Dennis Kennedy

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March 06, 2008

Competitive Intelligence Roundtable Article

Just posted on the online version of the ABA's Law Practice Magazine is one of the best articles I've ever been a part of. It's called "Competitive Intelligence Roundtable: CI Tactics, Tools and Lessons to Be Learned."

I asked a who's who of experts on competitive intelligence in the practice of law (Mark Beese, David Bowerman, Cynthia Cheng Correia, Ann Lee Gibson, Mark Greene, Sabrina Pacifici and Meredith Williams) to participate in a roundtable discussion of the basics, practical tips and lessons learned about the use of competitive intelligence. To my delight, they all agreed to participate and the result is one heck of an article from which I learned a ton of things and so will you. I'm the article's moderator and a quasi-participant.

In the same issue is Ann Lee Gibson's How to Create and Use Competitive Intelligence: 45 Tips for Law Firms, a helpful CI primer to read as an intro to the roundtable article.

If you are familiar with CI, you'll benefit from the wisdom of this group. If you don't know anything about CI, these article will get you up and running. IF CI wa not on your radar, after you read these articles, it will be.

Highly recommended.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Debuting at the 2008 ABA TECHSHOW: The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell.

Technorati tags: competitive intelligence roundtable law pracitce ABA TECHSHOW

Posted by dmk at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2008

Leadership Advisory Board

I've been a fan and a reader of everything Patrick McKenna of the Edge Group has written for many years. An Edge Group training course I took on rainmaking while at The Stolar Partnership was very important in my professional development. It was quite a thrill when Patrick attended the initial LexThink event and I got to meet him in person.

So, when Patrick lets me know about something new that he finds innovative and exciting, I'm all ears.

His latest project, with Baker & Daniels' Chair Emeritus Brian Burke and Managing Partner Magazine, is the Leadership Advisory Board. The Board is a service for new law firm managing partners to get advice from experienced and knowledgeable managing partners through an interactive forum.

I've met a good number of young managing partners in the last few years who have talked to me about their wish to have a way to learn more about how to manage firms, get advice for the challenging questions they face and find some mentoring. Patrick aptly has described it as a "safe sounding board."

It looks like a case where need meets solution, which, given Patrick's involvement, doesn't surprise me in the least. This development is one to watch.

And, the Board, to me, gives us another glimpse of what Law 2.0 developments might look like.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Coming Soon: The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell.

Technorati tags: leadership advisory board managing partner LexThink! law firm Law2.0

Posted by dmk at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2008

Tom Collins on Law Firm Management Blogs

A special welcome to first-time visitors who found this blog via Tom Collins' post on Recommended Blogs for Those Involved in Law Firm Management on the More Partner Income blog.

It's always nice to have your work recognized and I appreciated Tom adding this blog to his very useful list of recommended blogs. It's great to find my blog on such an impressive list and I appreciate Tom's nice comments about me.

I've definitely noticed more interest than ever before in blogs on the part of law firm management types in the last year or so. In large part, that's due to the large amount of high quality and timely information and commentary about law firm management topics you find every single day on blogs that cover this topic.

Tom's list is an excellent place to start, but don't stop with his list. Be sure to explore on your own and find some more great blogs that will bring you great, practical and timely info on the subjects that matter to you.

Hmm, I notice that I keep mentioning timely information. As a writer, one of the greatest things about blogging is instant publication and getting your written immediately in front of your audience. I currently have several articles (and very good article, if I say so myself) written from more than a month to several months ago that are still waiting to come out in print. Since I usually don't write on the same topics until an article I've written appears it print, it bothers me not to have that article and other thoughts on the same topic out. I'll also be very happy when the book is out - I've never ever had so much material written for so long that hasn't appeared in print or on the Internet. That will change soon, though, with the book release in a couple of weeks.

If you haven't seen Tom's post on recommended blogs for law firm management, then what are you waiting for? Head on over and check it out.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Coming Soon: The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell.

Technorati tags: legal technology blogs law firm management

Posted by dmk at 09:44 PM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2008

By Request: What's Your Best Advice for a Lawyer Wanting to Start a Solo Practice?

With the economy looking a little shaky (or more than a little shaky) and some rumblings already about law firms considering laying off lawyers, the solo option will become a consideration for many lawyers in 2008.

The short answer to your question is to find a great mentor. However, that's really the answer to any question about the practice of law and it's easier said than done.

In my own case, the advice I got that really stuck with me was to be sure to be able to identify exactly where your first client from a client would come from. That simple exercise helps you move from fantasy to reality.

In my recent Blawggie awards, I singled out the solo practice blogs as being a great resource for solos and aspiring solos. You'll want to do some reading there.

This question also gives me the chance to single out and praise Carolyn Elefant's new book, Solo by Choice: How to Be the Lawyer You Always Wanted to Be. I had the privilege of reading a pre-publication version of the book and wrote the following short blurb about it:

Carolyn Elefant's new book continues the tradition of her MyShingle.com website, which I once called "the perfect example of a great web resource." It's chock-full of exactly the practical advice I was looking for when I left a big firm to go solo. Highly recommended.

It's the most current of the books about solo practice. It's also worth tracking down a copy of the latest edition of Flying Solo (you'll find a few chapters in there that I wrote) and, of course, Jay Foonberg's classic, How to Start and Build a Law Firm.

However, after having left a large firm to go out on my own almost five years ago and spent a good deal of time thinking about the solo practice and how best to prepare for it and improve how you do it, I've recently found a resource that I plan to recommend so much that people will get tired of hearing it from me.

The best advice I can give right now is to watch regularly and study BBC's Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

My cable company shows it on Thursday nights on BBC America, but you can also buy a DVD. I've recently started watching it and it's a revelation to me. There's so much that I can see in the show that I wish I would have known earlier.

In the show, restaurateur, chef and absolute master of dropping the F-bomb, Gordon Ramsay, visits and tries to turn around a struggling restaurant and its struggling chef and owner. What is key for a solo practice is how he helps you walk the line between business and profession, accounting and art.

If I were thinking of starting a solo practice now, I'd watch episode after episode of this until I started to see the repeating patterns, the common issues and the common solutions. It really does start to become clear what will work and what won't (at least in concept - implementation and execution are vital factors as well). It strikes me that in the successful situations there is a fascinating balance between being ruthless objective about what you are doing and, at the same time, being very passionate about the service and product that you provide. In addition to some valuable business lessons that you'll see play out in a number of settings, you will also get a feel for whether the life of running a business is something that you want to have. I can't recommend immersing yourself in this show enough, and you will also get the side benefit of learning a whole lot about good food and fantastic new ways to use swear words.

That's my best advice these days. That, and to be willing to be ruthlessly honest with yourself about whether or not the solo life really fits you. You do not want to become a effing solo practice nightmare.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

If you enjoy this blog, remember it has its own Amazon Wishlist and appreciates your generosity. ;-)

Technorati tags: legal profession solo solo practice ramsay mentor flying solo solo by choice

Posted by dmk at 09:08 PM | Comments (1)

February 04, 2008

Cole Silver's Expert Audio Series

Lawyer and career and marketing consultant Cole Silver has put together an amazing collection of audio interviews with a who's who of experts in all phases of law practice management as part of his Expert Audio Series.

It's a collection of top experts interviewed about their best topics, with coverage of key aspects of business development and marketing, career planning and development, and organizational development and management. I've contributed an interview on "Technology that Drives Operational Efficiency."

What is great about Cole's collection is that I've heard many people (including me) with the idea (and best intentions) of putting together a collection of interviews like this, but Cole has actually done it. And done it extremely well. Even a cursory glance at what is already part of this collection will show you the potential value of this material to your practice. It's a great example of what the audio/podcasting world is bringing and how an iPod (or other mp3 player) might be the best business and educational tech investment you can make these days.

Check out Cole's Expert Audio Series.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Coming in March from ABA Publishing - The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together

Technorati tags: legal technology expert audio series cole silver podcast

Posted by dmk at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2007

FastCase and Free Legal Research for Missouri Lawyers

One of my side projects for the last year or so was being part of a Missouri Bar task force charged with bringing a legal research alternative as a member benefit to members of the Missouri Bar.

It was a productive and fun experience, and I'm proud to say that it resulted in both a great new member benefit and a President's Award for the task force from the Missouri Bar.

We recommended FastCase as the service provider and the service launched last summer. More details here.

We had a follow-up conference call yesterday and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of usage the service is already getting, and the positive response it seems to be getting to this point.

It also reminded me to recommend that Missouri Bar members who read this blog and haven't tried the FastCase service yet should definitely get out there and give it a try. You can't beat the price.

It will be interesting to see the long-term impact of this program and others like it being adopted by other state bars on traditional legal research tools. Considered this recent development.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Get your legal technology information by audio. Check out The Kennedy-Mighell Report Podcast.

Technorati tags: legal technology legal research fastcase missouri bar

Posted by dmk at 10:25 AM | Comments (3)

September 25, 2007

Recruiting, Paying and Retaining Lawyers: Quite a Discussion Going

Wow! There's been a lot of conversation over the last few days on lawyer salaries, the legal job market, recruiting and retention issues. As much as I'd like to believe that my post "The Brand is the Talent" last week set off this discussion, in fact it was Amir Efrati's The Dark Side of the Legal Job Market in the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog that kicked off the lively conversation. Bill Gratsch does a nice job of summarizing and linking to the some of the posts on this topic.

I also liked Rob Millard's America's Two Legal Professions, Gerry Riskin's Sharp Pin Approaching Associate Starting Salary Balloon, and Michelle Golden's Law Students Building a Better Profession (a great example from the LSBABP blog Michelle discusses is called High Billables & Attrition Take Their Toll on Summer Recruiting). It's worth tracking down and reading the posts on this topic.

The posts also brought me back to Ron Baker's Two Cheers for Gary Boomer post last weekend, which really got me thinking, in part because Ron touched on the role that technology and hourly billing play in professional services recruiting and retention.

My own view? I have a number of thoughts percolating and some of them will definitely appear in the quickly approaching webinar that I'm doing about the role technology can play in law firm recruiting and lawyer retention on Thursday, September 27.

As I've said, the role that the use of technology can play in recruiting seems to get all the attention, but the role technology can play in retention is the more important piece of the puzzle, not just starting salaries. There's still time to register and some spots available for the webinar. If you are interested in these topics, I hope you'll attend the webinar, but I also hope that you'll read the posts I've mentioned and think about their implications.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Upcoming webinar: On September 27 at 12:00 Central, Aspen Knowledge will present Frank Gillman and Dennis Kennedy on "Winning the Battle for Legal Talent with Technology." Information and registration information here. Please mention that you heard about the webinar on DennisKennedy.Blog.

Technorati tags: legal technology webinar recruiting retention Law2.0 starting salaries

Posted by dmk at 09:29 PM | Comments (2)

September 17, 2007

Matt Homann Interview in Law Practice Magazine

There's a great interview with Matt Homann in the current issue of the ABA's Law Practice Magazine. Matt talks about many things: innovation, big thinking, his views on the practice of law, LexThink and his recent move to Xplane, the visual thinking company. The article also includes two sets of helpful tips from Matt for lawyers and their clients.

The money quote:

What’s driving innovation in law firms now?

MH: That’s a particularly difficult question to answer because the forces driving innovation in firms (if innovation is happening at all) are varied. In large firms, big clients have wised up and begun to demand businesslike efficiency, accountability and technology from their counsel of record. Midsize firms have recognized that innovation allows them to compete for previously unattainable clients and work.

For their part, small firms have always innovated out of necessity—and that’s never been more true than today. The lack of institutional friction inside a nimble small firm gives that firm a tremendous advantage in trying new things. What’s driving much of the innovation in small firms now, however, is that a much more educated and Internet-savvy clientele is not only expecting better service, better technology and better pricing, but is also not afraid to find a lawyer who will deliver it.

If you are in St. Louis this evening, I see that there are (as of now) a few openings left for Matt's latest Idea Market event tonight. Check it out if you have the chance.

In any event, read the interview with Matt. But read it quickly, because, despite my suggestions to change this policy over the past few years, this article will disappear behind the magazine's members' only firewall and not be available over the Internet in a few weeks. That might be a good reminder to join the Law Practice Management Section and get the print version of the magazine (with a nice picture of Matt), but I've always preferred the open, always available on the Internet approach. We might see a change in that policy soon, but it hasn't happened yet. Lots of other great articles in this issue too.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Upcoming webinar: On September 27 at 12:00 Central, Aspen Knowledge will present Frank Gillman and Dennis Kennedy on "Winning the Battle for Legal Talent with Technology." Information and registration information here. Please mention that you heard about the webinar on DennisKennedy.Blog.

Technorati tags: LexThink! innovation unconference Law2.0 homann

Posted by dmk at 07:10 AM | Comments (1)

September 05, 2007

Winning the Battle for Legal Talent with Technology

A while back, I had a great conversation with Frank Gillman, Chief Technology Officer of Allen Matkins LLP, about the different ways that lawyers could use technology to attract and retain lawyers and other professionals. Our conclusion was that there were many underused and untapped opportunities - some quite simple and inexpensive - to use technology in these areas.

Fast forward a few months (and after starting associate salaries took another big bump up into the $150,000+ range at leading US law firms). Andrew Sandler at Aspen Knowledge called me about kicking off the Strategic Speakers Series that he was planning. He wanted to produce a series of video webinars that addressed legal technology with a strong business focus. His goal was to give law firm decision-makers information on ways to think strategically about technology in law firms and to place technology squarely within the business needs of a law firm.

That's the approach I like best, and I also really enjoyed working with Andrew on a video webinar about best practices for technology committees last year.

I immediately suggested to Andrew that he try to get Frank to do a webinar with me on the topic of using technology for recruiting and retention so that we could extend our earlier discussion and share it with others.

I'm pleased to announce that on September 27 at 12:00 Central, Aspen Knowledge will present Frank Gillman and Dennis Kennedy on "Winning the Battle for Legal Talent with Technology."

Here's the program description:

The fight to retain and attract top legal talent is one of the most talked about topics in the legal industry and for good reason. The two most significant continual investments a firm makes are in legal recruiting and in technology. What many firms don’t realize is that technology itself can be a deciding factor in the recruiting wars. Our speakers will show your firm how to effectively connect these two factors to give you a competitive edge in this critical war.

You can get more information at Aspen Knowledge's Knowledge Center and register here. Please mention that you heard about the webinar on my blog when you register.

Also, if you have topics you'd like Frank and I to address, specific questions, or, best of all, examples of ways your firm is using technology to recruit and retain law students, lawyers, and other professionals, please leave comment to this post or email me at denniskennedyblog @ gmail . com. I know that I'll be mentioning some of the efforts Meredith Williams spoke about in our recent presentation at ILTA that Baker Donelson is using - if I worked at that firm and had regular access to those tools, it would be difficult for me to leave to a firm that did not offer the same tools.

This webinar will be especially valuable to hiring partners, members of technology committees, department chairs, managing partners, and executive directors of law firms in addition to lawyers and IT directors. It will also be a great way to check out the way that video can be used to present educational and other materials using Aspen Conferencing's videoconferencing services.

Register for webinar.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Get your legal technology information by audio. Check out The Kennedy-Mighell Report Podcast.

Technorati tags: legal technology webinar recruiting retention Law2.0

Posted by dmk at 07:40 AM | Comments (1)

July 23, 2007

Law News Now . . . and More to Come at the ABA Journal

The American Bar Association has today launched a completely revamped version of the website for the ABA Journal to stellar notices, like this, this and this. My friend and ABA webmaster Fred Faulkner played a big role in this launch and I enjoyed getting the chance to congratulate him on his excellent work this evening. Fred was a key reason that the Law Practice Today webzine got off the ground so successfully and I clearly see Fred's influence on this new site. I miss getting the chance to work with Fred on a regular basis as we used to do on Law Practice Today.

You will want to visit the site for legal news, a great blawg directory, and free content from the magazine archives.

I like the direction that the ABA Journal is going with the website and the print publication. In fact, I like it so much that I've recently agreed to take over the legal technology column for the publication starting this fall. I'm looking forward to working with Ed Adams and the ABA Journal editorial team.

It was a big honor for me to be asked to write the column and get the chance to continue the great tradition of the column that "the two Davids" - David Beckman and David Hirsch (two of the biggest names in legal technology history) - established and carried forward for many years. Their column was always my first stop in the ABA Journal when it arrived (except, of course, the issue that had an article with my picture in it - the lawyer equivalent of getting your picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone, or at least inside it). I salute the two Davids and hope that I can carry on in their footsteps.

I started out writing about legal technology in a column for Lawyers Weekly USA and I've always liked the regular monthly column format. This new column will become my primary outlet for regular articles on legal technology. I'm planning to take an approach that is highly practical, appeals to all lawyers and helps them in their daily work, and also makes people stretch just a bit and think about technology. I have a list of column ideas already put together, but will always welcome ideas for new columns.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Read the blog posts and RSS feed items I find most interesting on my new linkblog or subscribe to its RSS feed.

Technorati tags: legal technology column ABA aba journal

Posted by dmk at 09:32 PM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2007

TWiL, Avvo, Lawyer Ratings and Beyond

I've been off the grid the past week at the annual firm retreat (expect some modest changes in the focus of this blog in the coming months).

I did have the chance to record a This Week in Law podcast last week and it's now live and ready for downloading and listening. The episode is called Rate-a-Lawyer and focuses on the launch of the new Avvo lawyer rating site. In the episode, Denise Howell leads the discussion about Avvo and its implications with Avvo CEO Mark Britton, Ernie Svenson, Mazyar Hadayat and me.

The episode is long by podcast standards, but I encourage you to listen all the way to the end. There's a lot of good discussion and this podcast lets Mark Britton tell his side of the Avvo story to an extent that I haven't seen before, and I learned a whole lot from hearing Mark talk about the service. If you've followed the Avvo story, you'll find this discussion quite interesting. I also suspect that you'll be intrigued by some of the directions the conversation goes.

I'm always an encourager of new approaches, like that of Avvo, so I'd like to see how it all develops. My opinions (generally favorable) and questions (somewhat different than I've seen others raise) about Avvo should be pretty clear from the recording. Tom Mighell reviews the podcast here.

Take a listen. Get the podcast here. I'll be getting back to regular posting this week.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Technorati tags: legal technology avvo twil podcast

Posted by dmk at 09:32 PM | Comments (1)

May 28, 2007

Reminder: May 29 Teleseminar on Legal Ethics and Use of the Internet

Here's a last minute reminder that if you are interested in the ethical issues raised by lawyers using the Internet, I invite you to join me and a stellar panel for an teleseminar on May 29 about ethical issues raised by the ways lawyers use the Internet. I don't know that I've ever seen a presentation on this topic with as many years of actual web-related experience as you'll find on this panel, given that my co-presenters are Kevin O'Keefe and Ben Cowgill.

We've split up the topic and plan to allow for plenty of Q & A. I'm covering ethical issues for law firm websites. Please feel free to let me know about the questions and issues you have on this topic in the comments and I'll try to incorporate that into my coverage. I'm planning to take a historical approach and talk about the evolution of legal ethics and the web from those first days when there were only a few law firm websites, a handful of articles on the topic, and no search engines as we now know them.

Here's an excerpt from the program description and registration information can be found here.

Sponsored by the Legal Publishing Group of Strafford Publications

Tuesday May 29, 2007
1:00pm - 2:30pm Eastern

Early Discount Deadline, May 11
CLE available for an additional fee

Websites, the Internet and email are the preferred communication and marketing tool for attorneys and law firms, and blogs are a popular way for attorneys to exchange ideas and educate clients. However, there are serious ethical risks for attorneys who use these online communications with clients and potential clients.

Sites and blogs that enable users to email attorneys directly increase ethical concerns. And yet, there are few guidelines for attorneys by the courts and state bar associations.

Do the standard ethical rules regarding lawyer advertising apply? If law blogs are defined as political speech, can states still regulate them as commercial speech?

Listen and participate from your office telephone as our authoritative panel discusses the regulatory future and ethical guidelines for communicating with clients and prospective client via websites and blogs. The panel will feature:

The panel includes:

Benjamin Cowgill, Counselor and Attorney at Law, Lexington, Kentucky, focuses his career in the field of legal ethics. He is the former Chief Bar Counsel for the Kentucky Bar Association and a well-known presenter of CLE programs on various aspects of law office technology, including ethical considerations.

Dennis Kennedy, computer lawyer and technology expert, DennisKennedy.com, LLC, St. Louis, is a well-known consultant, speaker and writer who is considered among the most influential experts on the application of technology in the practice of law. He serves businesses implementing information technology and e-commerce initiatives.

Kevin O'Keefe, president and founder of LexBlog, Bainbridge Island, Washington, is the leading provider of marketing blogs for lawyers. He was a trial lawyer for 17 years, during which he successfully marketed his law firm on the Internet.

The panel will review these and other key questions:

* How can attorneys protect clients’ privacy rights and attorney-client privilege in online communications?

* What are some of the key ethical concerns for attorneys who use websites and blogs to communicate with clients and prospective clients?

* How are the courts and state bar associations currently handling charges of ethics violations involving attorney use of the Internet and email?

Following the speaker presentations, you’ll have an opportunity to get answers to your specific questions during the interactive Q&A session.

*******************************************************************************

Thanks to Strafford Publications for putting this one together. It's a great opportunity to pick up some ethics CLE credit.

Register for the seminar here.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: legal technology legal ethics ethics webinar

Posted by dmk at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2007

Are Lawyers Doing Work That Should Be Done By Machines?

Good question. Important question. Maybe the Big Question.

Ron Friedmann offers his insights into the question in a post about an article in which Cisco's Mark Chandler raises the question in the context of document review in electronic discovery.

The money quote from Ron:

I’ve written previously that the choosing the best document review approach - US contract lawyers, offshore lawyers, or software - is an empirical question. Chandler adds anecdotal evidence that computers do better than humans, at least considering cost.

I ruminated a bit about the question outside the context of electronic discovery in one of my favorite posts on this blog from 2006.

The money quote from that post was:

At TECHSHOW 2005, Marc Lauritsen was reviewing the histroy of legal technology and made a comment about tasks that it made sense for computers to do and tasks that it made sense for humans to do. It struck me then, and does even more so today, that part of the reason we see dissatisfaction and burnout in the legal profession is that, arguably in many cases, lawyers are still doing work as humans that should at this point be done by computers, [rather than having computers do the work to free them up] to do more of the creative things that play such a big part in being a lawyer. Properly understood, we should be trying to use technology to enable us to move in that direction.

In his email, Gates says: "In this New World of Work, repetitive, uninteresting tasks like moving data from one system to another will be automated and employees will focus much more of their time and creative energy on work that generates real value and growth."

Important question. Maybe a Law 2.0 question.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page.

Technorati tags: legal technology electronic discovery Law2.0

Posted by dmk at 08:57 PM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2007

No Malpractice Insurance for Law Firm Blogs?

As I often say, if telephones were introduced today, there's no way that the use of telephones by lawyers would be approved under today's ethical and regulatory environment for lawyers. Just think of all the horrible things that can happen when lawyers use telephones.

Like faxes, emails, and websites before them, the "new technology" of blogging has seemed to flummox bar regulators who are unfamiliar with what blogs actually are.

The (over)reaction to blogs continues to surprise me. Let me say this as simply as I can. Blogs are simply one kind of website. The rules on lawyers' use of websites have actually reasonably clear and well-settled since about 1997. At least until the publicity blogs have received in the last two years. Since then, as I have said before, it has really become impossible to determine how blogs will be treated or to predict how regulators will deal with blogs, as the recent New York rules illustrate.

That said, there's been a modest movement toward more reasonable thinking about blog regulation since the New York regulators listened to comments to their proposed rules and made a few changes, even though there's no consensus how even those changes apply to blogs.

Last night, I saw Carolyn Elefant's post about a New Jersey law firm dropped its plans to start a blog because its malpractice carrier, the Chubb Corp., indicated that it might not insure the blogging activity.

I must admit that this came as a surprise to me. I almost posted about the story last night.

This morning, I got a call from Heather Havenstein, from ComputerWorld, asking me for some comments on the story. Her story, "Insurance company refuses to cover law firm's blog," has appeared already on the online edition of MacWorld.

The quote she used from captures the heart of my perspective on this story:

However, [Kennedy] said these types of attempts to impose new types of restrictions on blogs likely occur 'when people aren’t that familiar with the technology and think it is somehow completely new and different. Really blogs are just a form of Web pages. What you’re doing is not different than if you are speaking in public or writing an op-ed piece.'

Or using a website as lawyers have done for at least the last 12 years. Or talking to someone on a telephone.

While I am convinced that blogs can be a vehicle to greatly enhance communications with clients and the public, I am not convinced that, at root, blogs present any new issues that require different treatment under ethical and regulatory rules than any other prior communication technology.

I also suspect that a 5 or 10 minute conversation with a malpractice insurance carrier would alleviate any reticence or concern about covering blogs. It might, however, raise some concerns about whether malpractice carriers want to cover the use of telephones by lawyers. Heh.

My rule of thumb on these issues is to simply substitute the word "telephone" for "blog" and then see if there is any new issue raised by blogs that aren't raised by telephones. I haven't found any yet - in twelve years off thinking about these issues since I first started my website.

Kevin O'Keefe also has his usual great perspective and analysis on this issue here. Careful readers might guess that Kevin and I have had conversations about this issue over the years where we've both used the telephone analogy.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: legal technology ethics malpractice insurance blogs telephones

Posted by dmk at 10:20 PM | Comments (1)

September 18, 2006

Computer-based Legal Decision-making in 2006

Ron Friedmann has a thought-provoking post called "Computers as Lawyers?" that I recommend that everyone who likes to think about the intersection of law and technology take a look at.

The post strikes a lot of notes for me. For example, I've talked with Marc Lauritsen (Marc, how can we talk you into blogging?) and others on and off over the last few years about decision trees.

I remember back in law school at Georgetown, I took one of the first classes in Computers and the Law offered in the US. That was in 1982. Milton Wessel was the professor and I don't know many classes that I enjoyed more. One day, we were talking about artificial intelligence and the law, and the applicability of computers to legal decision-making. I asked this question: If we "knew" (in a measurable way) that an AI program was more likely to reach a measurably "correct" result than a jury, would we change from a jury system to a software system? There was an impassioned discussion, with the overwhelming consensus that people prefer a less accurate human system than a more accurate software system. What was interesting is how the discussion suggested that "objective correctness" was not in fact the goal of the legal system and that justice is something fuzzier, yet more comforting than pure accuracy.

It's now 25 years later and I'm curious whether lawyers end up in the same place. I suspect that as more is at stake, the "human element" feels more essential, but as less is at stake, issues are more mundane, and speed and efficiency matters more, computerized decision-making becomes more attractive. Or, let the computers take the boring cases and save the interesting ones for us.

Read Ron's post and the links he points to and give it some thought.

The money quote:

Lawyers (well, at least the forward thinking ones) are increasingly relying on “smart search engines” to reduce the cost of reviewing e-discovery documents.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page.

Technorati tags: legal technology electronic discovery Law2.0

Posted by dmk at 07:32 PM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2006

Innovation + Action = InnovAction

Here's a must-read PDF download for anyone interested in innovation in the legal profession:

The College of Law Practice Management has just released the Inaugural issue of its e-publication called InnovAction, which celebrates innovation in the legal profession.

I'm pleased to be part of a stellar cast of authors featured in this first issue.

In fact, I highly recommend that you read the wide-ranging Roundtable on innovation topics in which I participated with Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, Simon Chester, Matt Homann and Dan Pinnington. Some of the learning Matt and I have had over the past year or so in our LexThink venture made their way into this article.

You'll also find great articles from Gerry Riskin, Patrick McKenna, David Maister, Silvia Coulter, and Bruce MacEwen, and other great stuff. Kudos to Jordan Furlong for bringing this project to a successful launch.

Download the article here.

While you are downloading great e-publications, be sure to check out Patrick McKenna's highly-regarded new publication called First 100 Days: Transitioning a New Managing Partner.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization.

Technorati tags: innovation innovaction LexThink!

Posted by dmk at 10:43 PM | Comments (2)

July 17, 2006

Is This What They Teach at Reed Smith University?

I first learned about "Reed Smith University" and the other Reed Smith approaches to the practice of law that led me to mention the firm frequently as an example of an innovative law firm from Denise Howell. Given that Denise is a pioneering lawyer blogger and widely-recognized lawyer in digital media, Internet and intellectual property areas, it made sense that she would be part of an innovative firm. I see now that, as usual, maybe it's easier to talk the talk than walk the walk.

Saturday, I learned on Denise's blog, Bag and Baggage, that Reed Smith had fired Denise. I'm revising my opinion of Reed Smith, drastically. As Carolyn Elefant suggests, Reed Smith has probably guaranteed that rather than being known as an innovator or a premier law firm, it will be known instead as "the firm that dumped Denise Howell, one of blawging's greatest talents." Probably not the marketing move any firm would like to make, eh?

You might note that Denise's notes about Reed Smith University mentioned above appeared in The Industry Standard. This is the type of publicity in the type of industry publication that most law firms would kill for. Ironic, isn't it?

[Disclosure: Denise is a co-founder and co-author with me of the Blawg Channel and Between Lawyers group blog projects and I don't even pretend to be objective in my comments. I have not talked with Denise, however, about this happening or the events underlying it. My opinions, as usual, are uniquely my own.]

As I've said elsewhere, I thoroughly recommend that you read Denise's post announcing her departure because it is well-written, savvy and raises important issues for the legal profession.

I was struck immediately by the irony that, as an appellate lawyer, Denise would require excellent writing, analytical and organizational skills. These are exhibited in great abundance in her post, making Reed Smith's decision to fire her even more inexplicable than it first appeared to me.

As a friend of mine – an excellent writer – said after reading Denise's post – "why can't I write something that good?" Indeed, I was involved in hiring at law firms for many years and I'd be willing to hire Denise as an appellate lawyer on the basis of seeing that post as a writing sample.

All of which leads to speculation about what Reed Smith is thinking.

Let me say first that law firms obviously can and will make business decisions, especially personnel decisions, for reasons they believe are in the best interest of the firm. Others, of course, are free to second-guess those decisions. It is certainly fair to reach Carolyn Elefant's conclusion: "Because if you're a talented woman planning on having kids, why in the world would you EVER choose to work there?"

I've been thinking about what lessons we might be able to learn from this situation in our increasingly interconnected and Internet-focused world.

Based on my experience in law firms, inexplicable firing decisions (and sometimes inexplicable hiring decisions) almost invariably result in people inside and outside the firm drawing one of three conclusions:

1. The firm is slimming down for a merger. One standard approach in a pre-merger setting is to strip away people who will not fit into the new entity. Often that may mean of counsel and other lawyers in non-traditional arrangements. Since Reed Smith has engaged in some merger activity recently and there were stories of another one "on the street" at the end of last year, you might reasonably conclude that something along those lines was involved. If you saw other departures or departures from another likely merger candidate, this theory would be reinforced. Even if nothing is in the works, this type of decision invite exactly that kind of speculation..

2. The firm simply made a bad business decision. Hey, law firms don't always make good business decisions. I suspect that the negative economic and PR consequences of this move will far outweigh the savings from eliminating Denise's salary. However, I agree with Denise's assessment of the business acumen of the managing partner of Reed Smith, so I think this conclusion is less likely than #1. However, since Denise is the classic example of a person around whom to market an innovative or Law 2.0 approach, the decision seems to reflect a commitment to an "old school" practice of law. "Old school" may prove the best way to go, but I question the approach and think that signaling a commitment to an old school approach undercuts efforts like Reed Smith University. Ironically, the fact that Denise was an appellate lawyer who did a lot of brief writing and was incredibly tech savvy made her the perfect test case for innovative approaches to dealing with work that could have served the firm well as a model for the future.

3. The firm may be having financial problems. Almost any time an experienced lawyer gets fired, people start to wonder about the finances of the firm. I was a partner at a firm where we might have a partners' meeting in which we learned that we were having our best financial year ever, but also make a decision to terminate an associate, and then would see the staff and other associates worry that the firm was about to padlock the doors and go out of business. It's just the way people react today. One of the most interesting presentations I attended this year was given by Alan Rich of Thomson Elite on why law firms go out of business. It's a thought-provoking presentation that had a lot of resonance for me. In most of the cases, you saw firms that were riding high closing their doors in remarkably short periods of time. In each case, there seemed to be one of more management decisions that, in retrospect, made no sense and reflected a decision to go with "business as usual" when business was no longer usual. I think that this is the least likely of the three conclusions, but I also think, based on my experience, that it will be the one that people spend the most time speculating about, especially if there is even one more departure. I don't think that law firms give that result enough consideration these days before taking actions.

As I've said elsewhere, I'm flummoxed by this decision, but suggest that we all look at it for lessons that we can learn about how we deal with talented people with non-traditional approaches and how to retain them, and for lessons about how best to run a law firm. As my title says, I'm mainly left with this question: "Is this what they teach at Reed Smith University?"

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: legal profession reed smith reed smith university denise howell Law2.0

Posted by dmk at 10:07 PM | Comments (4)

June 21, 2006

Using Technology to Increase Profitability: Moving into Alternative Billing Via Technology - Article

[Note: This is another in a continuing series in which I am reposting some of my original drafts of published articles.]

In a recent post on the Between Lawyers blog, I linked to a post on the subject of value billing and the post seemed to generate a bit of discussion about the topic. It also reminded me that I wrote an article that includes my most extensive writing about the subject of value billing in an article that was originally published in the April/May 2006 issue of Law Office Computing magazine. Not surprisingly, I focused on the impact that technology might and should have in the area of alternative billing. Sharp readers will note that my real topic was profitability and not so much alternative or value billing, which was a bit of a side issue in the article. Nonetheless, I thought I'd republish my original draft of the article (that means there may be a few typos) on my blog and see if people think that it adds anything to the discussion. I really liked the way this article turned out and it contained some original ideas and approaches that I hadn't seen elsewhere. I hope you enjoy the article.

Using Technology to Increase Profitability: Moving into Alternative Billing Via Technology

Better. Faster. Cheaper. These three words have long made up the mantra for the benefits of legal technology, at least for those trying to sell new technologies to lawyers.

However, these three words, even if proven, have never been quite enough to close the sale with many lawyers, especially for technologies that promise to change the nature of the practice or substantially alter the ways legal services are delivered.

The final barrier is often concern about the impact of technology in a system where fees are based solely on the number of billable hours worked. Simply put, if you can use technology to do what is now a twenty-hour project in four hours, haven't you just cut your earnings by eighty percent?

This article is not going to be another manifesto about how lawyers need to end the tyranny of the billable hours system. However, I do want to make you think critically about your current approach to pricing your services.

This article, in fact, is about supplying the missing part of the legal technology equation: how will new technologies or better uses of technology improve profitability, client satisfaction and make your life better? In other words, how does the mantra of better, faster and cheaper actually help you make good decisions about alternative billing methods?

The Billable Hours Dilemma.

Let’s assume that your practice includes drafting a legal document that takes you six hours to produce a solid draft, and that you draft one hundred of these documents a year. You find that you can implement a document assembly application that will reduce the time to create that solid draft to six minutes per document.

Forget about the cost of the software and developing the document assembly application. What have you done to your practice? In a billable hours system, you have reduced six hundred billable (and collectable) hours down to ten hours! In addition to software and development costs, you have lost 590 hours of earnings. However, you definitely have achieved the goal of better, faster and cheaper with your technology.

Of course, this simple analysis is just the starting point. Perhaps not all of the hours are "lost." You might be routinely writing off some of this time. You might "replace" the hours with higher value hours doing something else.

When you implement any technology, you must rethink your approach to the use of your time and how you bill your clients.

I chose this example for two reasons. First, it is a great example of a place technology has a negative impact in an hourly billing approach and almost drives you to consider an alternative billing model. Second, clients increasingly think that lawyers have these capabilities.

In today's world of computerized forms, what does a client think if they see that you spent six hours producing a first draft of a will? Your client will believe that you chose the method that maximizes your billable hours.

Here's one of my favorite analogies. You contract with a builder to build you a new house on an hourly billing basis. The workers show up with no power tools, only hand tools. How do you react?

That brings us to the great billable hours dilemma. If there are strong pressures from clients to reduce the number of hours spent on projects and strong resistance to rate increases, what will the impact be on your practice? In general, the answer will be that you simply have to go out and find more hours (new clients and new projects) each year.

Alternative Billing Primer.

For a growing number of lawyers, technology is one of the drivers toward alternative billing methods. There is a list of good resources for learning about alternative billing in the sidebar.

For our purposes, I want to divide alternative billing into three categories: (1) value billing, (2) enhanced or blended hourly billing, and (3) other innovative approaches.

Think of value billing as flat fee billing. You and the client agree in advance to a fee for the project based on the perceived value of the work to the client. Implementing the document assembly application I mentioned earlier definitely makes sense here.

There are many examples of enhanced or blended billing approaches. You might have one rate for drafting and a higher rate for tax planning, for example. The document assembly application might make sense if your clients pay you more for you tax planning time.

We are also seeing a large number of innovative approaches, Bonus pools and incentives for meeting budget targets are examples in this category. Typically, these are used by large corporations or where there is a high volume of work. Technology might enhance your profitability in these settings.

Billable Hours Not Going Away - Ethics and Other Concerns.

Experts have been predicting the death of the billable hours system for many years. It's still going strong. In many cases, both clients and lawyers are comfortable with the approach and believe it achieves fair results. Changing your existing billing approaches may take time and negotiation and involve changing systems. There is also a vocal group who believe that any type of billing other than hourly billing is unethical, and innovative billing approaches can raise issues under applicable ethical rules.

You will find both a growing momentum for alternative billing approaches and receptivity on the part of clients to these approaches. If you want to see what lawyers really think of hourly billing, watch a lawyer's reaction when any other service provider suggests hourly billing.

For purposes of this article, I am going to assume that hourly billing remains the dominant approach to billing, with a small, but increasing, number of alternative experiments going on in many law practices.

My first rule is that you must think carefully about how technology might help make any alternative billing approach more profitable.

My second rule, which I will now turn to, is that, whatever your billing method, you must always consider the impact of technology on profitability. The vendors may be telling you better, faster, cheaper, but your response should be to ask about and understand the impact on profitability.

Profitability – The Key Measure.

Profitability is the key factor in technology decisions today. I had two recent conversations that brought home this point to me. First, I talked with a partner at a large law firm that is looking at its practice, staffing, technology and much else all in the context of how each item contributes to profits per partner. Second, I spoke with a lawyer in a small firm who made a large commitment to modernizing technology, with the result of a 50% increase in profit on the same annual revenues as the prior year.

Profit, classically, is the result of subtracting costs from revenues. In the short term, we can increase profits by decreasing costs and/or increasing revenues. In the long term, improving customer service also plays a key role in keeping profits strong.

I often find that lawyers underestimate the role technology can play in cutting costs, increasing revenue and improving customer services. Let's look at each of them in turn.

Using Technology to Cut Costs – The Cheaper of Better, Faster, Cheaper.

My wife's brother, Kevin Ford, started a solo law practice with a notebook computer, speech recognition software and no secretary. His calculation was that the technology would cost him $4,000. A good secretary would cost him $4,000 per month and need to be paid before he earned anything. His belief was that the technology investment would help him become profitable more quickly and that the savings each month would accrue to his benefit until he determined whether he needed a full-time secretary.

He was able to wait nine months before hiring a secretary. He saw the technology had a real-world payoff of $32,000. However, more importantly, it had a profound impact on the profitability (and cash flow) of his practice and helped him get his practice off the ground.

Here's another example. Lately, there has been much interest in Internet telephony or Voice over IP (VoIP). It's sold as a way to save money on your telephone bills. Annual call savings might be hard to calculate, but, if as a consultant recently told me, it would cost a law firm that was moving offices more to move the PBX and phones to the new office than to switch to VoIP, then I can easily see the bottom-line benefits.

I recommend taking a much more careful look at real cost savings as part of making your technology decisions. Notice that "better, faster, cheaper" benefits of technology may well offer you cost cutting opportunities. Some of these can be subtle and require that you think about your business model.

For example, outsourced technology services and even hosted software services may help you avoid large investments in hardware and software, reduce staffing needs and provide other savings. Similarly, you might use technology to let you hire part-time employees rather than full-time employees.

There are almost no end to the ways you can look at new technologies as potentially cost-cutters. Keeping documents in electronic form will save you on paper and printer ink or toner costs. Making documents available to clients on secure, private websites might save you postage and overnight shipping costs.

Cost-cutting uses of technology will work for you no matter whether you use hourly billing or alternative approaches. If you are realistic and think carefully about the economics, using technology will help you increase your profit margins on projects and run your office more cheaply, and that's a recipe for having a better year than last year.

Improved Revenues – the Faster of "Better, Faster, Cheaper."

Many variables come into play in determining a law firm's revenues. Projections involve assumptions that may or may not prove true. However, let's cautiously take a look at how technology might improve revenues in both hourly billing and alternative billing settings.

As a general matter, the case for technology improving revenues is easiest to make in the alternative billing approach. Client happily agrees to a price of $1,000 for a will. Rather than taking you ten hours at $100 an hour, you use document assembly to reduce the amount of time you spend to four hours. Assuming you do the same number of wills in the year and use the six hours you "saved" in other fee-generating work, you will increase revenues for the years. By comparison, in the billable hours world, you simply have reduced your fee for the will to $400.

While this example shows how technology can lead you to alternative billing, it's important to see that alternative billing models may not be realistic without the use of technology.

What is the biggest untapped information source in any law practice? It's the time records.

If you start to process and analyze those records, you will learn many important things, not the least of which is how to price flat-fee projects. If you don't know how long it takes you, on average, to do projects, how can you set a flat-fee that works for you? You've been forced to enter your time every day; why not use that information for something that benefits you?

In hourly billing, one of the hidden problems is time write-offs. Let's go back to my example of the document that takes six hours to draft. If you routinely write off half of that time for clients on every bill, then you are not making an accurate calculation of the economics of the impact of technology. Any process where you consistently write off time is an invitation to consider technology alternatives.

The biggest area to consider using technology to improve revenues is to improve your staffing. If using speech recognition allows you to avoid hiring a full-time secretary and hire a paralegal instead, or other technologies allow a secretary to do paralegal work, you've turned a cost into a revenue producer.

Another good area from increasing revenues through technology is to see whether you can automate documentation or other processes to create fees for "annual corporate maintenance" or other legal support or service packages as annual subscriptions.

Client Satisfaction – The Better of "Better, Faster, Cheaper."

The notion of "better" rarely resonates with lawyers. In most cases, the "better" is something that benefits clients more than lawyers. Although you might perceive few immediate benefits, the benefits over the long term can be substantial.

Let me give you two examples of ways to use technology to improve client satisfaction.

First, after developing a document assembly application to generate first drafts of complex estate planning documents, I realized that the same process could routinely generate document summaries and charts of the estate plan for clients with little additional time or effort. For almost no additional cost, clients received a package that helped them really understand the contents of complex legal documents.

Second, with just a couple of mouse clicks, the ReportBooks feature of CaseMap 5 generates a handy client summary of the main facts, issues and cast of characters in a litigation matter, along with an assessment of some of the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence. That's something that clients will appreciate and will keep them coming back to you.

In each example, you are looking to use some aspect of technology, small or large, to improve your client's experience in working with you. It might be as simple as using a color printer or enlarging the font size for elderly clients.

You want to look at technology with an eye for how it might improve client service, which will help tie your clients to you for the long-term. Study after study shows that it is better and easier to land new business from existing clients than it is to go out and land new clients.

Making the Turn to Alternative Billing.

Better use of technology will help you build an environment where alternate billing approaches make sense and may even thrive. I am not, however, trying to convince you, that you must switch to alternative billing methods. I do want to suggest that experimenting with alternative billing is advisable. You can expect to see it from your competitors and be asked about it by clients.

Five essentials for using technology to move toward better billing practices and enhanced profitability are:

1. Understand the Facts and Do Not Rely on Assumptions. If a project takes ten hours of time at $100 an hour, then charging a $500 flat fee will never make economic sense. Similarly, if you do not know the costs per page of printers and copiers, you can't evaluate whether it makes sense to buy a new one. Knowing the total costs of hiring an employee is essential when evaluating outsourcing or technology alternatives.

2. Use Your Facts, Not Anyone Else's Facts. People always give me examples of cost savings from technology for a litigation practice. I do not have a litigation practice. The examples simply do not apply to me. Keep the focus directly on you and what's going on at your firm.

3. Cheaper Will Help You the Most Now, But Faster Will Be the Key in Alternative Billing. Keep your eye on profitability. The benefit of technology today is in how you can use it creatively to cut costs. Cutting costs will help you increase profits, which will give you the flexibility and capital to try new technologies and new approaches to billing. However, cutting costs is only one step. Almost every alternative billing approach makes the most sense when you reduce the time it takes to perform services and become more productive.

4. Look for Billing Inefficiencies as Indicators Where to Experiment with Alternative Billing. I'd be surprised if you cannot use your existing software to analyze your time, billing and collection records to generate useful business information. Are you doing that? You should be. Do some analysis with those programs or a spreadsheet and then use the information. Tasks that are consistently written off, expenses that are not billed and similar facts may show you areas where technology can help you or provide fertile ground for alternative billing experiments.

5. Look for Happy Clients You Can Make Happier. My informal surveys suggest that lawyers often use new clients to test alternative billing approaches. I suggest that you might get better results and feedback by approaching your happy clients. If you've used technology in the past to improve client service, they may be even more receptive.

Conclusion.

It will be a while before we see a massive shift away from hourly billing. However, do not make the assumption that productivity gains from technology are always at odds with the hourly billing system. Instead, focus on the contributions that technology can make to improving profitability – cutting costs, increasing revenues and improving client service – and then use a hard-headed realistic approach to looking at whether your technology helps you in these areas. Then, apply some of the ideas I discuss in this article to begin to experiment with alternative billing models where they make sense for you.

____________

Useful Resources on Alternative Billing Methods

Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell, Alternative Billing Requires Alternative Resources, Law Practice Today, September 2004 (http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/articles/slc09041.html).

Jim Calloway and Mark Robertson, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590311175/Winning Alternatives to the Billable Hour, 2nd Edition: Strategies That Work, ABA Publishing.

Ron Baker, Professional's Guide To Value Pricing, CCH.

Alan Weiss, Value-Based Fees: How to Charge—and Get—What You're Worth, Pfeiffer.

The [Non]billable Hour Blog – http://www.nonbillablehour.com

Other Helpful Books on Value Billing

_________

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page. More information on the "Second Pair of Eyes" packages for legal technology audits and strategic planning may be found here (PDF).

Technorati tags: legal technology alternative billing value billing document assembly

Posted by dmk at 07:57 PM | Comments (2)

June 20, 2006

A Practical Confidential Information Protection Primer

Almost every law firm and lawyer can benefit from paying greater attention to the most basic and practical aspects of protecting information from prying eyes. If you want a good place to start, you simply can't beat Reg Adkins' post called "10 Spy Tips" on the Elemental Truths blog.

Reg lists ten top sources of data leakage and makes it clear that we are often "guarding the air conditioner duct instead of the front door."

The money quote:

If I wanted to know about a corporations business, I go to the snack bar at lunch and read the paper over coffee. You won't believe the things you hear (if you're in education, teacher lounges are hair raising!).

I remember once standing in line to order lunch behind a lawyer who was reading a document prominently labeled "CONFIDENTIAL" and oblivious that everyone in the line was reading over his shoulder.

Read the post and think about some of your habits and practices.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: legal technology confidentiality

Posted by dmk at 09:05 PM | Comments (2)

May 22, 2006

Honoring the Tradition of Training: Ten Tips for Running a Summer Program

Denise Howell's recent post mentioning summer programs in law firms made me think back to the first article I ever wrote for publication, just over ten years ago. The article was called "Honoring the Tradition of Training: Ten Tips for Running a Summer Program." It was published in the ABA's Law Practice Management Magazine and I'll always be grateful to John Tredennick for deciding to publish the article.

I scoured my hard drive and found a copy of the article, which might be the original draft. I decided to republish it on my blog without making any changes to it.

This is the time of year that law students start summer jobs and law firms try to find ways to give law students a good summer associate experience. I know that there is still not a lot of material to help lawyers who run summer programs, so I hope that making this article available online will help some people.

I didn't re-read the whole article today. I did notice that it had some of the characteristics of what has become my writing "style" and I noticed that the paragraphs are so lo-o-o-ong, reminding me how writing styles have changed during the Internet era to reflect the way readers prefer to scan shorter paragraphs.

+++++

Honoring the Tradition of Training: Ten Tips for Running a Summer Program

"How would you like to be in charge of our summer program?" So begins one of the most rewarding roles a younger attorney can have in the administration of a law firm.

You should take a momentary pleasure in the vote of confidence being so selected represents. The increased workload and time commitment, however, may seem a bit daunting. You probably know what you liked, and what you didn't like, about your own summer experiences. You have undoubtedly had some involvement with your firm's summer program and may even be a graduate of your firm's summer program. And you probably had at least an inkling that you would be asked to take on the leadership of the summer program. Where do you find help? What are the best sources?

I've just finished a four-year tour of duty in charge of the summer program at my firm. I was somewhat surprised to find that there are few articles and other materials available to help design and administer summer programs. Some of the more useful articles and sources may be found in the bibliography at the end of this article. Even better is to take over a well-designed program with a predecessor who will serve as an ongoing source of wise counsel and sage advice. That, however, may not always be the case.

This article lists my ten best tips for running a summer program. My firm has a relatively small summer program, but I have chosen the tips which have the most universal relevance. I have tried to combine both the practical and the philosophical and to place the role of running a summer program squarely within the tradition of training that is an integral part of the profession.

1. Involve Yourself in the Hiring Process. You have probably been interviewing law students for a number of years. Being part of the interview process allows you to develop relationships with summer associates early in the process and gives you an opportunity to evaluate potential recruits. When you are put in charge of summer program, you should become more than a mere participant in interviewing and hiring process. Becoming a member of the hiring committee or at least having significant involvement and input in the decision-making process is vital to the success of your summer program.

I tried to interview every candidate that we brought back to the office for a second interview and did a number of our on-campus interviews as well. This approach requires a significant time commitment and may not be practical in your situation. By interviewing each candidate, I could provide consistent answers to questions about our summer program and use my enthusiasm about the program to help sell the firm and the summer program. As time went on, I found that my experiences with summer program helped me identify potential candidates more easily and see potential problem areas with various candidates. I also found the interview process very helpful for getting feedback from students about what aspects of our summer program appealed to them and for getting responses to new ideas that I was considering for the next summer.

Because I saw a large part of my role as an interviewer to be providing information about the summer program, my interview techniques became friendlier and less-threatening. This approach pays dividends in helping you build an early relationship with offerees and allows you to be more active in actual recruiting of individuals. This early relationship also makes early and consistent contacts after a person accepts an offer a more natural process.
Being involved with your firm's hiring committee is useful for at least two other reasons. First, you will learn why offer decisions are made and what factors the other members of the hiring committee feel are important. This learning process will teach you many things about your firm, its culture and its mission. Second, after a couple of summers, you will have had the opportunity to field-test the results of those decisions and the assumptions on which they are based. Your observations become very important feedback to the hiring committee and should help to improve the hiring process.

2. Early Preparation Pays Off. It is difficult to exaggerate the time and energy commitment which is required to run a summer program. When the interviewing component of the job is included, running a summer program requires a significant amount of attention on a year-round basis. After the summer associates leave in August, you will find yourself writing memos to Managing Partners about the summer program, making your own notes about what worked and didn't work and deciding what might be new ideas to try the next summer.

It hardly seems that the summer associates have left (and sometimes they haven't) when you start interviewing law students for the next summer. You will be helping recruit your former associates who received offers and giving references for others. There might be 1-L interviews in December and January. In St. Louis, there is a Minority Clerkship Program which involves additional preparation and interviewing in the spring. By April I felt that I had to focus on the summer program and get set up for the arrival of new summer associates in May.

I also liked to incorporate new ideas in the summer program each year. I spent time looking for new articles and talking to others with the same job in other firms in the "off-season." I also talked to a number of people in the firm after the summer was over to help decide what went right and what went wrong. Also, there were always a number of people in the firm who sought me out to tell me what went right and what went wrong. I am afraid to add up all the hours that I spent in conversations with people about the summer program. As I suggested earlier, you learn many things about the culture, philosophy and mission of your firm by running its summer program.

You must have early and continuing contact with each person who accepts an offer with your firm. It can be as simple as a congratulatory note upon acceptance of the offer, a note to say good luck with finals at the beginning of December, a note to touch base with some information about the program in February and then a note every few weeks from April to the starting date. The worst mistake you can make is to have one of your summer associates call you up to confirm that he or she does, in fact, still have a job with you for the summer.

I also highly recommend some form of written manual and taking the time to do a comprehensive orientation on the first day a summer associate arrives. A manual can take many forms. I simply adapted our firm's staff manual into what I called a "guidebook" to help avoid any potential "official employee manual" employment issues. The guidebook contained a description of firm policies, phone numbers, computer, mail, copier and fax information, maps and biographies and secretarial arrangements. While I touched on much of the information covered in the guidebook during the orientation, the guidebook contained the type of material that will not be remembered after one listening. Our summer associates found it useful to have a written source to turn to for answers to basics questions. Never underestimate the importance of accurate office maps to your summer associates. In addition to the manual, I gave each summer associate and information packet with samples of written work and time sheets, an updated firm resume and telephone list, and articles useful to someone starting his or her legal career.

I have never liked to put someone right to work on his or her first morning on the job, but most summer associates arrive ready and raring to go. My compromise was to spend a few hours in the morning doing an orientation, touring the offices and introducing the summer associates to attorneys, taking them and their "buddies" to lunch, and then letting them get started on a project or two in the afternoon. It is unrealistic to expect that summer associates will hear and digest everything that you tell them in an orientation, but there are a number of items that they need to hear on a number of occasions and it is good to start immediately. I generally began with an introduction to the firm and its history, clients and structure. I proceeded to talk about matters specific to the summer program and then covered a broad range of practical details. I always took the approach that summer associates had not worked in a law firm before and stressed the practical while incorporating a few of my philosophical points about the program. I gave people practical tips about handling their first assignments and soliciting feedback, but I did not feel that walking through a sample assignment was useful. I also experiment with involving other people - managing partner, hiring partner, office manager, librarian - in the orientation itself. Involving others may make sense in your situation and it may even be part of your firm's culture, but I decided that it was best to keep the orientation focused and personal and, except for library tours, everything was covered by me.

The importance of early preparation for administrative matters - offices, secretarial arrangements, network setup, phone numbers, parking - goes without saying. It is good to get on top of this by April so that everyone is thinking along the same lines. If there is a problem with office space or number of secretaries, you can get it worked out much more easily over a six-week period than you can, say, over a six-day period.

Confidentiality and ethics issues involving summer associates have become far more significant in the last few years. There has been a growing awareness of potential conflicts of interest involving a summer associate who may have worked on the other side of a case at another firm the previous summer. Because summer associates are given small parts of cases, a summer associate may have worked on a case at another firm during the previous summer and have no idea of potential conflicts. A summer associate can get caught in the middle of these types of conflicts checks. The better approach seems to be to initiate contact, probably at an appropriate higher level, between your firm and the prior employer to work out the conflicts check issues and keep the summer associate out of the loop.

A large part of my early preparation went toward promoting interest in the summer program and increase participation by members of the firm. Make sure that people who will be participating in the program as "buddies," speakers, hosts of social events or in other capacities are contacted well in advance of the summer. I sent a memo to all attorneys and staff several weeks before the summer associates arrived describing the summer program, giving starting dates and providing brief biographies of summer associates. The day before a summer associate started an item containing a more detailed biography ran in our daily bulletin. Another item was placed in the daily bulletin on the actual start date and informed the receptionists when summer associates arrived so that they would be expected and warmly greeted. The little details really do matter. I also spoke about the summer program at the firm meeting in the spring. Participation by everyone at the firm is a large component of any successful summer program. Getting the summer program on peoples' minds is a first step toward getting that participation.

3. Make Use of Mentors. The summer program is probably not a place where you want to tough it out and go it alone. Although you are likely to run into a few things that no one else has ever experienced, many of the situations that arise during a summer are ones that arise fairly commonly. You will not have all the answers.
Your predecessors will most likely be tremendous sources of assistance to you. I talked to my predecessor on a regular basis and he was an enormous help to me. This type of regular consultation is a way to check your new ideas. Perhaps your ideas were considered or tried earlier. You should definitely learn where the potential pitfalls are as well as get a good sense of what has worked well before.

I also found the members of the hiring committee and the hiring partner to be good sources. It is good to remind them that the decisions they make have real consequences. People on the hiring committee are very interested in the training of younger attorneys and are often very willing to help you.

Your own mentor in the firm, even though he or she has little or no connection with the summer program, is often the best person to help you with some of the thornier issues or to give you important insights. In fact, tip #8 is a near quote from a comment made to me by my mentor as I lamented last summer that I felt I had the system really worked out, but that I was spending more time on the summer program than I ever had previously.

4. Consider Using a Buddy System. I am a big advocate of using a "buddy" system for your summer program. A "buddy" is a young associate who is paired up with a summer associate for the summer. I thought of them as "designated friends"; the buddies would have preferred the title of "associate advisor." A buddy's role, as with many things, lies somewhere in between. Each summer associate was paired with an associate in the firm with whom I thought he or she would be most compatible. The buddy helped the summer associate learn the culture of the firm and the many subtleties that are difficult to pick up in a short period of time - appropriate dress for casual day, forms to use, where to eat lunch and general information about working with individual attorneys. My notion was to try to have the assignment of a buddy act be a catalyst to a friendship that would be likely to develop over the summer in any event. I was not always successful at that, but I didn't expect to be.

The buddies also helped me by being my "eyes and ears" for potential problems and addressing other concerns before they became problems. For example, many summer associates will say that they can take on work even though they are swamped. A buddy could give me a more accurate assessment of the summer associate's workload and I could make the appropriate adjustment. On a lighter note, another example is the issue of what to wear to the firm picnic. I also found it infinitely preferable to pass off the issue to an appropriately-gendered buddy than try to answer questions about whether what type of swimsuit to wear to a pool party or float trip.

Although the use of buddies can take a good deal of the day-to-day load of running the summer program off of you, use of a buddy program does involve additional time to select buddies, keep them informed about what you want and to listen to their comments on summer associates. There are also tricky issues of confidentiality and objectivity. In my view, a buddy's job is to help the summer associate get an offer to return to the firm. As a general principle, a buddy could not give his or her summer associate a project. A buddy was not asked to give me a yes-no recommendation on the summer associate, although I would ask them for a more general assessment on the issue of "fit" and their opinions on whether a summer associate had a good experience and was likely to accept an offer.

For a buddy system to work well, a summer associate has to be able to feel that he or she can confide in a buddy. I chose to emphasize that aspect of the buddy relationship and respect the confidentiality of the relationship. There are obvious pluses and minuses of this approach and you might decide to take another approach. Disclosure of whatever the buddy's role is in the evaluation and information-gathering process, however, is essential.

Finally, a buddy system can help you handle the friend/evaluator dynamic that is an integral part of running a summer program. On the one hand, you want to have enough distance and objectivity to be an effective evaluator. On the other hand, it is unrealistic to expect that you won't end up liking everyone and rooting for them to get an offer. The buddy system allows you to be a bit stronger in the evaluator role. Because buddies are much nearer in age to the summer associates, a buddy system also helps you avoid looking foolish by trying to act like you are younger and hipper than you are.

5. Involve Attorneys on a Regular, Structured Basis Other Than Simply Giving Assignments. I met with all the summer associates on a regular, weekly basis. We would meet each Friday morning in the same conference room. The meetings had two purposes. First was the business side of the meeting. This part of the meeting lasted above five minutes and allowed me to discuss upcoming events, any problems that had arisen, workload issues and the like. The summer associates then had an opportunity to raise any issues that applied to the group at large (individual matters had to be discussed with me individually). The second purpose of the meeting was to have one of the partners in the firm give a talk to the summer associates. Partners could talk on any subject related to their specialty with only the instruction to make their talks personal rather than institutional. Partners were to talk about how they chose their specialty, what they liked most about their work and what they actually did on a daily basis. Invariably, this approach resulted in a discussion of advice that the attorney would give to a young law student. I followed the talk with a short homily emphasizing a point or two that the speaker made. Parents with children who watch Barney will recognize this approach.

This approach built on some of the things which were already being done in the program and reflected part of my answer to my consistent question: "What would I have liked to see when I worked during the summer?" Although this type of program results in a larger expenditure of time, it is very worthwhile. First, it is a non-threatening way to introduce attorneys to the summer associates and to help break down perceived barriers for the summer associates. After speaking to the group, a partner would be more inclined to take summer associates to lunch, to have them accompany him or her to a deposition or closing or to give out more projects. Summer associates were also more likely to seek the partner out either for projects or to discuss some of the points raised in the talk.

Second, it helps law students learn what lawyers actually do. Many law students simply do not know what an average lawyer does let alone what lawyers do in some of the more esoteric areas. Third, because I usually had eight to ten speakers in the course of a summer, I was able to promote participation from attorneys in various departments. Fourth, I could tailor speakers and, in a few cases, topics, to the particular group that I had for the summer. Some attorneys who I wanted the summer associates to meet might not be able to give projects, but were able to speak to them. I also let the summer associates pick one speaker at the end of each summer, which proved to be a very popular and successful experiment. It is a powerful motivator to tell an attorney that the summer associates have picked him or her as the one person they would most like to hear.

You can also benefit immensely from learning about the firm and its history and culture and, more importantly, about your partners and their history, work and interests. You will certainly benefit from being able to refer potential clients to others in your firm and to cross-sell existing clients as a result of the knowledge you gain about your partners that you might not have otherwise known.

6. Adopt a Structured Approach to Feedback and Evaluations. The two dragons of the summer program are feedback and evaluations. These two areas are largely a function of firm culture and you may be able to do little to change existing practices. To paint a fair picture of life at your firm, you will want to develop a feedback and evaluation system that is not too different from the one that is being used for young associates. I focused on eliminating barriers to feedback and evaluation and tried to minimize the amount of paperwork involved. I developed an explicitly two-tiered approach to feedback.

For feedback on the specifics of a given project, I simply relied on the one-on-one relationship between the assigning attorney and the summer associate. I told the summer associate that I would get involved in project feedback only if asked. Part of what I wanted to do was to push summer associates to seek feedback and to help them recognize feedback when they got it. Learning to get and interpret feedback is an essential skill that must be learned and practiced by young attorneys.

My focus was on the general evaluations rather than on specific project feedback. I gave two evaluations during each summer, one in the middle of the summer and one at the end of the summer. Each attorney with whom a summer associate had worked received an evaluation form and I concentrated on ways to get the highest level of responses. I experimented with different evaluation forms and finally decided to use a simplified form with 4 or 5 rating areas that forced a general conclusion. Attorneys seemed to write more comments when I left little space for comments than when I left large white spaces for comments. I used these evaluation forms as the basis for my own comments to the summer associates and filtered the responses back to the summer associates. This approach was preferable to showing summer associates the individual evaluation forms. Personally soliciting oral evaluations from attorneys may sometimes result in more in-depth evaluations, but the enormous amount of time that can be involved probably does not make this method practical in most firms.

Students generally will tell you that they are most interested in getting a thorough and honest evaluation at the middle of the summer. I put a lot of effort into the mid-summer evaluation. A mid-summer evaluation can be very inaccurate since it tends to highlight the comments on the first few projects done by the summer associate. Nonetheless, it is vital to get summer associates as information as possible by mid-summer.

I preferred a structured format for evaluations. I used the same format for each summer associate. Each summer associate review lasted at least 20 - 30 minutes. I began by explaining how the information was gathered and the potential inaccuracies that might arise during the evaluation process, especially at mid-summer. I then discussed with as many specifics as possible the positive aspects of the evaluations. I then mentioned at least three areas for improvement, again using as many specifics as I could. It is one thing to say that someone is "careless"; it is far better to say that the person needs to pay attention to detail and point to a specific oversight, like leaving out a page of a copy of a memo that was turned in to the assigning attorney. An evaluation of the summer associate's written work was next on my agenda. I tried to read some examples of each summer associate's writing, but I focused on a general set of points I wanted to emphasize during the summer - attention to detail, use of citation, drawing conclusions, considering the audience - and then made a few specific comments on the written work. Finally, I asked the summer associate for a self-assessment and his or her view on how things were going. The summer associate and I then tried to develop a plan for the rest of the summer to address the improvement areas or any other problems and to try to get specific types of work in which the summer associate was interested. The final evaluation followed the same format except that I asked for the self-assessment at the beginning of the meeting before giving my comments and I solicited feedback on the summer program and talked specifically about the summer associate's desire to return to the firm.

I liked this highly structured approach because it allowed for criticisms to be made in a positive framework, it ensured that each evaluation was similar, it made it easy for me to keep notes of each evaluation and to eliminate the complaint that "you never told me there were things I had to improve," and it promoted a two-way flow to the evaluation. It is important to seek information as well as impart it. My approach takes a good deal of time and effort, but it provides good information to the summer associates and it helps eliminate misunderstandings from evaluations which can take endless amounts of time to sort out.

7. Handling Social Events. My least favorite part of running our summer program was organizing and promoting social events. The social events were great, but working around schedule problems, work emergencies and other distractions was extremely difficult. And that was just getting the summer associates together.

My conclusion is that no matter how great a social event may be you are always better off getting summer associates out of the office, and out of the library, to attend trials, depositions, closings or any other work that shows what an attorney actually does. The time spent riding and talking with an attorney in a car to and from a deposition will likely turn out to be a more pivotal experience for the summer than will a night at the opera. Similarly, lunches and small group activities are also preferred by most summer associates.

The key, however, is to be who you are. Social events which fit within the firm culture and which are in line with your own personality as well turn out better than a great new idea that you may have. What you want to achieve is a setting where both attorneys and summer associates are relatively relaxed and comfortable (even though most law schools seem to counsel students never to let down their guard at any time) and the summer associates can get a better sense of what the attorneys in your firm are like outside a work setting.

I did not like to schedule many social events in the first few weeks of the summer. You will want to get a reading of what your summer associates' interests are first. Last year's most successful activity might be a disaster with this year's group. Remember also that a summer associate can get overbooked for the summer. Be sure that you do not plan so many activities that summer associates have little free time on the weekends or begin to see the events as a burden.

I always preferred a realistic approach. If there are twice as many social events in the summer as there are in the rest of year, you probably need to rethink your approach.

Remember that you do not have to do everything with respect to the summer program. Delegation is key. Getting several people, especially the buddies, to take over the planning of social events can be a big help. Another good idea is not to attend every event. Your presence can inhibit summer associates and, if you are not there, they can feel that they are not necessarily being told the party line.

8. It's a People Job, Not a Systems Job. Last summer was my fourth summer of running our summer program. I had all of my systems worked out and running smoothly. But I found that I was spending even more time on the summer program than I ever had before. It was frustrating me until I heard the words: "Well, it's a people job, not a systems job."

The systems that you design can make things flow more easily and smoothly, but running a summer program is a very high-maintenance operation. Many people are involved who need to be given attention on a regular basis. Do you really want to go for a week or more without chatting with each summer associate? Do you want to have regular meetings with buddies? Friday morning meetings may take up another hour or two. Managing workload can take up a good deal of time. Gathering evaluations from attorneys who do not turn in their forms can take a great deal of time. Evaluations take time. During the last few weeks of the summer, people who rarely, if ever, speak to you, will spend a great deal of time asking how summer associates are doing and