Yet, globalization and the breakneck pace of business are also exacting a heavy price on lawyers and their organizations. New competitive pressures are bearing down on the practitioner, both in the law firm and the law department. The expanded scope and accelerated pace of client demands are stressing both lawyer-client and law firm-client relationships.
Whether these boom times continue or not, the heightened pace of providing legal services is here to stay. Experience proves that once service levels rise, they never again can be lowered. Client perceptions of speedy service re-adjust quickly. What was once spectacular service soon becomes expected, then routine. Can you imagine your client ever again accepting 3-5 day mail delivery of important documents, after becoming accustomed to courier, fax, e-mail, and extranets? For a fascinating, and somewhat depressing, view of the ever-quickening pace of our society, take a quick read of Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, by James Gleick, published September 1999 by Pantheon.
Technology is both the hero and villain in this story. Advancements in technology have played a major role in stoking the New Economy, but they have also created escalating expectations of responsiveness and triggered an information avalanche. The result is somewhat circular. The only way to meet the external volumes, demands and opportunities arising from technology is to move technology to the forefront of your own legal business and practice. Firms that can adapt and strategically position technology to leverage the strength of both professional and enterprise will become highly successful, while others may fall even farther behind.
FAILED EXPECTATIONS
Law firms have invested large sums on technology for many years with relatively little direct impact on lawyer performance or client relations. Indeed, a 1999 study of the Am Law 200 top firms by Adam Bendell, technology counsel at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles, asserts that there is no correlation at all between technology and profitability of firms, and the statistics seem to support this astounding conclusion. Reference may be made to A Faraway Pay Day-When Will Firms' Investment In Technology Produce Dividends?" by Mark Voorhees, The American Lawyer, March 7, 2000.
Why is this the case? Well, part of the cause may be the delay between investment and long-term payback, and part may be due to poorly implemented or under-utilised systems. But, the more likely culprit is the type of technology that law firms and law departments have traditionally adopted.
THE FIRST WAVE
Traditionally, law firms and law departments have first implemented enterprise production technology as the most obvious means to gain efficiencies. Mainstream automation systems, such as word processing, financial management, case management and document management systems, are an essential first step for the efficient production of work.
The objective of production automation is to help produce more and better things at less cost to the enterprise. Investing in a new photocopier should result in faster, better quality copies. Investing in a word processor should result in production of more documents faster. These systems focus on the work, not the worker. Therefore, they have the most positive impact on production tasks and the business of law, and less of an impact on knowledge-based tasks and knowledge workers.
However, the practice of law is not about production, it is mainly about using know-how. The primary value of the lawyer, law firm and law department is in the knowledge and skills of its members. Since only a small portion of a lawyer's work is involved in production, it is no surprise that the impact on revenue generation is not significant. Time-pressed lawyers have little incentive to learn and use enterprise production systems, since they can distract effort from practice priorities.
While these essential systems may improve the productivity of support staff and administration, production systems do little to improve or leverage the value of the lawyer. Production automation may help produce a brief faster, but it will not make the content more persuasive or more valuable.
THE SECOND WAVE
As lawyers come under increasing pressure to provide anytime, anywhere know-how to clients, many are bypassing their enterprise systems altogether and adopting a variety of Personal Information Managers (PIM's) such as Palm, RIM (BlackBerry) and other wireless devices. This second wave of technology has the distinct advantage of directly benefiting the lawyer, so the impact is significant. PIM's providing quick, mobile access to a wide variety of personal information (e.g. calendar, addresses, case notes, etc.), and free the user from the restrictions of the enterprise system.
However freedom comes at a price. By adopting personal technology and disconnecting from the firm's information infrastructure, the lawyer (or law firm support staff) frequently have to assume the redundant role of information manager for multiple, disparate systems. The task of downloading applications, entering data, maintaining and synchronizing databases and installing new versions for personal systems can dissipate much of the perceived productivity gains and stress firm resources.
Personal systems technology allows the individual to stay more connected to clients and to personal practice information. It helps lawyers get accustomed to using technology for their benefit, and serves as an important step in the technological evolution of the practitioner. Yet, it does little to leverage the strength and resources of the law firm or law department. In fact, personal technology often imposes additional burdens on both the individual and the organization, and it can compound the effort necessary to maintain multiple sources of information.
WHERE'S THE LEVERAGE?
So, enterprise production systems are designed to improve production, but rarely provide leverage or relief to the individual lawyer. Conversely, personal information systems empower the individual lawyer, but do not leverage the enterprise's strengths and resources. Both types of technologies are valuable for what they do, but they often miss the opportunity to leverage the value of combined resources. So far, the vast potential of knowledge technologies for professionals remains untapped.
As service pressures increase, can lawyers and law offices continue to meet escalating challenges with systems that contradict the concept of leverage? Can lawyers continue to work longer and harder, and can organizations survive and prosper without better leveraging combined strengths?
There are now the beginnings of a third wave of technology in law offices. This wave is bigger and more significant that any other. It is not easy to achieve, but it has the potential to transform the profession.
THE THIRD WAVE
Introducing technologies that leverage and maximize the value of the knowledge worker and the organization requires a fresh approach to technology. The third wave is not a new product, it is a process. It is a strategy and approach that originates from the perspective of the knowledge worker and the organization working in concert. It starts with recognition of a fundamental knowledge management concept: to create leverage and be effective, knowledge technology must directly benefit both the knowledge worker and the organization as separate distinct entities of a system as a whole. Both the firm and the lawyer must co-benefit for the technology to succeed.
This concept is applicable to all knowledge workers, not just lawyers. For an individual, the benefit must be sooner, not later. It must be obviously direct, not arguably direct. Each party should benefit from the other's gain, that is, it must be a co-operative benefit or co-benefit from the same initiative. The initiative must be ONE. When all parties benefit, knowledge technology attracts greater participation, which leads, in turn, to greater attraction to participate, and so on.
In a legal practice context, there are already some examples of this new approach to technology. Some interactive intranets and collaborative extranets focus on leveraging the knowledge of the lawyers, the law firm and the client for better results. Others allow lawyers to leverage support staff to play a role in serving the client, while in turn benefiting the worker and the organization. Still others provide an open flow of information between parties for increased participation and collaboration.
Co-benefiting represents a new way of thinking about technology in the law office. It is the only effective way to bring real leverage to a legal organization. Yet, while it is easy to see the advantage of a co-benefiting system, it is not easily created.
The process poses some serious challenges to the traditional roles and responsibilities of both the lawyer and the organization. It requires a greater commitment by the lawyer and the organization than that required to buy a technology product. Yet, once know-how can be leveraged, the results can be spectacular. It will not be easy to transform the cautious, conservative legal profession to a co-benefiting model, but it is imperative that lawyers take this initiative before others pass them by.
Dan C. Felean and Mario D'Amico are principals of PensEra Knowledge Technologies, a national consulting firm which specializes in knowledge management strategies and technologies for law firms and corporate law departments. See www.pensera.com. Next Month: Knowledge Funnelling Strategies: How to align the technology, the organization, and the lawyer to create a co-benefitting relationship.