Articles Posted in Productivity

From Hottopic, a publication of ARMA International at 7, come several shrewd pieces of advice about what to do before you hit the “Send” button for an e-mail. (1) Check the recipients of the e-mail to be sure they are the ones you want to write to. (2) Use a meaningful subject line. (3) Match the subject line to what is actually being discussed, which means you should change the subject line when the topic has veered. (4) When you respond to several points in a long message, excerpt just the points being responded to. (5) Keep your signature line simple and without adornment.

The article also suggests that when you send email, limit how often you attach files. Instead, link to the document. They also suggest that you go on a “bacn” diet. Bacn (pronounced bacon) “refers to e-mail that the recipient has subscribed to or agreed to receive, so it is not as bad as spam, but it is e-mail that may not be read quickly, if ever.” We all get on email lists, but we all should prune our bacn.

The Gallup Organization conducted a large survey in August, 2007, which American Magazine thereafter compiled. Parts of that compilation are in the business section of the NY Times, Feb. 23, 2008. “When asked how much time their colleagues waste during the day, the mean number reported was 90 minutes. When asked how much time they waste, respondents said one hour.”

Those are disturbing estimates if anything close to them were to be uncovered in law departments. What “wasted time” is was not defined, but I will treat it like obscenity: we all are sure we know it when we see it. I assume it does not refer to administrative obligations of corporate attorneys since recruiting, reviewing bills, preparing status reports and similar tasks are part of the job. Wasted time means goofing off, slacking, completely unproductive time (See my post of Nov. 9, 2006: skiving at work.).

Data is nonexistent on wasted time by in-house lawyers, perhaps because it would be a waste of time to ask them. If, however, the Gallup data were true for them, we will need to redefine one very useful metric. No longer will we refer to fully-loaded costs per lawyer hour. Instead, we will need fully-loaded costs per non-wasted lawyer hour. To lop off one hour of productive time a day from the standard annual estimate of 1,850 hours of time deemed chargeable (See my post of May 16, 2006: what we mean by “chargeable.”), drives up the average cost to a company significantly.

The term “information architecture” appears in David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (Henry Holt 2007) at 47. Weinberger defines it as “the art and science of organizing electronic information.”

On this blog, the information architecture includes (1) categories, (2) cross-references to previous posts, and (3) metaposts that gather all earlier posts on a topic (See my posts of Jan. 13, 2008: topical categories that interest readers; Jan. 18, 2008 #2: more than 3,500 references; and Jan. 3, 2008: four collections of metaposts.). Separately, I keep an index of all proper nouns and sources as well as a sorted table of contents based on the headers. What I have not done is explored tags on my posts.

Orders of information exist. First-order information is the blog postings themselves; second-order information here are the three information architectures described above – each of them aggregates the fundamental information at a higher level. Third-order information has less information architecture than lower orders of information (See my post of Jan. 4, 2008 on orders of information.) but people can get to the information more easily. On this blog, the search capability represents third-order information.

I have been an enthusiast of dictation and voice recognition (See my posts March 17, 2006: higher pay to stenos than to digital equipment transcribers; Aug. 26, 2005: voice recognition software as a chimera; Nov. 20, 2006: voice recognition software; Feb. 4, 2007: digital transcription technologies; Feb. 6, 2006: voice transcription software.). Much of what I write for this blog starts with me either dictating or using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Many in-house lawyers might benefit from using these capabilities.

The recent news is that you can use a BlackBerry device to record, edit and play voice recordings. You can also upload those recordings wirelessly to an assistant who can complete or transcribe the tape. This capability came to my attention through an article in Peer to Peer, Nov. 2007 at 34 by Steve Butterworth, President of BigHand, Inc.

A white paper published by BlackBerry cites (at 12) a 2004 study by Ipsos-Reid. Not surprisingly, the study found that those who use a BlackBerry become more productive. “The median and user reported recovering 47 minutes of productive time per day by having BlackBerry connectivity, which annualizes to 196 hours per year.” If BlackBerries were to work that magic for a typical in-house lawyer, at $200 an hour of fully-loaded costs, the savings would equal $39,200 per lawyer. I suppose time on a train, or in traffic, might account for some of the transformation of dross into gold.

Additionally, the median end-user reported recovering 27 minutes per day of otherwise lost personal time. Increased productivity or personal as a result of using a PDA might come from a BlackBerry device from Research In Motion Ltd., a Treo from Palm, the Q from Motorola, or similar devices.

The average person can only focus on four things at once. According to the Wall. St. J., Feb. 12, 2008 at B4, which summarizes research from a team at the University of Oregon, the ability to focus on more things at the same time is correlated with IQ. (This boomer found it a relief to learn that “Young people can’t do more things at once than anyone else.”). The research also found “the complexity of the things people try to remember doesn’t matter.”

An in-house lawyer ceases to be very effective if a radio is playing, e-mail pings constantly, a document is on the screen, the Blackberry vibrates, and IM’s arrive from two colleagues. We suffer from information overload that hits from too many directions (See my posts f June 7, 2006 on attention density; July 14, 2005 on diminished productivity from communication devices; July 7, 2005: multi-tasking lowers productivity; May 14, 2006: multi-tasking ability highly ranked by Canadian in-house counsel: and Oct. 2, 2006: multi-tasking’s drawbacks.).

The Client Advisory produced jointly by Hildebrandt International and Citi Private Bank, Jan. 2008 at 5, shows “average annual productivity” by four categories of law-firm lawyers. From a group of large US law firms that were described as “lower profit firms” (firms having Profit Per Equity Partner less than $500,000 in 2000), equity partners averaged 1,666 hours, non-equity partners averaged 1,603 hours; and associates averaged 1,770. In “higher profit firms” the averages were a few hours higher. Law firm lawyers strive to bill every hour they can, so it is unlikely that these figures understate average billable hours.

Many people in our industry presume the in-house lawyers in the United States put in the equivalent of 1,850 chargeable hours (See my post of Sept. 25, 2005: 1,850 as a normal assumption for in-house chargeable hours; and Jan. 3, 2008: calculates costs for senior lawyers.). Estimates in support of that figure raise doubts, since law-department lawyers may exaggerate their estimates of chargeable hours or hours worked (See my post of May 24, 2007: on average 50 hours a week among Canadian corporate counsel; Sept. 25, 2005: “generally 45-50 hours” worked per week; April 13, 2006: 52% on in-housers said 41-50 hours a week while 38% said 51-60 hours; and May 16, 2006: definition of “chargeable hour.”).

If the presumed standard is too high, if in fact the in-house load is closer to 1,600 chargeable hours a year, calculations of what an in-house attorney costs the employer rise, perhaps dramatically (See my post of July 25, 2007: calculations for highly-paid general counsel; Dec. 16, 2005: consequences of miscalculating fully-loaded costs of inside lawyers.). The difference can be significant (See my post of Nov. 20, 2006: Aviva’s law department reports an ideal of 1,320 chargeable hours a year.).

A study by IDC concludes, according to Info. Mgt. J., Vol. 42, Jan./Feb. 2008 at 14, that “a company with 1,000 information workers can expect to lose more than $5 million in annual salary costs because of time spent on unproductive e-mail searches.” Does that loss scale downward, so that a law department with 100 knowledge workers – nee lawyer and paralegals – dissipates $500,000 a year in salary costs (but more in fully-loaded costs) because those workers can’t find e-mails or can’t find them efficiently?

The ability to retrieve email messages hinges on such factors as how clearly people explain the subject of the message, how well they separate ideas into multiple messages, the norms of copying people on messages, the search software available, backup procedures, individual practices when people file messages, and much more (See my post of Nov. 28, 2007: email productivity and references cited.).

Well-managed law departments, when they reach double-figures of lawyers, usually have someone who handles budgets, non-lawyer staff, facilities, computers and other administrative tasks (See my post of Aug. 1, 2006: lawyer compared to operations roles.). Administrators, as they are generally known, handle the thankless tasks of keeping the machinery ticking (See my posts of Aug. 1, 2006: various titles for the position; Dec. 9, 2005 #1: Chief Operating Officer at Barclays; and Dec. 31, 2007: Wikipedia has no entry on them.).

Ten lawyers seems to be the tipping point for when more general counsel establish an administrator position than lack one (See my posts of Oct. 1, 2006 on this metric; Feb. 7, 2008: large law departments but no administrators; and April 8, 2005 on replacing an administrator with rotating lawyers.). With the right person give appropriate responsibilities it is an important, professional position (See my posts of Nov. 4, 2007: direct reports to the general counsel; Nov. 30, 2007: exempt-employee status; July 31, 2006: median compensation figures; and Dec. 20, 2005: compensation per year of additional education.).

The comments on this blog has been various about what law department administrators typically do (See my posts of Jan. 27, 2006: lower legal costs and increase productivity; July 9, 2007: manage and publicize paralegals; June 28, 2005 and Sept. 10, 2005: supervise paralegals and secretaries; July 9, 2007: organize lunch & learns about software; July 9, 2007: facilitate mid-year reviews; Aug. 9, 2006: deal with vendors; Jan. 14, 2007: push for more diversity in law firms; and Dec. 7, 2005: oversee technology in the department.).

“Regression analysis suggests that legal departments will be most efficient when more than half of legal work (55%) is conducted in-house.” For the 161 companies in the 2006 GCR Benchmarking Exercise, the average law department said it conducted 37 percent of its work in-house. How do you measure the percentage of work conducted? If you do not tracking internal time, all you can do is estimate (See my post of Nov. 8, 2005 about measuring total hours of legal advice rendered.). On what basis did the respondent departments estimate the split of their work?

In passing I would suggest that hours worked are not fungible. One hour of a fourth-year lawyer in-house is not equal to one hour of a 20-year partner outside; one hour of the general counsel is not equal to one hour of a first-year law-firm associate. To simply tally hours worked is too crude a calculation.

Don’t these numbers no more than restate the classic 60/40 split of outside and inside spending?