♫What’s new pussycat? Woah, Woah♫
by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, sung by Tom Jones.
I gave a TIPS presentation at a CLE in December. During the question period when I asked for TIPS from the audience, a lawyer came up to the mic and said that the *best* piece of technology that he has acquired was a Tablet PC combined with an Aircard for internet access. He stated that he takes it to court and while waiting for his case, he can call up his email and write his replies (that are recognized by the tablet PC’s handwriting recognition software) and draft notes etc. And since it is a a Tablet PC and he is handwriting, he isn’t disturbing the court and the judges leave him be. The Aircard gives him access to the Internet from virtually anywhere.
This is a great adaptation of three different technologies – the Aircard, the Tablet PC and handwriting recognition software – that allows this lawyer to be more effective and efficient wherever he may find himself. And it is also a great example of how we all can benefit by occasionally asking each other: “What’s New, Pussycat?”
♫ How do I feel by the end of the day
Are you sad because you’re on your own ..
No, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends…♫
Words and music by Lennon-McCartney
It seems I am on a roll lately with The Beatles…and with a little help from my friends Allison Wolf and Doug Jasinski. It seems we are sharing a 2007 CLawBie award in the area of Practice Management Blogs! In addition I seemed to have snagged a runner-up award for Best New Law Blog along with Donna Seale’s Human Rights in the Workplace and Dan Michaluk’s All About Information.
I am humbled by this recognition. Blogging seems a solitary affair and it is gratifying to find your work recognized. I also wish to thank Steve Matthews and his work in developing the CLawBies …he is indeed a leader in the whole area of Canadian Legal Blogs and moving law into the world of Web 2.0. Steve deserves the most recognition of all!
And in reflection, you realize that as a blogger, you are not alone…you are part of a community of like-minded individuals - and we all get by with a little help from our friends.
♫Tell him “no”, oh-oh-oh, Tell him “no”..♫
Words and music by Travis Pritchett, recorded by Travis & Bob.
A posting on InfoWorld’s web site today reports that British Schools have been advised not to upgrade to Microsoft’s Vista operating system and the Office 2007 productivity suite. The reasons are telling:
“We have not had sight of any evidence to support the argument that the costs of upgrading to Vista in educational establishments would be offset by appropriate benefit,” it said.
Furthermore, it continues:
“As for Office 2007, “there remains no compelling case for deployment,” the agency said in its full report, published this week.”
InfoWorld states that the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) advised that ‘the added value of Vista’s new features was not sufficient to justify the cost of deployment, while Office 2007 contained no “must-have” features.‘
In a telling move away from proprietary file formats: ‘the agency also recommended setting up desktops to make it easy to use such open-source applications, and advised schools to insist their suppliers deliver office productivity software that can open and save ODF documents, setting it as the default file format.’
This may be an early sign for organizations generally, including law firms, to move toward greater standardization around ODF formats. And if file formats become open and standard, that leads to questions as to why one would need a proprietary word processor, if Open Source software can easily meet the needs of a business organization.
This means that when the automatic request comes to purchase the next upgrade from Microsoft, the answer may be, to tell him no…
♫I’ll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day and through..♫
Words and Music by Sammy Fain / Irving Kahal, sung by Billie Holiday.
Wednesday Oct. 10, 2007 will see the 2007 edition of the Pacific Legal Technology Conference held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This conference will be the 5th PLTC and this year The BCLMA (the British Columbia Legal Management Association), the LMA (The Legal Marketing Association - BC Chapter) and the GPSSF National Conference of the Canadian Bar Association (The CBA’s General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Conference) all have joined the Conference as additional sponsors. This is in addition to the four founding sponsors: The TLABC (The Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia), the CBA - BC Branch (The Canadian Bar Association - BC Branch), the LSBC (The Law Society of British Columbia) and the ABA-LPM Section (The Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association).
This year’s conference starts with a bang at 8 am with: 60 Technology, Management, Marketing and Finance Tips in 60 Mins and concludes with 25 Things You Really Need to Know and Take Home. The noon plenary features Frank Fowlie, the Ombudsman for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Frank has a unique view of the growing trend towards on-line dispute resolution and will talk on the different technology platforms in use, the state of ODR and the opportunities - and challenges - that ODR poses to the legal profession. The full program can be found here.
In-between these plenary sessions are a further 18 sessions divided into six tracks: The Solo and Small Firm Track (sponsored by the GPSSF section), the Tips and Marketing Track ( sponsored by the LMA), the Applications Track (sponsored by the ABA-LPM Section), the Implementing Technology Track (sponsored by the LSBC), the Administrators & Managing Partners Track (sponsored by the BCLMA) and the E-Discovery and Litigation Track (sponsored by the TLABC).
The sessions range from How to Know What You Don’t Know - a Primer on the Newest Legal Technogies to Electronic Evidence Best Practices; from Working with Adobe Acrobat to No Limits! What a Young High Tech Firm Could REALLY Look Like!; from Security Overview: Backups, Removing Metadata, Digital Signatures, Secure Email, Handling Spam, Fraud and Other Tips to Tips on Becoming Creative with Technology in the Practice of Law.
The conference features outstanding speakers: Sharon Nelson and Dan Pinnington (both past ABA TECHSHOW Chairs) as well as a number of other outstanding speakers from ABA TECSHOW and from BC (Doug Jasinski, Allison Wolf, Steve Matthews just to mention a few…(24 great speakers in total). The Conference draws attendees from as far away as Halifax and down into the USA (MCLE Credit is available for Washington, Oregon and California and pending from Idaho) and the Conference offers 9 hours of Professional Management Instruction for reporting by BC lawyers.
The theme of this year’s conference is Leadership, Technology and You. This conference is unique in that it is designed from the bottom up in a collaborative manner with all past attendees. Each year, the Advisory Board pulls together a list of possible sessions that are posted to a SurveyMonkey web site - and every past attendee is invited to participate and indicate which sessions would be most relevant to them.
From the survey results the session program is pulled together from the top rated sessions. As a result, in every year the Conference has been held, it has received a 100% “YES” answer to the question “Would you recommend this Conference to your colleagues?” in the conference evaluation. As the Chair of the Conference, I am proud of that distinction and believe it indicates the world-class speakers, exhibitors and information that is integral to the success of the Conference.
I hope to be seeing you at the Vancouver Westin Bayshore Hotel and Resort on Wednesday October 10 for the Pacific Legal Technology Conference this year!
Dave
♫
Makes me feel sad for the rest,
Nobody does it half as good as you.
Baby, you’re the best…♫
Music by M. Hamlisch, Lyrics by C.B. Sager, Recorded by Carly Simon
Law Practice Magazine published by the American Bar Association, Law Practice Management Section, received three awards this summer: A 2007 APEX Award for Creative Director Mark Feldman for cover design of the April/May 2006 issue, another 2007 APEX Award in the writing category for Bill Gibson’s terrific “Ask Bill” column, and a 2007 Tabbie Award for cover design, again for the April/May 2006 cover. The APEX Awards are based on excellence in graphic design, editorial content and ability to achieve overall communications excellence. The Tabbies recognize excellence in trade, association and business publications. Credit has to go to former Law Practice Magazine Editor-in-Chief Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, who led the team to excellence at the time these awards were earned!
Dan Pinnington (Director, PracticePro) recently received The Edge Award for the Best Column in Law Practice Magazine for 2007, entitled: I’m Not Here Right Now, Please Leave a Message (Tips and Tricks), in the April-May 2007 issue. Congratulations to Dan for an excellent column! Speaking of Dan, he was just inducted into the College of Law Practice Management. Edge International is a leader in firm strategy and management.
Congratulations are also due to all the 2006-2007 Edge Award winners—announced on page 5 of the September 2007 issue—for writing excellence in Law Practice magazine. They are: Best Feature Article: Steven T. Taylor “Rainmaking: Rewriting the Rules” in the October/November 2006 issue; Silver Feature Article: Peter Darling, “Seeking Out New Markets” in the September 2006 issue and of course, Best Column: Dan Pinnington, “I’m Not Here Right Now, Please Leave a Message”, from the Tips and Tricks column of April/May 2007.
It is gratifying that a magazine devoted to the topic of the business of the practice of law receives such recognition. Oh, and I am proud to be the current Editor-in-Chief and grateful to be working with such a talented team of professionals - the Editorial Team (Joan Feldman - Managing Editor, Joy White - Editor, Mark Feldman - Creative Director), the Editorial Board (Laura A. Calloway - Finance Editor, Marcia Pennington Shannon - People Editor, and Mark Tamminga - Technology Editor), the Editorial Advisory Board (Edward H.Flitton III, Ann Lee Gibson, K. William Gibson, Erik J. Heels, Karen MacKay, Reba J. Nance, and Doona L.G. Shaft), the talented writers, ABA Staff and all others who contribute to the success of Law Practice Magazine. Way to go Team - Baby, You’re the Best!
♫ Living in my own world
Didn’t understand
That anything can happen
When you take a chance ..♫
Words and Music by David Lawrence, Matthew Gerrard & Robbie Nevil, recorded by High School Musical.
My copy of Innovations, an Editorial Supplement by the editors of Baseline, CIO Insight and eWeek, hit my desk this week. This magazine bills itself as focusing on the secret ingredients of successful companies. On page 18 was an article by Robert Hertzberg on the top technological innovations that businesses were focusing on in 2007. I love these types of studies that show what people are actually spending money on rather than those that state what people could be doing with technology. While thinking about futuristic ideas is always interesting, ultimately it all comes down to the question of whether or not you are willing to risk capital on an idea or project in order to achieve a better ROI than you are achieving at the moment. And this provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the where law firms are relative to other businesses and see where there is room for innovation - or at least increased emphasis - by law firms. So what are these top projects?
#1 Business Process Improvement (BPM): BPM, or as I prefer to put it: figuring out how to do things better, faster or cheaper, is the number one innovative initiative undertaken by businesses. These projects all have one common denominator - they address a defined business need (or at least, one that has been identified by an outside consultant!) This is certainly one area where law firms are always interested; the principle challenge, as I see it, is in devising improvements that are not already in use at other firms - in other words, being truly innovative rather than just keeping up with Jones, Jones & Jones LLP.
#2 Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Wikipedia states that CRM is a broad term that covers concepts used by companies to manage their relationships with customers, including the capture, storage and analysis of customer, vendor, partner, and internal process information. These projects, while exciting and truly different, typically have a high failure rate. If you follow the maxim that high risk must equal high return, there must be a hefty upside to building an effective CRM system and building it right. Law firms may wish to pay a bit more attention to this trend.
#3 Business Analytics and Business Intelligence: Here you are taking firm business data and analyzing it to demonstrate to partners or clients or perhaps both, that there are demonstrable benefits from new ways of working together or working in a defined manner (such as implementing increased delegation and staff leverage for greater returns to both the clients and the firm). I would be surprised if any but a small handful of the larger law firms are actually taking steps to implement business metrics and measure the benefits of analytics and thereby looking to innovate using this technique, notwithstanding the real data and results that could be achieved. However, akin to CRM systems, the benefits from undertaking these types of projects could be big. This is definitely a ‘working smarter not harder’ idea.
#4 Desktop/laptop Upgrades: The trend today is for businesses to purchase laptops rather than desktops. This reflects a common insight - that if you give someone a desktop at the office, they work at the office. If you give someone a laptop, they can work from virtually anywhere, anytime, particularly with widespread Wi-Fi and web-enabled email. Lawyers, being workaholics, should be jumping all over this trend.
#5 Web Services: This is an interesting area. Certainly there have been firms that have built extranets and web portals for their clients for some time now (such as commercial, transactional and litigation firms that wish to communicate with their commercial clients). Other types of law firms have realized that they can exist largely on the web and market to clients and render services via the web (such as immigration firms). This area, in my opinion, has a large growth potential for law firms who can adjust their business model to incorporate the potentials offered by the web.
#6 Disaster Planning/Recovery: After the recent gamut of Katrina, 911, tornadoes, floods, fires and other potential disasters, whether natural or man-made, it would be amazing if firms are not spending significant time and attention here to ensure their viability in the face of disaster and the protection of their data, client information and intellectual property. Perhaps the only thing holding back law firms from addressing this would be the belief that disasters only happen to someone else…
#7 Intrusion Detection and Prevention: Along with disaster prevention, protecting your systems from hackers, malware, viruses and the host of low-life on the web is a priority as I see it, for lawyers and law firms. A once-a-year review by an outside consultant to advise that law firm systems are sufficiently secure and robust would be a good thing, in my view.
#8 Server Upgrades: This is a fairly routine task and one that I see attended to by the IT staff or IT contractors for firms on a regular basis. I rarely see a firm that delays implementing a server upgrade once the recommendation has been made that it is time to do a replacement.
#9 Enterprise Systems Planning: In the law firm context, these projects look at greater system integration in order to meet law office business requirements. A good example is the roll-out of integrated practice (or case) management systems such as Amicus Attorney, Time Matters, ProLaw and the like. This is certainly a growing trend in law firms. The benefits of such integrated systems has clearly been demonstrated and the ROI is positive. Firms that have not already considered an integrated legal case and practice management solution have some catching up to do in this regard.
#10 Financial Reporting: Given that partners are also business owners, I would think that improvements in financial reporting would be attended to with all due haste provided that the partners knew what to ask for from their systems. Any lack of innovation here could be attributed to more of a lack of knowledge of what reports they should be creating to improve their business performance rather than a lack of desire or resources. There is much room for financial reporting to move from reporting on historical performance to being a forecasting and strategic performance tool in law firms, in my view.
So there is the list of top projects from the business side and a reflection on where law firms are relative to these areas. Now the question is - how does your law firm budget incorporate any of these? Are you giving time, attention and resources to address any of these in your business plans and budget this year? After all, anything can happen when you take a chance…
♫ Ya know it’s true
Everything I do - I do it for you…♫
Words and music by Bryan Adams, Mutt Lange and Michael Kamen.
I have been reading the Ohio State University Leadership Center’s weekly email on leadership for some time. In particular, I have been looking for information on how a law firm can ‘close the gap’ between the difficulty that a client may have in perceiving the value that lawyers bring to their client’s problems and the actual services rendered. Like it or not, legal services are not terribly ‘tangible’ and lawyers face a continual challenge in communicating their value to their clients. As such the Ohio State leadership email struck a chord in terms of focusing a law firm leader’s work in a law firm directly on the client. It sets up a measuring stick to use in terms of determining if any proposed action will ultimately ‘add value’ to the client. Their post was as follows:
Five Expectations of Customer Leadership
1. “Every leader needs to be able to hear the customers ‘voice’ in everything they do.
2. Leaders who are aware of customer needs should be customer advocates, whether others in the organization are or not.
3. Leaders need to implement only those changes that are customer driven.
4. Leaders need to be knowledgeable about the entire value chain of how work is delivered to the customers and ensure that the value chain interdependencies work efficiently and effectively.
5. All objectives and measures for leaders (and their teams) need to be articulated with a clear connection to the value that the objectives create for the external customer (Weiss, 2005, p.58-61).”
Reference: Weiss, D. S. (2006). The leadership gap: building leadership capacity for competitive advantage. Mississauga, ON: John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd.
Milton Zwicker, a lawyer in Orillia, Ontario has been writing in this area for decades and was one of the first ‘law firm client advocates’ that I can recall. He has spoken and written long and hard on the need to focus on the client and on how one orients a law firm around the concept of client service and value. In this context, the advice from D.S. Weiss is apt - before making any change, take a moment and ask if this particular change is one that is client driven. If a proposed change does not add value from the client’s viewpoint, then perhaps greater thought needs to be put into the proposed change and the reasons behind it. After all, when a leader looks around at the hub of activity before him or her in the office, they want to be able to say that ‘everything they do, they do for you…’.