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. 

Surviving the Economy

I think it’s time we silenced the self-anointed pundits who’ve been heralding the direction of the legal profession for so many unchallenged years.  For much of the nineties and the pre-recessionary years of this decade, I’ve listened to managing partners and management consultants talk about the inevitability of consolidation in the legal profession.  As the story went, the legal profession would bifurcate along two very clearly drawn lines:  small and mid-size firms would be absorbed (“merged” as it were) by ever larger and growing mega-firms, while at the small end of the market would remain only niche and boutique firms, focused solely on a practice or two.  The middle of the market would simply go away.  It certainly seemed that this was the true path, though it’s been largely fed by self-fulfilling prophecies.  These management consultants even thrived on M&A practices.

A Take on the Economy and the Law

The current economic crisis has touched law firms more in broader terms than any other economic cycle in recent history.  In a profession noted for being largely immune to economic downtowns, it’s interesting to note that the large general practice firms, those ostensibly best positioned to weather a storm because of the diversified nature of their work portfolio, are in fact being hit the hardest.  There’s been plenty of conjecture about the impact of this recession on law firms. I’ve long posited the theory that the large rounds of layoffs earlier this year mostly piggy-backed the recessionary woes, as opposed to being directly correlated to them, and that most firms used the economy as an excuse to clean house and reduce the “bloat” of recent years. 

But there’s an interesting phenomenon taking shape under our noses.  Corporations are now poised to drive the most fundamental shift in the nature of legal practice ever.  Corporate clients are demanding changes to the “social contract” that exists between legal service providers and their consumers, in ways that attack the cornerstones of the legal profession – the focus on billable hours, the “apprenticeship” model that drives the leverage and “on the job learning” model s in all law firms, and  open-ended, run-away nature of legal services.

Lawyers are now being forced to think about business models. True change indeed.