Is Legal Project Management Going Mainstream?

Jordon Furlong charts recent press on legal project management and thinks it's about to burst on center stage.  He writes:

The day of the haphazard lawyer, who pursues a solution by intuition, experience and the loosest possible timetable, is drawing to a close. In his place is emerging the process-driven lawyer: disciplined, procedural and systematic, who understands that madness lies not in method, but in its absence. Most of us don’t like that idea. We’d much prefer to maintain the image of the ingenious lawyer who triumphs by intellect rather than by procedural discipline. It confirms our belief in our innate intellectual advantage over non-lawyer competitors — and, frankly, it makes us feel better about ourselves.

....

The truth is, much of what lawyers do can be charted, diagrammed and proceduralized, and both the quality and the cost will be better for it. But that doesn’t mean there’s no room for smart, creative lawyers in the future. For one thing, systems don’t need to be straightforward and monotonous. More often than not, especially in the law, they’re complex and challenging, and they can easily be made elegant, precise, finely tuned, honed to a keen edge — the imagery of swordsmanship is intentional. And even within systems, a lawyer’s unique judgment, analysis and creativity can emerge.

I think this right and the whole post is worth reading.  And as I've written before, good processes and standardized work facilitate, rather than hinder, creative thinking.

Why Process Improvement Should Matter To All Lawyers

One thing is now clear: for serial litigants, developing efficient processes for handling e-discovery is critical. Joan Goodchild at Computerworld sings a common refrain heard at the The Sedona Conference Institute e-discovery conference I attended last week:

NBC Universal is one of the largest media and entertainment companies in the world. Chief Information Security Officer Jonathan Chow and his team manage information security for several business lines within NBCU, including its broadcast and cable television to film production, online ventures and its two theme parks in Hollywood, California and Orlando, Florida. Among one of the biggest challenges in the last few years has been the incredible explosion in demand for e-discovery services, according to Chow.

Since different legal teams handle the needs of each line of business, the workflows associated with managing electronic discovery vary as well, adding another layer of complexity. And because of the growing number of cases, and increases in both the amount of electronically stored information and hours spent supporting the process, demand for e-discovery services has increased 30 to 50 percent annually. The costs were spiraling out of control and this sent Chow looking for a way to manage the process internally.

Chow . . . tackled the costly and time-consuming process and turned it into a cost-effective and more efficient system that has seen a 40-45 percent gain efficiency since its implementation.

I spoke with several in-house teams who've done a remarkable job developing standardized workflow for handling e-discovery. In doing this, they've discovered how wasteful the processes were when handled by outside counsel.

But the lesson isn't that in-house teams are necessarily more cost effective than outside lawyers. Outside counsel can do this too. The lesson is that process matters. Efficient processes allow in-house teams to save money for their companies. And outside counsel can give their clients the service they deserve.

Back From The Sedona Conference On E-Discovery

I apologize for the dearth of recent posts. I was traveling last week to attend the Fourth Annual Getting Ahead of the eDiscovery Curve Program presented by The Sedona Conference Institute. I had the honor of sharing notes with dozens of thought leaders in e-discovery, which by extension, means leaders in designing efficient legal processes.

I'm still in the process of catching up, but back to a normal posting schedule and promise to share some of the interesting ideas I've learned.

Serve It Up Precisely

Chuck Hollis thinks IT managers have paid too much attention to costs for hardware and software, and not enough attention to internal IT processes. He argues in favor of less precision and more speed, since the "time to serve" -- the time infrastructure is requested to the time of deployment -- determines the business advantage of implementing new IT infrastructure. "Time to serve" is another way of describing lead time, which is, indeed, something we rarely hear about when evaluating IT initiatives. And in discussing IT costs, we rarely explore how much of these costs are the result of internal wasteful processes. Instead, the discussion focuses almost exclusively on costs for hardware, software, and training.

However, I disagree that "time to serve" is improved by reducing precision. In many projects, resources are spent fixing bugs, troubleshooting, training because of poorly designed systems, and modifying existing processes so they are compatible with the new infrastructure. Less precision just exacerbates these non-value added processes, or waste. On the other hand, waste -- and therefore costs -- are reduced the more an IT project fits an organization's needs.

Interestingly, he concludes:

Over the last year, I've sketched out what I believe to be the dominant model for next-generation enterprise IT: the private cloud. What makes it a "cloud" is that it's built differently, operated differently and consumed differently. What makes it "private" is that it's under the control of the enterprise IT organization.

But new models require new metrics to judge their effectiveness, and drive continually improvements.

As cloud computing matures, and our assumptions about hardware and software change, will we see new focus on internal IT processes?

D. Mark Jackson

Designing Software for the Workflow

There's an interesting article on Customer Relations Management (CRM) software in this month's California Lawyer.  It does a nice job describing what these applications do,  as well as some of their limitations.  And I was both surprised and pleased to read this section:

But in practice, most CRM systems do require a change in the way attorney workflow is handled on a day-to-day basis. Building a robust CRM system depends on a resource many firms are reluctant to surrender: attorney time.

"Your success or failure with CRM software is less a technology issue and more a process problem," says Andy Havens, a legal marketing consultant and founder of Sanestorm Marketing. "It has more to do with what you're going to require lawyers to do as part of their daily work than [with] the features of the software. You have to know what things your lawyers are willing to do that are trackable."

I find this dynamic to be true with any technology roll out, unless it's completely on the backend.  A great deal of management time goes into developing and then training on the new workflow.  If possible, our technology team works to customize the application to fit our workflow preferences, and facilitate any necessary changes to the workflow as gently as possible.

But isn't it amazing that many developers expect the users to model their processes around the application, rather than the other way around?  And it's not necessarily about customizability.  A lot of enterprise software, while including many powerful features, seems to have been developed with only minimal consideration of the workflow it is designed to facilitate.  Workflow should be a key element of  software design.

D. Mark Jackson