Articles Posted in Productivity

An article in the McKinsey Quarterly, 2008, No. 4, at 131, by two Stanford professors, has much to offer about innovation in an organization. “Learning how to do something new is far more time-consuming than doing what you already know; it requires far more mental effort to be in the ‘mindful’ state required for learning and experimentation than in the ‘mindless’ state required for ingrained actions. Moreover, people who are learning and innovating tend to make mistakes and experience setbacks, which are often upsetting and lead to inefficiency.”

Ease the burdens on your lawyers when they venture into new ways of working. Innovation is often perceived as difficult, expensive, and protracted, but it need not be. So-called affordances help ease shifts of behavior (See my post of Feb. 5, 2009: ergonomics and affordances.). As the authors would tell general counsel, “Boost the odds that innovative ideas will spread, by encouraging their [law departments] to identify affordances that help people learn about, understand, and apply new products, systems, and procedures” (See my post of Dec. 21, 2008: change management with 16 references cited.).

Having previously depressed everyone with eight downsides, I sanguinely offer ten advantages for general counsel that they might seize as a result of the economic downturn (See my post of Feb. 5, 2009: 8 downsides.).

1. Use the corporate pressure on you to try new law firms and scrape away at the encrusted incumbent firms (See my post of Dec. 17, 2007: challenges newcomers face compared to incumbents.).

2. Demand deeper discounts, fixed fees for phases, holdbacks or other cost concessions (See my post of Jan. 21, 2008: 10 more posts with variations on discounts; and March 1, 2008: fixed or flat fees with 36 references.). Several posts refer to holdbacks (See my post of Sept. 10, 2005: holdback payment based on client satisfaction scores; Feb. 16, 2006: reasons not to hold back amounts; Feb. 20, 2007: competitive bids and hold-backs; Aug. 4, 2007: holdbacks with bonus terms; Nov. 6, 2007: time constraints to negotiate; Sept. 18, 2007: a form of alternative fee arrangement; and Dec. 17, 2007: competitive bids.).

President Obama and I share an infatuation with our Blackberries. That means I send and receive many e-mails, although nowhere near as many as some in-house attorneys handle. The more adept and efficient we all are with email, the better.

Email effectiveness tips have shown up all over this blog (See my post of June 16, 2006: five tips; Nov. 6, 2006: three tips; Dec. 28, 2006: additional suggestions and comments; July 20, 2007: two tips; Nov. 7, 2007: five good practices; Nov. 28, 2007: four tips on email productivity; Dec. 26, 2008 #4: grotesquely long signature block; Jan. 18, 2009: software that helps with email; Feb. 17, 2008: futile searches for e-mail messages; and Feb. 25, 2008: seven tips for how to do email more productively.). With my next post on e-mail I will restate all the life-hacking gems.

An invigorating article in the McKinsey Quarterly, 2008, No. 4, at 131, introduces a set of clever ideas that would help law departments implement new practices. The authors, both professors at Stanford University, draw many interesting lessons from a campaign by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. I would like to extrapolate them to law departments, and start in this post with two terms that they use throughout.

Ergonomics is the science related to people at work, embodying the anatomic, physiologic, and mechanical principles affecting the efficient use of human energy. According to the McKinsey article, “A basic idea from ergonomics is that physical and cognitive ‘affordances’ can help people to think about, know, and use something more easily and to make fewer errors.”

In turn, Wikipedia informs us: “An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action. The term is used in a variety of fields: perceptual psychology, cognitive psychology, environmental psychology, industrial design, human–computer interaction (HCI), interaction design and artificial intelligence.”

In-house counsel should strive to be competent drafters, at the worst, and skilled prose stylists at the best (See my post of May 13, 2007: writing instructors; Sept. 21, 2005: writing coaches; May 19, 2006: comparative styles of firm lawyers and law department lawyers; Feb. 8, 2006: maximum of two drafts; June 12, 2005: “a good lawyer sounds and writes like a lawyer”; and March 26, 2008: you are what you write). Molly Dibianca, a lawyers in Delaware, posted her “30 of the Best Writing Blogs.” I shrank them to the eight that are legal oriented and kept her descriptions.

Adams Drafting, by Ken Adams, concentrates exclusively on contract drafting and writing issues facing transactional lawyers.

Disputed Issues, by Stephen R. Diamond, J.D., Ph.D., tackles common missteps in legal writing, as well as the reasons why lawyers write so badly.

A long-time fan of dictation and voice recognition, I couldn’t help but notice a slew of software exhibitors at LegalTech New York who have offerings in that area (See my post of Feb. 23, 2008: dictation with 5 references; April 8, 2008: use commute as time to dictate; and May 27, 2008: nuggets of learning).

Here are some tidbits I gleaned from a quick read of their marketing material. In-house counsel should try out this productivity tool.

BigHand has all kinds of awards and some good case studies of law firms

Legal departments have project teams for almost every conceivable task (See my post of Jan. 23, 2008: disaster planning; Jan. 3, 2008: risk management; Dec. 20, 2005: crisis management; Jan. 28, 2008: end-to-end contracts process; and July 3, 2007: morale.).

Teams at specific law departments show up in numerous posts on this blog (See my post of Nov. 22, 2008: Becton Dickinson’s Six Sigma team for IT contracting; Jan. 22, 2008: Caterpillar’s Six Sigma team on pro bono; March 3, 2006: John Deere’s with HR and consultants to review jobs; Nov. 13, 2005: Dow Chemical’s for IP review June 10, 2008: Exelon’s for RFPs; Jan. 4, 2006: Halliburton’s virtual teams; Jan. 30, 2006: cross-functional teams at Independence Blue Cross; April 27, 2008: Kraft team to study litigation holds; May 15, 2005: change management at NLRB; May 19, 2006: Nestle’s project team; Oct. 1, 2006: Sainsbury team to review external spend; and June 15, 2008: Saint-Gobain’s team to select document management software.). Many posts refer to a team formed as part of a Six Sigma process (See my post of Feb. 13, 2008: Six Sigma with 18 references.).

Tools to help law department teams abound (See my post of June 28, 2005: facilitators; Sept. 27, 2005: facilitate important meetings; Jan. 4, 2009: four ways teams can make decisions; Jan. 11, 2009: online tool to diagnose team effectiveness; Jan. 11, 2009: suggestions for better team decision-making; Jan. 6, 2006: social network diversity is very important; June 4, 2008: virtual team-building game; and Feb. 7, 2006: Group Development Questionnaire.).

An article in the ACC Docket, Vol. 30, Dec. 2008 at 50, describes how Fairmont Raffles Hotels International used an online data-room from IntraLinks to enable potential purchasers to carry out their due diligence. More than 150,000 pages of documents were made available to hundreds of reviewers. The article touts nine benefits of an online, secure document repository, eight of which I summarize below.

1. Saves time assembling the documents as compared to using binders, since you don’t have to
2. Saves time and money on scheduling slots for due diligence, since users have continual access from anywhere

“When decision rights are not clear or well distributed, every decision tends to get pushed up the hierarchy.” Consequently, if a general counsel does not define the roles and responsibilities adequately for those on the org chart and does not devolve authority and power to them, the top lawyer will end up making too many decisions and slowing the entire process. Complaints by clients about the slowness of the law department are a good clue to clogged arteries of decisions. Surveys can help calculate the cost of glacial decision-making.

I adapted the preceding from the MIT Sloan Mgt. Rev., Vol. 50, Winter 2009 at 38. The article explains how to combine process mapping and network analysis techniques to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of important decision processes (See my post of Jan. 10, 2008 #3: process maps; Aug. 28, 2005: process maps; and Feb. 16, 2008: flow charts compared to process maps.).

Starting in early 2006, the General Counsel of Caterpillar (James Buda) asked a senior lawyer to put together a Six Sigma team to focus on a pro bono program for the Legal Services Division (See my post of Feb. 13, 2008: Six Sigma with 18 references.). Because the 180 attorneys and 140 non-attorneys are divided between in two locations, there were actually Six Sigma teams that both sites. All this is explained in the ACC Docket, Vol. 30, Dec. 2008 at 12-13. Apparently Six Sigma techniques can apply to any study.

In less than two months, the teams had done their groundwork and in September 2006 Buda endorsed a pilot program. Each of the three initiatives tried out that month provided free legal assistance to underprivileged individuals (See my post of Dec. 16, 2008: pro bono contrasted with community service.). Ever since the full-scale program got under way in November 2006, “more than 100 volunteers from the two offices have provided over 600 hours of free legal services to underserved members of their communities” (See my post of Aug. 24, 2008: pro bono programs of law departments with 12 references.).