Articles Posted in Tools

Many surveys by law departments ask for answers on a scale that moves from negative scores to positive scores. For example, 1 (hate), 2 (dislike), 3 (neutral), 4 (like) and 5 (love). The analytical tool, “net scores,” displays the combined effect of related scale scores. Net scores are calculated by subtracting the percentage that indicates negative directional change from the percentage that indicates positive directional change. If there are five choices on the spectrum, net the percentages of the top two against the bottom two.

When analyzing responses to four-point scales, often the “top two responses” and “bottom two responses” are grouped in the findings. For example, “somewhat agree” and “strongly agree” responses are combined into a “total agree” percentage (See my posts of June 30,2006 on analysis and depiction tools.).

One would hope that the law department integrates its retention letters (See my post of Aug. 24, 2006 that compares these to outside counsel guidelines.), inside guidelines (See my post of Aug. 8, 2006.), and outside counsel guidelines (See my posts of Aug. Aug. 1, 2006 that wonders about their effectiveness; Aug. 9, 2006 about certification by firms; Jan. 10, 2006 with an example.). These three documents should hold hands tightly.

Law departments should also grip these documents with their budget policies (See my post of Oct. 20, 2005 on cascading departmental budgets to practice groups.), and its policies and documents that concern evaluation of inside counsel and outside counsel (See my post of May 19, 2006 on BP’s 30-factor evaluation form.).

A grandiose consilience, without doubt, but well managed law departments take care to assure that all the pieces fit together.

US law department managers loosely use the term “international,” as in, “We do a lot of international work in-house.” It’s sloppy thinking to call a sale of goods and services to a purchaser in another country, for that reason alone, an “international transaction”; only if the governing law is other than that of the United States or one of its states should a US law department categorize the legal services as international.

A related point smacks of jingoism. The US is not the center of the legal universe. The term “non-U.S”. avoids this nationalistic solecism. If a company has lawyers outside of the U.S., what should they call their work other than “international” if the law of their home-base country (or headquarters) does not govern?

If something a law department does accomplishes the objective, what was done was effective. For example, if a department cross-trains paralegals, who are thereafter able to do the second job, the effort was effective. Or if the department negotiates a discounted billing rate with a firm, that was effective.

A separate notion is the effective action’s cost, which captures the key idea of efficient. Efficiency measures the resources required to accomplish something. If a competitive bid process costs $100,000 and saves only $100,000, then while effective it is far from efficient. If the $200,000 matter management system cannot plausibly show equivalent or greater savings, it is not an efficient management initiative (See my posts of July 31, 2005, Nov. 19, 2005, May 1, 2005, and June 16, 2006 on the ROI of various management actions.).

Consultants, vendors, law departments, and information technology staff of corporation have devised several tools for law departments to learn about technology. In Metropolitan Corp. Counsel, Vol. 14, Sept. 2006 at 48, Joe Fantuzzi, CEO of Workshare, confirms this point. More, he describes a specific tool. “Internal surveys of what is working and what is not working are essential.”

Even though I have not seen an example of such a technology survey within a law department, I think the idea is sound. A well-constructed survey with a representative response rate will tell you much about the value lawyers and paralegals and staff see in in-place technology and can help forecast additional needs.

Among the vendors of matter management systems for law departments (See my post of July 14, 2006 with a list of several), perhaps all of them host periodic conferences for their users. So-called user groups let licensees share ideas about how best to use the software, share customized reports, and push the vendor to add and improve the system’s capabilities.

There may also be user groups for other software that is commonly found in law departments – document management, project management, and document assembly software come to mind – but the user community is much broader than legal. For some specialized legal packages, such as corporate secretary and intellectual property databases, formal or informal networks or groups may also spring up.

Law departments that have licensed a package should take full advantage of the network of users, and might even consider hosting such a community if none exists. The ability to learn and benefit from other users gives licensed software a big edge over customized solutions.

Metropolitan Corp. Counsel, Vol. 14, Sept. 2006 at 22, has an article by Scott Wirtz, Controller of the US law firm Loeb & Loeb, about electronic legal invoice delivery. Wirtz points out several of the ways e-billing systems can check bills for compliance with a law department’s policies.

The software can enforce (1) limits on cost-per-page charges for photocopies; (2) limits or prohibitions on costs of facsimiles or legal research; (3) prohibitions on block billing, where several tasks are lumped together in a single time entry; (4) negotiated rates for individual timekeepers; (5) authorized timekeepers; (5) budget limits; (6) discrepancies between lawyers on time recorded for meetings or conference calls both or all attended; and (7) accurate descriptions of law department matter names and numbers.

Wirtz believes that law firms benefit from billing electronically because their invoices are paid faster. “Clients that typically pay their invoices in 90 days are now paying within 30 days.” He also notes that better capabilities with regard to budgeting are on the horizon. “The LEDES Oversight Committee has recently approved a standard file format for submitting matter budgets.”

Scattered posts discuss what I call the “law department cottage industry,” all the goods and services providers – other than law firms – who earn a substantial amount of revenue from or through law departments (See my posts of April 2, 2005 about unbundling services of law firms; Sept. 13, 2005 which discusses a 5% estimate for external payments by law departments; and Nov. 14, 2005 on offshore providers.).

According to BusinessWeek, Issue 4001, Sept. 18, 2006 at 42, the total revenue of the US “legal services industry” amounts to $225 billion. The largest slice of that pie belongs to law firms, but that still leaves billions of dollars for the rest of the providers, what I call the cottage industry.

Eight or nine posts in recent months have highlighted different niches within the industry. Others I hope to cover include jury researchers, copy services, equipment manufacturers and lessors, stationers, book publishers, CLE services, temporary staff providers (for example, Kelly Law Registry, Special Counsel) expert witnesses, photocopy and blowback charges, forensics experts, and many other denizens of the law-department cottage industry.

A few law departments have asked their law firms to speak to the relationship between firm and department and how to improve that relationship (See my post of May 17, 2006 on Exelon). Whether law firm partners bare their souls to those who pay them I doubt (See my post of March 30, 2006 on fawning and flattering.)

What if a consultant called a relationship partner and asked the partner to list five clients who were better than average at communication, clarity of directions, decision-making, balanced cost control, early involvement and other characteristics of a law department that manages counsel well. If the law department that retained the consultant was never or rarely in the top five, which is all the consultant would report, the critical message can be fairly reliably be presumed (See my post of May 1, 2006 on the dark side of partnering.).

Security of legal documents – protection against hackers, phishers, and unauthorized eyes – concerns law departments. Nowadays, most law departments make their lawyers keep track of several IDs and pass codes, the prevailing method of protection (encryption being another), so that sensitive documents and data are safe.

Researchers have developed two new methods that may make secure identification easier, according to Fast Company, Sept. 2006 at 38. One company offers software that monitors keystroke patterns to verify identity. BioPassword, of Issaquah, Washington, tracks how quickly your fingers strike the keys, linger over them, and find the next ones. Artificial-intelligence software analyzes the pattern to confirm you and block impostors.

Less developed, Peter McOwan, professor of computer science at Queen Mary, University of London, has developed a keystroke-based security system that analyzes personal styles from the movement of the computer mouse.