The Oregon Court of Appeals recently issued an opinion vacating and remanding a trial court's modification of a prior parenting time order due to "an internal inconsistency as to the number of overnights that the child is to spend with each parent." A short version of the facts: Both parents appeared at the modification trial pro se. In the bench trial, the judge relied on the father's (mistaken) interpretation of the couple's existing parenting plan instead of taking the time to understand the plan himself. The judge issued an oral ruling granting mother slightly more parenting time than father (4 days a week to mother, 3 to father). With no ... (Keep reading)
The Agile Attorney Blog
Pioneers and Pathfinders is a podcast about the people driving change in the legal industry. I was honored to be invited on the show earlier this year. Stephen Poor and I talked about: What I learned from working in tech The need for human connection in the A2J space Applying Kanban principles to legal organizations How I helps attorneys with overwhelming workloads You can listen to the episode on Seyfarth’s Podcast Page, or at any of the links below: Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify ... (Keep reading)
I joined Melissa Shanahan from Velocity Work for an episode of her Law Firm Owner podcast. We dive into the importance of looking at your practice through the lens of your client and their experience. You’ll hear why doing this inherently forces better quality legal work, how he’s navigated shifting to a client-first approach in his business, and how unbundling your business internally has the potential to help you up-level client satisfaction. What You’ll Discover: • What the Kanban board entails. • The value of divorcing your business model from the act of examining the components of your delivery pipeline. • What happens if you solely focus on expanding your skillset and knowledge ... (Keep reading)
This is part of my series where I try to help anonymous strangers on Reddit (as u/AgileAtty). You can find the original post here. This is my answer to a follow-up question; the original question is in my Part 1 post. Thank you for this wonderful reply. We are tracking these metrics on spreadsheets and need to rely on the data more seriously to make decisions. Question for you, excluding partner salaries, what do you see as a typical range of overhead costs at a firm that does $3-5m in revenue? $600K to $1m in overhead? Remainder in profit? I'm not aware of any well-designed study that would give us the ... (Keep reading)
This is part of my series where I try to help anonymous strangers on Reddit (as u/AgileAtty). You can find the original post here. There was a follow-up question in the comments which I also answered in part 2 of this thread. How does your firm determine when to hire a new attorney? Do you look at cases per attorney, new cases filed and project out, or some other metrics? New attorneys mean more overhead but also more firepower so it seems to be a balancing act that I haven't quite figured out yet. Add to the complication the determination as to whether to hire an attorney vs paralegal. Any good ... (Keep reading)
Software company VersionOne (now part of Digital.ai) has conducted an annual State of Agile survey for 16 years now, and I thought I'd share a few tidbits from this year's report. While it is still heavily weighted towards the tech sector (where Agile methods are widely used), it is the best long-term gauge we have on Agile adoption overall.The biggest news for those of us on the Kanban bandwagon: "Kanban use has exploded from 7% in the 14th survey to 56% in the current [16th] survey."This makes sense in the context of another of the report's findings, that "Agile continues to extend beyond the original software development or IT team to cross-functional ... (Keep reading)
As we close out 2022, I've now spent over 8 years trying to convince lawyers and other legal professionals to use kanban boards — and the Kanban methodology more broadly — in their law practices. Back when I started, my biggest challenge was getting people to recognize that Kanban was even a thing. Much of my outreach focused on getting people to make a kanban board for the first time. I even made a Vine about it (remember Vine?): Ahh, the satisfying schlup of a sticky note unsticking. These days, the challenge is different. Kanban boards are kinda everywhere — well, in a lot of places at least. Software teams ... (Keep reading)
Jonah Perlin asked me to be on his podcast and I didn't hesitate to accept the invitation. We discussed my path to law, my work in the tech industry before going to law school, and my work now counseling lawyers to work smarter not harder using process-oriented frameworks. You can listen to the episode on How I Lawyer's Podcast Page, or at any of the links below: Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify Overcast ... (Keep reading)
This is part of my series where I try to help anonymous strangers on Reddit (as u/AgileAtty). You can find the original post here. Like the majority of us, I am currently dealing with an increased work load, and finding it a challenge to stay on top of things. I'd really appreciate your insight and experience on the below. What systems or routines do you have in place to stay on top of work? Do you use a First in, First Out system? How do you track open files and ongoing requests? Of course, whenever an urgent matter comes in, that takes priority, but I'm finding my trusty to do list ... (Keep reading)
One of my first best bosses was fond of saying “measure what you treasure” (it’s catcher than the Peter Drucker formulation). But finding the right things to measure in a law practice can be confusing. A recent guide from Clio recommends 62 Key Performance Indicators your firm should measure. 62 KPIs! That’s a lot of metrics. Before I get to the six measurements I care most about, understand that the thing I treasure is the flow of work through your law practice. Specifically, I care about flow in your delivery pipeline. Expanding briefly on the Theory of Constraints I've written about before, there are three high-level systems that make up ... (Keep reading)
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