|
|
|
|
Reprinted from the July 2001 issue of "The Lawyers Competitive Edge -
Co-Benefiting From Technology
Globalization and the accelerating pace of business are exacting a heavy price on lawyers and law firms. New competitive pressures are bearing down on the practitioner, both in the law firm and the law department. The expanded scope and heightened level of client demands are stressing both lawyer client and law firm-client relationships.
Whether or not this period of rapid expansion continues, the accelerated pace of legal service is here to stay. Experience proves that once service levels rise, they never again can be lowered. Client perceptions of speedy service re-adjust quickly. What was once considered spectacular service soon becomes expected, then routine. Can you imagine your client ever again accepting 3-5 day mail delivery of important documents, after becoming accustomed to courier, fax, e-mail, and extranets? It’s about as likely as you taking a horse and buggy to your next deposition.1
Technology is both the hero and villain in this story. Advancements in technology have played a major role in stoking the New Economy, but they have also created escalating expectations of responsiveness and triggered an in-formation avalanche. The result is somewhat circular. The only way to meet the external volumes, demands and opportunities arising from technology is to move technology to the forefront of your own legal business and practice. Firms that can adapt and strategically position technology to leverage the strength of both the professional and the enterprise will become highly successful, while others may fall even farther behind.
Failed Expectations
Why is this the case? Well, part of the cause may be the delay between investment and long-term payback, and part may be due to poorly implemented or underutilized systems. But, the more likely culprit is the top-down approach to technology that law firms and law departments have traditionally adopted. This approach often considers the individual user’s needs as the last element of the equation, instead of the first.
Enterprise Production — The First Wave
The objective of production automation is to help produce more and better things at less cost to the enterprise. Investing in a new photocopier should result in faster, better quality copies. Investing in a word processor should result in faster production of more documents. These systems focus on the work, not the worker. Therefore, they have the most positive impact on production tasks and the output of law, and less of an impact on knowledge-based tasks and knowledge workers.
However, the practice of law is not only about production, it is mainly about people using their “know-how” well. The primary value of the lawyer, law firm and law department is in the knowledge and skills of its members. Since only a small portion of a lawyer’s work is involved in production, it is no surprise that production automation tools often have no significant impact on revenue generation. Time-pressed lawyers have little incentive to learn and use enterprise production systems, especially since the systems often can distract effort from client and practice priorities.
While these primary systems may improve the productivity of support staff and administration, they do little to improve or leverage the value of the lawyer. Production automation may help pro-duce a brief faster, but it will not make the content more persuasive or more valuable.
Personal Systems — The Second Wave
The impact to the lawyer can be significant. However freedom comes at a price. By adopting personal technology and disconnecting from the firm’s information infrastructure, the lawyer (or law firm support staff) frequently has to assume the redundant role of information manager for multiple, disparate systems. Downloading applications, entering data, maintaining and synchronizing databases and installing new versions for personal systems can dissipate much of the individual’s productivity gains or strain law firm resources.
Personal systems technology allows the individual to stay more connected to clients and to personal practice information. It helps lawyers get accustomed to deriving a personal benefit from using technology, and serves as an important step in the technological evolution of the practitioner. Yet, it does not do enough to leverage the strength and resources of the law firm or law department. In fact, personal systems often impose additional burdens on both the individual and the organization, and they can compound the effort necessary to maintain multiple sources of information.
Where’s The Leverage?
As service pressures increase, can lawyers and law offices continue to meet escalating challenges with systems that contradict the concept of leverage? Can lawyers continue to work longer and harder, and can organizations survive and prosper without better leveraging combined strengths?
There are now the beginnings of a third wave of technology in law offices. This wave is bigger and more significant than any other. It is not easy to achieve, but it has the potential to transform the profession.
Knowledge Technologies —The Third Wave
To be effective knowledge must directly benefit both the knowledge worker and the organization as separate distinct entities of a system as a whole. Both the firm and the lawyer must co-benefit for the technology to succeed.
This concept is applicable to all knowledge workers, not just lawyers. For an individual, the benefit must be sooner, not later. The impact must be direct and obvious to the worker, not arguably beneficial. Each party should benefit from the other’s gain, that is, it must be a cooperative benefit or co-benefit from the same initiative. When all parties benefit, knowledge technology attracts greater participation, which leads, in turn, to greater at-traction to participate, and so on.
In a legal practice context, there are already many examples of the co-benefiting approach to technology. Interactive intranets can help lawyers to leverage the knowledge of other lawyers and tap the institutional intelligence of the law firm for better client value and better case results. Collaborative extranets can allow lawyers to better inform and better service clients by transparently leveraging the participation of other lawyers, and support staff within the organization.
But, not all intranets and extranets co-benefit the user and the firm. Knowledge technologies value the lawyer’s time and expertise, while responding faster to client needs. Collaboration technologies provide an accessible means for the open exchange of information and work product between parties for increased participation and cooperation.
Co-benefiting represents a new way of thinking about technology in the law office. Every participant benefits from acting in their own self-interest, while concurrently advancing the goals of the organization. It is the only effective way to bring real leverage to a legal organization. Yet, while it is easy to see the ad-vantage of a co-benefiting system, it is not easily created.
The process poses some serious challenges to the traditional roles and responsibilities of both the lawyer and the organization. Instead of compelling participation, knowledge technologies at-tract and encourage participation by providing value and utility in the daily course of business. This change in approach requires a greater commitment by the lawyer and the organization than that required to buy a technology product. Yet, once know-how can be leveraged, the results can be spectacular. It will not be easy to transform the cautious, conservative legal profession to a co-benefiting model, but it is imperative that lawyers take this initiative before others pass them by.
---
© 2000 PensEra Knowledge Technologies
Dan C. Felean a principal of PensEra Knowledge Technologies, a national consulting firm that specializes in knowledge management strategies and technologies for law firms and corporate law departments. See www.pensera.com.
|