Articles Posted in Tools

IBM hosts a site, many-eyes.com, which lets a user upload data in a simple format and specify the parameters and type of graph desired (See my posts of May 3, 2008: eleven methods of data visualization; and May 7, 2008: seven more methods.). Besides informing and inspiring users, the site allows researchers to learn how people interact with data, according to an item in the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, May 2008 at 30.

Is anyone out there interested in uploading some law department benchmark data and seeing whether we can present the data in new and more instructive formats? For instance, one format is the treemap, which looks like a mosaic of tiles colored and sized to show different features. As an example of how to use it, a treemap would allow a law department to depict its spending on outside counsel by number of firms used and amount spent for each firm by practice area.

Earlier I summarized 11 ways to depict data visually (See my post of May 3, 2008: from a chart.). Since that time, I have dredged up seven more methods.

Bubble charts, where the size of the bubble combines with the bubble’s location against the left and right axis to show three data points at once.

Column charts, which I have referred to in at least six posts (See my posts of March 23, 2007: statistical moments; Feb. 19, 2007: standard deviations and data on outside counsel invoices; Nov. 19, 2005: Google’s legal staff growth rate; Feb. 11, 2007: cascading column charts; July 3, 2007: consolidating work with too few firms; and Feb. 23, 2008: case resolution times.).

A stunning chart, available at Visual Literacy colorfully and usefully displays a “periodic table of visualization methods.” The chart shows 86 methods, clustered like an atomic element chart, for data, information, concepts, strategy, metaphor and compound methods (See my posts of Dec. 9, 2005: data visualization software and some uses; Oct. 1, 2006: seven methods of data visualization with charts; and Aug. 14, 2005: push your law firms to provide quantitative data.). Starting with the data techniques, this post passes on to readers the eleven ways shown to present data visually.

1. Continuum. Perhaps this is a line with numbers on it and whatever intervals make sense.

2. Table (See my posts of May 16, 2006: outside counsel use by three municipal entities; Aug 30, 2006: grid analysis of options; Aug. 26, 2005: mapping risks; Jan. 1, 2006: prosecutors’ data; April 9, 2006: IP litigation data in a table; July 3, 2007: survey data; and May 28, 2005: online applications for US trademarks.).

Kraft Foods Global won the 2008 Legal Technology News award for the most innovative in-house use of technology. As described in Legal Tech. News, March 2008 at 31, a senior litigation lawyer teamed up with a director of records management as well as the company’s IT department. That was a sensible trio, as many times a multi-disciplinary team, with a lawyer on it, is necessary to accomplish a company-wide task (See my post of Jan. 4, 2006: virtual teams; Jan. 30, 2006: Blue Cross’s teams; Aug. 28, 2006: an attack on project teams; and Aug. 16, 2006: end-to-end process for contract management.).

The team turned its attention to litigation hold orders (See my posts of Feb. 6, 2007: PSS Systems for litigation hold management; and March 19, 2006: nuts and bolts of hold requests.). Having decided that the software available from commercial vendors for that purpose focuses too much on the in-house lawyer, not the employee or record owner, Kraft decided to build its own system (See my posts of Jan. 30, 2006: customized patent software; Feb. 12, 2006: US Army Claims Services’ bespoke package; Sept. 5, 2005: a Lotus Notes application; Dec. 5, 2005: Thomas Miller & Co. and its OASIS customized software; and May 23, 2007: disadvantages of customized software.). “It was a huge undertaking, and required approximately three months to fully develop, and many additional months of testing.”

The team thoughtfully and deliberately concentrated on creating a system that would be based on the employees as record owners. As part of the application, its Legal Hold Dashboard sends targeted hold notices to employees and requests that they verify receipt. Lawyers generate hold notices from templates and receive alerts if they haven’t received a response from the custodian. The dashboard notifies employees when the hold is lifted and sends quarterly automatic reminders on all holds.

For some time I have thought that in the free market of ideas, where examples, experiences and exhortations about how best to manage an in-house team are widely circulated, the better ideas would rise to the top. Thereafter, the good ideas would become increasingly more common as a Darwinian selection process improves the fitness of the general counsel management-scape. Successful ideas would drive out losers. More ideas would mean more convergence on sound management ideas.

Perhaps not. In fact, a multiplicity of ideas about how to manage outside counsel, how to invest in technology, how to wring the most from the legal team may well lead to different paths taken. An ever-wider group of general counsel encounter more concepts, approaches, techniques and permutations to apply, so they spawn even more permutations and combinations (See my post of March 29, 2005: plethora of conferences; Oct. 26, 2006: progress in law department management; Nov. 13, 2007: publications for law department managers; Jan. 23, 2008: unusual sources of information; and June 25, 2007: ways innovative ideas spread.). What may just as well be true is that more ideas means more divergence on management ideas.

One worthy objective is to receive bills from law firms in electronic format; a second objective, distinctly more complicated, is to convey the information about bills your have approved to your company’s accounts payable system. Be that system Oracle, SAP, or some other Enterprise Resource Program (ERP), the proper accounting treatment, not to mention the translation, transmission and reconciliation of invoices and payments, is often a frustrating quagmire.

Better to accomplish the first part of the process and continue with your traditional method of requesting payment of checks than to be bogged down trying to accomplish it electronically all at once.

Two overarching and equal terms could describe all of law department management: people and processes. The concept of people encompasses all aspects of talent management, cognitive styles, and leadership. We might even include outside counsel in people. Perhaps we would call that side the Dionysian twin. The Apollonian twin, processes, encompasses all systems, practices and management initiatives in law departments.

If we add another core concept, we have a three-way braid. Each of three concepts weave together to help us describe the essentials of how to manage a law department. Along with people and processes, structure would intertwine. Structure has to do with the location and organization of the people in the law department as well as the scope of their work.

The next metaphor adds one more fundamental management concern and it draws on DNA, which consists of four proteins. The four chief concerns of law department managers would be people, processes, and structure plus what I call “resources.” Resources encompass software, hardware, infrastructure, and all providers of services to the law department, notably law firms.

No one can carry out a new idea who is too afraid of failure. Risk shadows novelty, so as much as we prate about the benefits of creativity (See my post of Nov. 24, 2007: creativity in-house and click here for a PDF of my article Download rees_morrison_creativity_12207.pdf.) we must be mindful that we are dealing with many lawyers who are by personality, training, or context allergic to risk (See my post of June 30, 2007 with its four references to risk aversion in lawyers.).

Cautious lawyers, who dread the sting of “error,” won’t come up with something new – let alone try something new – unless they feel protected from the stigma of stumbling. At the same time, general counsel look favorably on improved ways of doing something. They favor innovation and its hand maiden creativity. At the same time, general counsel and those who report to them fear making mistakes and see ugly dragons of legal risk in every corner (See my post of June 30, 2007 about risk attitudes among lawyers and four references cited.). We will try forever to square this.

It falls trippingly from the tongue: “Let’s draft and circulate a policy.” Say, for instance, a policy on when to close matters stored on a matter management system. The fundamental question is whether the effort to draft, communicate, and enforce a policy is justified by the benefits expected to come from having the policy (See my post of June 30, 2007: four steps to solutions of problems.).

Problems abound. It is no easy thing to write a clear policy that governs in a muddy world. Nor is it easy to change people’s behavior to conform to the policy. Even how you communicate changes in policy is prickly. Do you email it around? Post it on the intranet? Mention it once in a staff meeting?

On top of these questions, every change results in unintended consequences (See my post of Aug. 28, 2005: trade offs when actions are taken; Aug. 1, 2006: second-order consequences; Dec. 17, 2006: all practices have pros and cons; July 10, 2007: well-intentioned actions that boomerang.). Finally, each policy is a tiny piranha – one won’t hurt you but a school of them can eat you alive (See my post of Oct. 22, 2006: sclerotic bureaucracy.).

Ian Ayres, Super-Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way to be Smart (Bantam 2007) describes in Chapter 2 how business uses randomized tests to learn more about their markets. For one group of consumers, picked at random, they do something and for the rest they do something different, then pore over any changes in outcome. It made me think of ways that general counsel could harness the power of randomized studies (See my post of March 25, 2008: send sample matters to both external and internal counsel to see differences in cost.).

As one instance, a law department might randomly choose matters to have their invoices carefully reviewed and the law firms advised of write-downs. Three months later look to see whether the effective billing rates or cost structure of those matters were any different than matters for which bills were not carefully reviewed. More precisely they could test whether the reductions end up with a cost saving net of the time it took to achieve them. Any change would be an example of what statisticians call the “treatment effect.”

A second test would assign similar cases at random to two capable law firms and then track the performance differences. Or use a disciplined ECA procedure on every other case for six months. If the two groups are similar in every other dimension, the department can be confident that any change in the two groups’ outcome was caused by their different treatment.