Throughout my career I have always tried to sense — what’s the next big change or wave to occur in technology. The “Internet revolution,” and I am choosing my words deliberately, was just that — every aspect of communication was impacted as the framework of the web came together in a commercial sense. I was fortunate to ride the wave forward and participate in this window of time that allowed for widespread creativity and paradigm shifts (young technology folks were able to avoid the corporate ladder — myself included). Since then, there have certainly been breakthrough companies/models (Google, Amazon, etc). However, it has not been until recently that I have sensed another groundswell, which I think many folks sense as well — what I like to call the bottom up revolution or the “voice” of the internet (blogs, twitter, facebook, etc). It’s exciting to see that big companies and Corporate America alone cannot dictate the results of how businesses are perceived. It’s not what you say about you, it’s what “Google” says about you. This is just the beginning folks — your online brand, reputation programs are at their infancy — as the web move to greater interactivity (video, web cams), so will marketing and client/customer interactions. I’ll leave this post with a look at an interesting article I came across in brandweek, a bit dated, but illustrates the point:
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/digital/e3i6f1a697eee327ba0e15676d4aea4263c
I have the pleasure of participating in a CKO/CIO Roundtable dating back to my days at Paul Hastings (where I held the position of CTO/CKO). The group meets every few months and consists mostly of AMLAW 150 firms. Top on the group’s mind as of late have been: (a) KM lite — doing more with less; (b) AFAs — creating workflow systems to help manage and (c) Normalizing Data. It’s the last topic I want to spend a few moments on today — in that it’s so very critical to being able to effectively offer a client an alternative fee or fixed fee arrangement. I am not convinced firms have nailed normalizing their data to be able to justify and clearly defend to management profit margins in fixed fee or alternative fee arrangements, other than for the simplest of matters. If others out there have had success — would welcome your input.
Much is, and has been, said about the outsourcing of legal work product, law firm infrastructure, etc. In a former post, I commented on Seyfarth Shaw’s Lean Six Sigma, which is really (in some respects) a good response to outsourcing — become more efficient and effective, change practices long-term. Another method I learned of, after sitting down with a CKO at an AMLAW 20 firm was “insourcing,” higher lawyers that perform the more standardized legal work (1st yr – 3rd year associate type of work) in more affordable markets, secondary employment markets, thus, work gets done at more appropriate rates. To me, this was another indication of how much more savvy law firms are becoming with respect to the ever changing climate. Here’s a quote from the law21.ca blog that I thought did a nice job of summing up the point:
“If I were an LPO (Legal Process Outsourcing), I’d be nervous every time I read about a law firm that provided secondments, gave legal project management training, managed its workflow, unbundled its services, used decision trees, or even employed Lean Six Sigma, because it means they’re starting to adopt some of my stock in trade. The critical battleground in the legal services marketplace is not price, but innovation: inventing and implementing more efficient and effective ways to carry out legal work. That’s a tougher and far more important assignment than simply lowering the cost of associate work, and whoever figures it out first and best could, like Toyota and Sony, dominate this market. LPOs are in a strong position to compete in this race, but they’re not the only contestants.” The full-text of this entry can be found at:
http://www.law21.ca/2010/06/08/the-evolution-of-outsourcing/
There’s a groundswell occurring in the legal vertical with respect to developing specific web properties that pertain to legal hot topics, etc. What’s staggering is the amount of dollars even smaller firms are spending to “own” the internet presence associated with a hot legal topic (example, BP oil spill). The below was referenced last week in the WSJ.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/plaintiffs_firms_create_news_websites_where_potential_clients_congregate
PJO
Project/Case/Transaction Management just started to emerge when I was at my law firm in 2002, the processes were typically reserved for the largest of clients and quite rudimentary. Seyfarth’s work is just the beginning — it’s hard to see the pressure on fixed fees, alternative fee arrangements going away anytime soon. Recently, I had a chance to sit down with a managing partner (of one of its offices), he was very bullish on what the firm has accomplished to date. As our discussion turned to the future, he felt the firm was in a stronger position than just a few years ago to leverage not only processes, but technology and people as well — in part due to efforts related to Six Sigma effort. Here’s another blog post that adds additional color to the implementation, worth the read.
