Articles Posted in Productivity

Fast Co., July/August 2007 at 46, reports that Capital One has put thousands of its staff through a workshop that teaches how to improve their email practices. “Capital One estimates that it saves the equivalent of 11 workdays per employee per year thanks to the program.” If a law department pays its attorneys on average $200,000 per year that is very roughly $1,000 per workday. If that Capital One estimate applies, at $11,000 per lawyer per year, a 10-lawyer department would save $110,000 a year by more efficient e-mail practices.

The two examples given in the column are simple for law departments to implement. Clearer subject lines help recipients understand more quickly why they have received an e-mail and make it easier to search for messages. The second trick is to sculpt the text of the message: Use bullet points as well as underlining, bolding or color to emphasize key points.

A gaggle of companies provide custom legal research for law departments. Among the better known ones are LRN and Legal Research Center (LRC). Previous entries have referred to these companies and the niche in general (See my posts of Jan. 16, 2006 on some dubious cost-saving data; Sept. 27, 2005 on ACC data about legal research; Sept. 13, 2005 about chargeback policies for research done by law firms; Jan. 13, 2006 on internet availability of legal research; and Oct. 31, 2005 on CaseMaker and theCorporateCounsel.net.). A few other firms that describe themselves as providers of legal-research have come to my attention.

LegalIntelligence.net

Levan, Inc.

As one method to encourage delegation to paralegals, to provide paralegals with challenging work, and to make everyone in a department aware of the capabilities of its paralegals, consider the approach of a 24-lawyer department in the health-care industry.

The administrator of the department “put together a comprehensive list of tasks that paralegals in this office are capable of doing – a way of marketing their skills.” The administrator realized that some attorneys did not have a good sense of what the paralegals were capable of doing, so she put together the list to publicize the paralegals’ capabilities. The quote and idea comes from Rees Morrison, Law Department Administrators: Lessons from Leaders (Hildebrandt Inst. 2004) at 28.

Paralegals in law departments are an under-exploited resource (See my posts of March 12, 2006 on ratios of lawyers to paralegals; March 29, 2005 and Oct. 18, 2005 on the lack of paralegals internationally and what to do about it; Jan. 3, 2006 on hiring experienced paralegals; Aug. 26, 2005 in increasing delegation to paralegals; June 28, 2005 about the trend toward “almond shaped” structures; March 18, 2005 on how far good paralegals can go; Nov. 6, 2006 on why to give them more responsibility; Oct. 26, 2006 on reverse secondment of paralegals; March 4, 2007 on their professional status; and Dec. 22, 2006 on the distribution of paralegals by practice area.).

Few members of law departments are able to take advantage of more than a fraction of the capabilities of the powerful applications they use, notably the staples: word processing and email. People don’t know what they don’t know, they fall in to bad habits, and they fail to learn many of the functions of their software. Training is done poorly or not at all (See my post of Oct. 6, 2006 on under-investment in training and five references.). A technique from Rees Morrison, Law Department Administrators: Lessons from Leaders (Hildebrandt Inst. 2004) at 23, highlights what Paul Roy, the administrator of the 37-lawyer department of Time Warner, did to remedy this problem.

Roy organized regularly-scheduled “Lunch & Learn” sessions. During them, his staff provided “a number of tips and shortcuts relating to computer applications and software. Everyone [left] the session with a ‘tip sheet’ that highlights new ways of completing their assignments more efficiently.”

The Lunch & Learn sessions were valuable in many ways. “In addition to general tips and shortcuts, it’s an excellent opportunity for our trainers to provide specific instruction on very sophisticated tasks.” The department hosted sessions on working with Excel, creating PDF files, preparing SEC filings, and increasing impact through PowerPoint. For lawyers, sessions covered using Blackberries and other remote access devices.

We all decide in different ways what we will work and in what order. Here are several methods that in-house lawyers use to make the call. I put these roughly in descending order of frequency, and my tongues gets a bit cheeky.

1. Respond to the loudest voice (the squeaky wheel gets the grease).

2. Do the work first of the highest-ranking client (the general gets the jeep).

Workaholism is not the same as just working hard. Many in-house attorneys routinely log far more than 50 hours a week at their desk or traveling (See my post of Dec. 12, 2006 on “extreme jobs.”). Yet just because someone doesn’t leave until late or doesn’t take full vacation time does not brand him or her an addicted or compulsive slave to work.

A piece in IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 44, June 2007 at 72, offers six prescriptions on what to do to resist the poison of incessant labor. “Manage your time better” (See my post of Oct. 16, 2006 and references cited.). “Don’t be a perfectionist.” It may be that good old Pareto gives chronic worker bees some guidance (See my post of June 27, 2007 on other manifestations of Pareto’s Law.).

“Don’t eat lunch at your desk every day.” The author writes that this “sure sign of a workaholic” just tires you out. “Learn how to say ‘No’.” Rather than take on the assignment to be completed right away, set a realistic deadline, or ask the client to rearrange its priorities on other needs (See my post of June 25, 2007 on status reports.).

An article in Sloan Mgt. Rev., Summer 2006 at 85, explores how management innovation happens and disperses (See my post of June 25, 2007 with some comments on the article.). The final stage of dispersion the authors call “internal and external validation.” They discuss four common sources of external validation, which prompted me to think about new ideas in law department management and how those ideas spread.

One validator and propagator of new management ideas are the business school academics who observe an emerging management innovation, codify it, and spread the word (See my post of May 5, 2006 with several management-minded legal academics.). One example is Prof. William Ross of Samford Law School who has research bill padding (See my post of Sept. 17, 2006.). Another is Susan Saab Fortney of Texas Tech Law School (See my post of May 10, 2006.).

A second common source of external validation is the consulting firm that spots a new idea and promotes it. LawPartnering is one example. The General Counsel Roundtable aspires to play this role, although it crosses between vending information and consulting.

An article in Sloan Mgt. Rev., Summer 2006 at 85 explores how management innovation happens. After the triggering stage of dissatisfaction comes the stage of “inspiration from other sources.” The authors reach the conclusion that “Inspiration for new management innovation is unlikely to come from within a company’s current industry.”

Based on their research, “Most companies get sucked into a pattern of benchmarking and competitor-watching that leads to highly convergent practices within an industry.” They cite examples of innovators at 11 companies who gained inspiration from many sources other than their industry peers. That observation applies to law departments; don’t limit your comparisons and stimuli to your competitors’ legal functions.

The authors also found that “eureka moments” – when someone sees the light bulb about a new practice, process, or structure – “are rare in management innovation.” A manager (or team) in a law department who innovates brings together the various elements of a problem (dissatisfaction over the status quo) with the various pieces of a solution (the inspiration elements), “but the manner in which these elements are brought together is usually iterative and gradual, rather than sudden.” It takes time, thought and experimentation – not blinding insight – to solve most management problems.

The General Counsel Americas of NACCO Materials Handling Group, Meredith B. Stone, explains in a document I have some metrics that her department tracks. One of them is the “number of contracts reviewed in a particular time period.” That is certainly a crude measure of productivity, as it says nothing about either quality or the economical use of resources. Why not track the number of pages in those contracts?

One can imagine an index of contract complexity, which would be a more accurate measure of performance. Shouldn’t there be some recognition for the dollars involved in the contract, at least as a rough proxy for complexity? It also matters whether contract originated in the law department or is submitted by the other side. Some law departments look at cycle time — how long does it take the law department to deal with a contract. Others might look at the number of lawyers and paralegal hours invested in each contract or the number of people who touch a contract as it makes its way through the law department.

Each of these aspects of contracts make more sense to track than the crude “number of contracts reviewed.”

When law departments prepare periodic client status reports, the reports help to market the activity of the law departments (See my posts of Sept. 22, 2006 about consequences of a law department marketing its services; May 10, 2006 on no good deed going unpunished; and June 30, 2006 on law department’s marketing themselves.). Status reports, however, take time to prepare and it’s a deft hand that can balance the effort against the value obtained (See my post of Aug. 1, 2006 on reasons to do and not to do status reports.).

A second benefit of periodic reports to clients of what departmental lawyers are working on is that clients can intercede and change priorities. Clients can also see whether their favorite project is being worked on or moving toward the top of the pile. Hence, status reports are a marketing tool, a work-mode management tool, and a client directive tool.