The Law Firm Revolution 

Doing More with Less

“If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you can't know what you are doing"

W. Edwards Deming

Lean principles are not new. The approach is based on the expression;

You can only manage what you measure

A Lean perspective adopts a structured and logical approach to identifying and analyzing what and how people work. Lean methods date back to over 100 years ago and was the catalyst for manufacturing innovations that culminated in “mass production”. In recent years, it has been applied to service ("white collar") industries and it's value has been proven over and over again with astounding success stories.

The legal industry however, has been a late adopter of Lean methods. Lean represents an opportunity for lawyers to respond to the Voice of the Customer, become more competitive and deliver more value to clients.

Alternative fee arrangements, legal process outsourcing, demanding clients and the financial crisis are all placing pressure on lawyers to transform how they practice law.

How do you deliver predictable pricing and high quality services

 without jeopardizing the bottom line?

Whether a law firm is involved with high-end, M&A legal services where every transaction is different, repetitive legal work or routine litigation, Lean offers lawyers a path for realizing value for clients while simultaneously containing costs in a sustainable way.

With organizations seeking to carefully control their legal spend, Lawyers need to find ways to safe-guard margins yet provide increased value to clients all at the same time. Lean offers this opportunity.

The Lean philosophy promotes customer focus, waste elimination and continuous improvement

 and can deliver productivity improvements in excess of 40%!

The Lean practitioner acts as a facilitator/guide to help subject matter experts analyze what they do and explore new ways of doing it better with quantitative rigour.

The approach is to flush out the activities each role performs, how long each takes and how often each activity occurs. The opportunities become apparent almost immediately. As an example, it isn’t unusual to find lawyers spending their day on the following activities;

Lawyer Time Spent on:

• M&A deals that never materialize (80% + of M&A deals)

• Responding to undertakings

• Data entry, searching and reporting within matter management software

• Filling out forms and generating reports

• Updating matters

• Multiple lawyers attending the same meetings

• Faxing

• Summarizing and updating

The list is endless and the astounding observation is always the answer to the question;

How much of this work (or which part of it) really requires a lawyer?

The objective is to improve efficiency, reduce the cost of repetitive and redundant processes such as conveyancing, claims handling or due diligence (just to name a few).

Tasks in the Legal World are Not Immune to Process Improvement

Lawyers have never had to view work as a collection of processes; each with a beginning, middle and an end. Their focus has always been on the expertise and knowledge but never on how the service is delivered.

Can Lawyers Adapt?

In order to achieve sustainability Lean on it’s own isn’t enough. The Lean work must then be supported by quantifiable measures attached to specific tasks and processes, targets, transparency and project management… all of which can be an awful lot for a lawyer to digest and accept as the “new way forward”.

Transparency about the work lawyers do will be the critical driver for how the market values and prices legal services

Eric Young
President
Tele-Centre Assist Inc.
www.telecentreassist.com