The Promise of Workflow?

Anyone who’s worked with me at any point over the last 5 years knows how seriously I take workflow.  As a concept, it is in fact the foundational component of my IPM Value Pyramid.  If you accept the notion, as I’ve stated many times, that the best means to achieve the ephemeral “Knowledge Management” is to focus on the low hanging fruit – simple and direct process improvements designed to address the everyday work of practitioners – then you understand how important and transformational a tool workflow, as both a concept and system, can be to an organization.  

More than anything else, workflow is method by which an organization can formalize and codify its policies and procedures in the systems that it implements to support its practices.  But in practice, workflow seems to be manifest as large-footprint technologies that are out of the reach of all but the largest firms, because its costs are so astronomical.

Why should implementing a technology that designed to use and present systems you already own and use be such an expensive proposition?  Even systems that advertise workflow components built-in seem to use tremendous poetic license in making those claims.  Most current IP Management systems claim to have “robust” workflow functionality; but absolutely no IP Management system on the market today can so much as provide a built-in faculty for automating a task (say, opening a new matter) based on an external trigger.

Workflow is the opportunity to make transformative practice changes.  We should have higher expectations.

Doing More With Less, Part V (continued)

Initiative # 5:  Automated Docket Clearance – my proposition

My vision for automated docket clearance would go something like the following. Please note, all current “next-gen” IP Management systems (the thin-client, web-based collaborative models) are built to manage the following process; they’re just not deployed with any imagination:

1. Lawyers would log in to their “My Matters” screen in the morning and review their due dates for the day (or week or month – we should all be clearing dates well in advance, right?)

Doing More With Less, Part V

Continuing my series on “quick and dirty” process improvement initiatives that don’t cost anything to implement:

Initiative # 5:  Automated Docket Clearance

Well, I might be stretching the definition of “quick and dirty” here, but I really think that one of the most transformational changes an IP practice can make is to leverage their IP Management system to implement a workflow for the automation of the docket clearance process. 

Doing More With Less, Part IV

Continuing my series on “quick and dirty” process improvement initiatives that don’t cost anything to implement:

Initiative # 4:  Review your docket progressions

In my many years of working with IP docket groups, both in-house and in law firms, I’ve observed that there are as many approaches to managing docket progressions as there are IP practices.  Some have little structure and docket most actions as “ad-hoc”, while other engineer every possible interaction with the docket system to anticipate every plausible scenario.  Of course, you can likely predict that my suggestion would be to find a balance that’s middle-of-the-road.  What I can say is that most every IP practice can benefit from a review of their docketing procedures. 

Doing More With Less, Part III

Continuing my series on “quick and dirty” process improvement initiatives that don’t cost anything to implement:

Initiative # 3:  Automated Correspondence

You might note by the fact that this is my third installment document assembly-based improvements that I think this is a major functional cornerstone for any process improvement initiative.  And again, if you’ve mostly kept up with technology over the past 5 or so years, you’re likely to realize that most of your enterprises systems already installed provide this functionality built-in.  So, in addition to creating documents to leverage your existing information systems, why not automate their use as much as possible?

Doing More With Less, Part II

Continuing my series on “quick and dirty” process improvement initiatives that don’t cost anything to implement:

Initiative #2:  Get a handle on your Forms

Continuing our last discussion on document assembly, few tasks are more important than to review and “certify” all client-facing and official form document formats.  Most firms use a mish-mash of forms cobbled together over many years, developed by different attorneys across practices, acclimated from acquired practice groups, or added to the repertoire by previous “process engineering” initiatives.  Today, however, these forms libraries are generally unwieldy, and rarely represent current firm policies or regulatory office requirements.  Believe it or not, there are still a preponderance of firms that are using proprietary document formats for USPTO official filing forms.

Doing More With Less, Part I

Many of my clients have been worrying lately about how to continue to provide excellent customer service, even differentiate their services, in an economy that’s greatly restricted their abilities to embark on process improvement initiatives. I’ve long expressed that “knowledge management” starts in the trenches, and focuses on making small improvements to the daily work of lawyers and staff.  In my nod to my IPM Imperative philosophy, following is the first suggestion in my (as yet brief) series on Doing More With Less.

Initiative #1:  Document Assembly

One of the easiest ways to realize true technological advantage from the systems you already own and manage is to leverage them for the propagation of information in the work product you create every day.