Lewis & Clark Law School’s Law Practice Management class about value creation and value theory. We went over a lot of topics, including some (too short) introductions to Lean and Agile as tools for understanding and delivering on a customer’s actual needs. Probably because it was too short, several students had questions afterwards about how Lean (which was originally a manufacturing concept) could work in the legal setting. My answer is nuanced, and it ultimately depends on what you think Lean is for. ... (Keep reading)
In my post about Waste I introduced the “Seven Wastes of Lean.” As a quick review, remember that Value = Benefit – Investment and Investment = Time + Energy + Effort + Resources + Opportunity Waste, then, is any Investment that isn’t offset by at least an equivalent increase in Benefit. Put another way, if the Time, Energy, Effort, Resources, or Opportunity you are putting into a piece of work isn’t adding Benefit, then it is actively reducing Value. ... (Keep reading)
A quick question: Which marketing pitch would more likely get you to contact me? “I have years of experience working with clients to re-engineer their legal process flows to gain efficiency and reduce costs.” -or- ... (Keep reading)
I’m a fan of Daniel Pink. I think he does an excellent job breaking down complex business problems and encouraging new ways of thinking about them. I especially like his 2009 book Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, and I keep coming back to it when I think about creating Value. A key topic of that book is the complex interplay of reward, incentive, and motivation. In the book (and in a related Ted Talk) Pink explains an experiment using an old puzzle called the Candle Problem. I won’t re-hash the whole thing, but the upshot is that a group of subjects was asked to solve a puzzle ... (Keep reading)
The basic premise of my search for the Grand Unified Theory of Legal Value has been that Value is the gap between what you Invest and the Benefit you receive in a particular transaction. Otherwise stated: Value = Benefit – Investment My discussion so far has focused on Value from the customer’s perspective, although a friend pointed out that my post on Waste conflated the customer’s Investment with the provider’s Investment. He has a good point, and I think the best way to differentiate the two is to introduce the concept of Profit. ... (Keep reading)
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