Alternative Rocks! Non-traditional Approaches to LPM

Formal Description:

Do traditional “waterfall” (PMBOK) project management methods really work in legal, or are they too rigid for most legal projects and processes? Learn how some legal project management teams apply Agile/Scrum software development frameworks or other modified traditional methods for a more iterative and incremental approach to the management and delivery of litigation, AFAs or any other legal projects that can be mapped into phases.

Speaker(s):

·         Kim R. Craig - Seyfarth Shaw LLP

·         Andrew Terrett - Borden Ladner Gervais

·         David A Rueff - Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz

·         Suzanne Wood - Norton Rose Fulbright

See tweets at #info8.

These are my notes from an intriguing presentation about an area of effort that may differentiate law firms. The conversation emphasized lessons from the trenches. The panel included representatives from three of the most sophisticated LPM law firms and it was good to hear about their challenges and victories in implementing LPM. I wish that they had spent a little bit more time explaining concepts like scrum and waterfall to project management newbies.

Kim Craig

[I've covered the Seyfarth PM story elsewhere http://caselines.blogspot.com/2012/08/ilta-session-alternative-forum-track.html ]

Lean Six-Sigma emphasizes the voice of the client.

Seyfarth started PMO in 2004 outside of IT. They did do some IT projects.

Using too much historical data to develop process maps can be problematic because the way we'll be doing things going forward is going to change.

They use "Task Map" which is a light overlay on Visio. They've mapped out the process of mapping out a process. They pull out a page that they've used before. They range from 8-60 pages. Attorneys get hung up on rolling over from page to page. They blow up one task and show how it's organized. Attorneys like educating them on what they do. She's learned a lot about law. Hearing attorneys talk about how they make decisions is really important.

These conversations are a major KM opportunity. KM needs to listen to, capture, and reuse the process mapping discussions.

We're all new at this. PM techniques that look nice and take a long time to develop may not work in legal. The first time she showed an attorney a SharePoint project chart it didn't work out well.

An email with bullets was much more effective than a full status report.

They used many types of applications and not any one coherent piece of technology to do PM.

Agile has self-managing teams, lets teams manage work. Scrum defines roles.

LPM needs to take core PM concepts and twist and turn them to apply to legal.

We don't know at the start of the engagement all the factors that come into play. You don't know in advance how aggressive opposing counsel might be or what you might discover in the documents.

The agile approach allows weekly planning meetings.

Agile is really a manner of thinking. You can adjust and be flexible.

Kim's team started out as a value add, but they are now billable (but without a billable requirement). They measure ROI on retained or new clients. Clients very rarely write off the LPM time. Clients usually have PM teams.

She's seen increased sophistication in RFP information requests around LPM.

Andrew Terrett

BLG borrowed from Seyfarth playbook, they have had an LPM office for two years. BLG has six offices and a very diverse set of attorneys and practices.

A lot of traditional PM makes a lot of sense in legal. It needs to be simpler. They are not writing things down in project plans. Lawyers have a high sense of urgency and want to "do, do, do" right away. You can turn a long project statement into one page.

Attorneys don't use Gantt charts. They do have deadlines and milestones.

Process maps enable bottom-up estimating instead of analogous or top-down estimating.

Process maps have been a great success, they elicit additional steps. Old habits die hard, that process mapping work has been done for a particular piece of work does not mean the matter team will actually leverage it in practice.

A process map is like a GPS. It gives you direction but you're going to use common sense and "keep driving when you cross the bridge" instead of turning into the river like the GPS suggests.

What matters is what works. Lawyers want the tools and approaches that will work for them. What that is may vary from industry to industry and client to client.

The big LPM challenge is change management. You're dealing with people who have been doing things a particular way for a long time.

David Rueff

Traditional project management workflow too cumbersome for attorneys to adopt. They spent three months designing a specialized workflow "BakerManage" that draws on waterfall project management, but is based on the way legal teams actually work. Clients can see the same information attorneys are using to manage the case.

They decided to develop a team of 10 project managers (paralegals, attorneys with PM certification, technologists). Process improvement and management is included.

Agile sets up regular times to revisit project schedule and plan. Not every two months, more like every two weeks.

The heart of the work is the tasks and processes. They worked with a health care litigator to develop a detailed process map. When the AFA request came in, they had already developed the ability to provide a detailed estimate within 48 hours.

BakerManage has a budgeting tool that reconciles with time with the budgeting system to show lawyers where they are against budget, and also provides email alerts. The system requires daily time entry. Checking the system every 30 days is not often enough.

Using a consistent set of codes allows cross-office matter comparison.

Lawyers need to have initial meetings where whole matter / case team is educated about budget and limits. Then they can operate as a self-managed team. It can't be business as usual. LPM type systems are a way of communicating with the team about what the client requirements are.

They use LPM on matters on fixed fee matters. The consistent communications with the client develops its own momentum. The LPM team doesn't bill to clients.

They have had client employees seconded to the law firm team to learn LPM.

Resource Availability

An audience member suggested that associate / resource availability is a real challenge for LPM.

Don't assume an associate only has an 8 hour day. Engineers have used critical path technique. That may be the next phase, but right now we're just trying to get lawyers to develop the plans at the time of budget development.

Identifying resource availability is a next step [my firm has developed "iStaff" software that could help with this, as associates identify their prospective level of availability.]

Clients are forcing kickoff meetings where they want whole team is identified up front.  

KM and Legal Project Management

These are my notes from a presentation on knowledge management and legal project management (LPM). The first half contrasted the purposes, tools, challenges of LPM and KM. The second half of the presentation covered an impressive, albeit soon-to-be released, legal service platform for delivery of commoditized administrative complaint legal services. It combines an effective workflow with KM and information-sharing of a very high order.

(As with the previous post, the specific presenters and firms are not identified under the rules of this meeting.)

KM Contrasted with LPM

While KM seeks to provide actionable information, LPM tries to provide more structure to what lawyers already do. Both seek to deliver more efficiency, and use software or business process changes. KM seeks to develop content (I note that some content is a by-product of LPM). It is not clear who can or should do legal project management at law firms. The PM role should be embedded within practice areas. Where LPM requires lawyers to create a plan and follow that plan, KM offerings are typically more voluntary. LPM requires a change in organizational methods, it is not simply "more structure."

A commentator noted that some KM practitioners are concerned with quality and consistency as well as efficiency. A project manager will typically balance quality as one component against time and cost.

Some KM practitioners are already concerned with process improvement. It may be time to "grasp the nettle" and get involved with these efforts. LPM is an opportunity

Clients will pay for planning if it is positioned properly.

Process Improvement

The CFO at one firm has been asking the KM department to identify or provide tools and mechanisms for process improvement and LPM. KM feeds into LPM very well. LPM helps you map the process. KM's job is to build the tools that support the processes.

This firm has set up a workflow for firm administrators to track intake on a certain type of administrative complaints that are filed against some clients across the U.S. KM provides forms, wikis, and information specific to the matter at the time that the attorney is drafting the response to the complaint or interviewing witnesses.

The firm has "flex-time" attorneys that can handle these matters. Other attorneys are supervising the matters and conduct or review risk assessments. (It strikes me that this model is flexibly expandable).

The recommendations of both as to how to proceed need to match (or, I assume, the file is escalated to the supervisor's supervisor). They are tracking metrics for frequency and cost of settlement that can be assessed at the flex-time attorney or supervisor level. All the status and monitoring information is available to the client. The client can also track metrics such as claims by location or by client's manager.

This approach is very effective for commodity-level work. You can control for the variables. It combines case management and document assembly. Multiple levels of supervision are critical for the quality control. The tool is not in active use yet but was started in January 2010. It took them two months to conceptualize the project and present to the client. They used an interim database to capture information before the full tool is rolled out.

Essentially the client is outsourcing much of the internal work that used to be associated with these matters to the law firm. The tool and processes (and the staffing model) enable mass-scale commodity work to be done by a large firm, with quality control.

Legal Process Management In Action

Another presentation at a KM peer group saw real-life examples of project management in action at large law firms. Under the rules of this meeting, firm identities are not publicly acknowledged. As with the previous notes, these are my near-live notes of the presentation.

The two firms discussed are at different phases of development and adoption of project management. It was interesting to hear real-life examples of the processes and changes necessary in a more PM-oriented law firm.

One firm saw greater client interest in knowing costs in advance of project commencement. They felt that greater certainty and predictability of legal cost would be a market differentiator for them. Clients are also seeking more nonstandard fees. They want to move away from the "cost-plus" model. Capturing historical information about staffing and pricing can be used to provide good estimates for fixed fee or other types of AFAs.

They drew on an IT staff member with significant project management skills. The KM professional worked with this person to try to identify what additions lawyers might be able to handle in terms of additional structure to their work.

They first developed a training program and some proprietary software. A small pilot led to robust feedback about what was and wasn't useful in different ways in different practice areas. Many of the partners who participated became champions of LPM going forward. The pilot has also led to some real stories about improving efficiency that help with training.

They didn't have a KM lawyer on the initial working group. In the second phase they have more KM lawyers, who have made a significant contribution in the areas of information collection and linking existing firm resources into the templates. They have also helped with naming conventions and the technical aspects of information gathering that typical lawyers are not so aware of. The KM lawyer can be a bridge or "de-mystifier" to LPM processes. KM lawyers have also helped managed the breakdown of work.

Legal PM can borrow techniques that have been very successful in other industries for decades. Putting a structure in place for planning, and increasing accountability for keeping to the plan has led to higher standards for matter organization. The communication points are crucial and are reflected in the name of their program. They believe that will greatly reduce their firm's writedowns (writeoffs).

LPM can greatly increase profitability in a few different ways. If the right people are doing the work, you will have the best leverage model for that work.

AFAs can be intimidating for law firms. A historical database of matter information can let you see how you staffed it and priced it, and what you learned from previous matters.

A second law firm is involved in the ACC "Value Challenge." They created a project management office outside of IT. They all got certified in PMI and put formal processes in place. They hired a few PMs from outside. The firm has identified PM skills as a core competency. KM professionals are supporting the PM team but aren't driving the effort.

Their goals were to institutionalize the process of having "value conversations" with clients and to work collaboratively to acheive that goal.

They are doing both process improvement and LPM. They take out ineffeciencies and take out what the client doesn't want. They've reduced the cost of legal services. They have a structure of DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control), or "improve & control." For instance, they examined the matter intake process and found a five-day delay that could be eliminated by combining some forms and rearranging the conflict check process.

They have done process maps for 70 different types of legal work. It's like static. If you know what's going to happen it will happen faster. The maps identify proper resources and task codes. The PM team sits down in "Kaizen Sessions" with a whole team and identifies what happens when (initially using sticky notes). Task codes are a very important piece to let them track how we are providing legal services.

KM "artifacts" are connected with particular steps. What do need at each step? A checklist? Template? Form? Get "brain dumps" for checklists. People from the team can see what they need for what step. Process maps are on their intranet. They are treated as "road maps." There is a time estimate in each step. They also have staffing suggestions (staffing is still under development). They have tools that identify where people are on the map.

They have a monitoring tool they developed in-house. They have created task codes for different areas of law and require all attorneys to use them. Time and expense against the budget is shown on their tool. Attorneys have to assess and add to the tool the actual "percent complete" at the specific phase level.

At the end of an engagement, this firm uses a scorecard and lets clients rate the firm on understanding objectives of the matter, legal expertise, efficiency, responsiveness, budgeting skills, and results, and asks "would you hire us again."

This firm has a "fixed fee" offering for single plaintiff (employment?) litigation. They have reduced the average cost of such matters almost by half by managing such matters more efficiently.

The PM team now consults with in-house counsel on effective process improvement.

They did not require the whole firm to adopt this approach. Attorneys are impressed with the mapping sessions. Clients like knowing that the firm is doing effective project management.

Firm culture has changed. It is a big change. People are understanding that they will have to change with the market.

Outside of formal PM processes, some people might be able to develop a time frame, staffing, and budgeting for a particular deal. But if it is not documented, these plans are not transferable, and can't be as easily reused. If the 189 steps of a deal can be documented it would make it easier to do the high-value work. If the tasking and scope is not confirmed with client, then changes to the scope (as with the discovery of another 400 boxes of due diligence documents) aren't so easily discussed with the client.

Legal Project Management

Susan Raridon Lambreth of Hildebrandt Baker Robbins presented on legal project management (LPM) at a meeting of KM peers this morning. She is an effective (albeit extremely quick-talking) speaker, and seems to have found an effective approach to communicating LPM themes and approaches to lawyers.

What is Legal Project Management

LPM is a "disciplined approach to the management of legal matters." We have to acknowledge that lawyers have been successful in managing legal projects before the formal application of LPM. In training LPM don't suggest that they have been doing everything wrong. Emphasize that LPM will enhance communications with clients and managing client expectations.

Process Improvement and LPM

Process improvement might be better tackled before LPM improvements. Many law firms have gotten on the LPM bandwagon, perhaps because it is less threatening. You can "back into" process improvement after doing some LPM. Process improvement may lead to greater efficiencies faster.

Drivers

One of the trends driving LPM is client demands for "better, faster, and cheaper." Clients saw more serious economic effects of the recession than the legal industry as a whole did (referred to increased profits at AMLaw 100 firms). Clients expect costs to be lower every year. Clients are looking more for alternative fee arrangements (AFAs).

The profit equation is also changing. Billable hour productivity had been going down. Billing rates were driving increased profitability. This is now flat or down in many firms. Law firms have to get more profits by changing the way that they work. There is also more competition for legal work in terms of outsourcing and aggressive pricing (large firms competing with and sometimes beating medium-sized firms on price).

The procurement offices are also getting more involved in legal work sourcing. Procurement officers may be in a position to put more pressure on outside firms.

Increased client power is driving faster segmentation and devaluing. Work even within a high-priority matter might get broken out or segmented, so that "trusted advisor" work would be compensated or sourced differently than the due diligence or filings work. The more strategic, high-value work is not getting bigger and may be shrinking. Operational or routine work might be expanding. Lower-tier work can be more highly leveraged. Some litigation practices can be very profitable, with the right work / staffing structure.

She considers project management to be not a business-world "fad" (like TQM?), but a natural evolution of application of certain tools and disciplines, already in place at the practice or department level, to the matter level. Eventually it may be internalized and not broken out as a different aspect of work.

Two hidden benefits of project management are a greater emphases on professional development and knowledge management. It leads to a greater emphasis on training and development for younger attorneys. Associates like being part of a formal project team because of the higher level of communication and awareness of the bigger picture. We can enhance the professional development of lawyers as part of an LPM approach.

She referred several times to the ILTA White Paper on alternative financial arrangement.

You can train LPM as "delegation and communication" skills. HBR's approach to project management breaks down a project life cycle into five phases of Initiation, Planning, Executing, Closing, and Lessons Learned. It's best to teach LPM without using PM jargon. They had left in the term "stakeholder," and despite some objections at a NY meeting in June it turned out that lawyers didn't mind that term.

She outline four approaches to early adoption of LPM.

Training and Education

Early adopters of LPM are starting with training and basic education. A 2-3 hour session is not really training, it's more education about "what" than "how to." It's more effective to get people to volunteer for LPM training. It can also be effective to build LPM skills into competency models for lawyer development.

Pilots

Other early adopters are trying LPM in pilot practices, such as with commercial litigation or other specific practice group. Groups with more client pressure (as described above) are more interested.

Technology / Software

Only a small number of firms have effective budgeting or project management software. Some have done historic data / analysis and others have done several years of tracking with ABA task codes or e-billing vendor codes. Litigators seem to be more on board with this in many firms, because they've had to do a tremendous amount of budgeting. In many cases they have not had to stick to those budgets, until the last two years. Budgets are now treated by clients as fee caps.

Staffing

Full-time project managers are in place at a few firms.

Lessons Learned

Don't make LPM seem mysterious. Attorneys may need support like staffing, software, and other "handholding" before LPM can be broadly adopted. Training associates where partners are not on board can be really challenging.

Adjusting compensation structures may be necessary to reward efficient practices. Client and matter profitability is increasingly the focus of compensation committees. Having partners more accountable for the profitability of their matters is an increasing trend. Some have started by making the information available but not tied it directly to compensation.

For some partners LPM might seem like fundamental change.

Initiating

The challenge for law firms in initiating projects is to slow down and more thoroughly explore the in-scope / out-of-scope parameters of the engagement. An engagement agreement is equivalent to a project charter, although typically in law firms they are much less detailed than a good project charter would be. Exploring detailed client expectations such as "what does success look like to you" (or the in-house counsel's boss) is really important and often neglected.

Planning

Law firms have done a better job at budgeting than at planning. Developing a schedule is often not done well. They don't or can't look back at previous matters and figure out what went well and was completely in a timely fashion and what wasn't. Communications planning needs to be set up for contacts with the client and internally with the matter team.

She showed a couple of examples of "work breakdown structures" that tie into a detailed scheduling processes (like phases and tasks of a matter).

Executing

Avoiding conversations where attorneys talk about increased work with clients is really common. There often weren't conversations about monitoring schedule and expenses.

Closing

They have separated out closing from lessons learned because they deserve extra emphasis in law firms due to their culture.

Lessons Learned

An after-action meeting could be 10 minutes or an hour. Talk about what went well, what they could have done differently. It's hard because lawyers don't like critical feedback. Lawyers are afraid of what might be discoverable in a malpractice claim. Get them to look at how it helps their team or other teams in the future.

Challenges

Who will pay for time spent on LPM tasks? Will clients pay for it? (There is an ABA code, some clients are willing to pay if it LPM is actually being done). There is a sense that LPM will make the work more "cookie-cutter." The greatest motivator for lawyers is their relationships with clients and their sense of accomplishment and professionalism (though they are also driven by relative compensation).

Making "best practices" and sample forms available without much effort can free up lawyers to do more interesting and significant strategic thinking about their matters.

Getting lawyers to work teams can be hard because of typical lawyer personalities and law school training. They teach "anti-teaming" in law school. Lawyers are contrasted with "non-lawyers. She was asked "do you mean that I'll have some project management geek telling me what to do?"

The biggest change will be moving to profitability analysis for compensation, as old metrics of production and revenue will not be as effective.

Keys to Success

Train volunteers. Get firm management buy-in. Give tools and templates matched to their needs (basic versus sophisticated / challenging).

ILTA Day 4--Using Business Process Management to Increase Matter Efficiency

Session Materials

Formal Description:

"Managing individual matters is where firms can realize the biggest efficiency and cost gains. For firms that are serious about efficiency and alternative fee arrangements, this session will discuss the strategic application of principles from the fields of business process management and project management and highlight firms that have put these principles to work. While law schools may not have project management or business process classes, lawyers can still learn from experts in these fields."

For tweets see #info15.

Monroe M. Horn ("Monty")- CIO, Sunstein Kann Murphy & Timbers LLP, Boston IP boutique
Angel Garcia-Manso - Goodwin Procter LLP
Bill Decker - Hubbard One, a Thomson Reuters Business
Toby Brown - Fulbright & Jaworski

Disclosure; Angel is my colleague at Goodwin Procter. I know Monty personally, he's an outstanding tenor! Also, these are my unedited notes (live-blogged).

BPM in an IP Boutique

Monty started. Why BPM? Technology benefits come from integration and automation rather than new "killer apps." They determined it would be best to have apps that exactly met their needs. Most users are suffering from information (email) overload. Very often business processes involve sending and acting on email. Yet users often don't have the information they need to act on when they need it (this sounds like a KM problem to me!).

They chose to automate a client-facing business process, IP docketing. They rolled out in Beta using live data (in parallel). They've applied for a patent and are working with a vendor to commercialize it.

Key elements of successful automation are:

1. Filling in "white space" between application without changing the way people are working.

2. Provide rich user interfaces, especially to attorneys and paralegals. They are not tolerant of things acting clunky and not following Windows protocols. Usually BPM applications don't have to have that level of user interface.

3. Allowing users to organize and prioritize the work and tasks is really important. For instance, break out attorney's work by stage, by whether they are directly responsible or supervising, and so forth. Add "flagging" that people can leverage as they see fit [I'd advocate for tagging by keyword!]

4. Supervisory capacities need to be baked in.

5. Try to give them the information they need when they need it.

Bill Decker

He spent the last five years doing project management at a large law firm and is now at Hubbard One / Thomson Reuters. How can PM techniques assist attorneys with fixed fee arrangements?

Project has four (or five) phases. Project Initiation is for understanding what your goals are. Project planning is the most important piece. Identify (and document) the processes needed to establish the scope and the objectives. Project Execution (lumped in with Project Monitoring), then Project Closure, where you show that you did what you set out to do.

Communication is the key success factor. Poor communication is the primary reason why projects fail.

Traditional projects are similar to a legal matter in that they have definite ends and goals.

Attorneys do not accept that a legal engagement is unsuccessful if not completed within a reasonable time and under budget. Their goal is to win.

Project management and continual planning will prevent clients from being surprised by the last bill.

With AFAs you need to build models based on previous experience. Bill mentions that ABA codes as a possible source for matter planning. He notes that "CodeSense" has loaded the ABA codes into SharePoint to track status against different parts of the tasks.

AFAs at Fullbright & Jaworski

Toby Brown of Three Geeks and a Law is the alternative fee person at Fullbright & Jaworski.

He described the approval process for AFAs at his firm.

The first step is a "pre-approval" processes where partners seek information and have a dialog. Partners want to know what form of fee to use and how much to charge. Every RFP crosses his desk, needing AFA content.

The second step is the lawyer's preparation of an actual AFA proposal. They seek information about the client (e.g., financial information), the type of arrangements (looking at type, amount, metrics, and probabilities), and value (allowing lawyers to provide more context).

The third step is AFA analysis. Evaluating the margin of a particular billing partner is key. Partners will run the same type of margins. He will compare similar proposals. Toby is using Redwood analytics. Small changes in the leverage can have large variations in margin.

Fourth, a small group of partners approve the AFA. They talk with Toby about the matter.

Fifth, it gets set up as an AFA matter.

Sixth, the budget gets entered into a tracking system. There still needs to be a system for tracking progress against budget (?).

Seventh, monitor budget against performance. Send monthly and quarterly variance reports.

Eighth, report back on closed matters to the AFA system.

Budgeting and other Projects at Goodwin Procter

Angel counted nine sessions at ILTA addressing Alternative Financial Arrangements (AFAs.) Goodwin decided that doing budgeting would be an important step in addressing AFAs. They asked practice managers to talk to partners and break work they do in phases and tasks. They continue reviewing phases and tasks and improving the 70 matter templates.

The Goodwin budgeting system integrates with Aderant and the time-entry system. Goodwin will also be integrating with SharePoint and Goodwin's Matter Pages system.

(Disclosure: I have been a part of the AFA work at Goodwin).

The iStaff project is another example. Goodwin staffing managers help find partners the best associate for a given project. Each staffing manager was dealing with 40-60 associates and had to learn their experience and professional development needs, and wanted to match that with the jobs. They automated the collection of information from associates about their needs and busyness. It pulls in information from Expert, the HR systems, partners' input about what they need, and associate workload reports. The new system increased compliance (associate reports) 70%.

Another example is the IP Practice System. They interviewed attorneys over 10 months to identify process mapping. They identified inconsistent operations across offices. They built a couple of tools that helped people delegate work. They integrated all the different sources of information. It pulled in matter-centric iManage folders where they had scanned and filed the paper records. The case information can be forwarded to other attorneys. It also links to the PTO file and the Matter Pages system.

Partners reported that what used to take them 10 minutes now takes 10 seconds.

Questions

How did they get buy-in? Monty said they have a small shop; the firm decided to change the way it worked; and the paralegals liked it because they could prove they had provided the file(s).

Angel said that adoption depends on the sponsors. Demand for iStaff came from the directors in the firm and was heavily promoted by the staffing managers.

Follow-up on IT Payoff and Project Management Post

In remarkably timely fashion, the ILTA Project Management Steering Committee has released its 2008 update to a 2007 survey. Now less than 2% of the 141 respondents indicated that their firms had no project management capabilities, down from 17% a year ago. Respondents still had significant concerns about the effectiveness of project management.

Not surprisingly, the larger the firm, the more likely it is to have a formal project management office (PMO).

For more context about the cost- and results effectiveness of project management, see my post on yesterday's CIO panel.

CIOs on IT Payoff and Project Management

Formal Title, Session Link and Slides: CIO Roundtable - Challenges in Demonstrating IT Payoff

Description:

Being asked to demonstrate the business value of IT to your firm management? Join an international group of CIOs from three ILTA member firms for an interactive discussion on how IT service value may be evaluated when compared with leading financial performance indicators. Examples and ideas on determining key performance metrics, measuring and tracking trends, working with firm management to develop financial performance indicators, as well as mapping existing technology to key business processes will be explored.

Speaker(s):

Janet Day - Berwin Leighton Paisner
Peter Bier - Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP
Brent Snow - Baker & McKenzie
David Cunningham - Managing Director, Baker Robbins & Company

The main lesson of this excellent sesssion, moderated by David Cunningham, was that CIOs can use project management implementation to greatly reduce the amount of time and money that they and their staff spend on infrastructure, basic support, and other "plumbing," and should use the resources thus freed up to concentrate on areas that more directly benefit the firm such as business process improvement and lawyer efficiency. In corporate terms, they should try to move from "keeping the lights on" to "Research & Development."

Model of IT Advancement

David lay out a basic framework, adopted from Carnegie Mellon's Capability Maturity Model Integration (R) or CMMI, of five-stage legal IT development. The slides at the presentation and as attached above were essentially illegible, but the basic idea is that IT can be ranked in the areas of people, programs, technology, and facilities, along a sophistication scale. The lower the rank, the more reactive and less proactive the area is. The higher, the more sophisticated the IT business processes and project management implementation. Law firms typically are not above stage three. Most are at stages 1 or 2 in these four areas.

Baker Robbins has surveyed is that law firms fall into three categories. One-third have a “low-cost, high-risk” approach. Only one person knows how to do things, little project management, and so forth. Low cost would be ~$6,300 per employee, a high cost would be ~$14,000.
A second third spends a lot more but is still high-risk because they spend a lot on operations.

The panel is more in the last third, where as firms get more into Levels 2 and especially 3, the IT costs per employee start to come down. Then IT can start focusing on projects. As technology companies mature, PM and quantitative skills start to be more valuable. Reskilling happens more than dropping total head count. They are fighting fewer fires. IP people start to move from infrastructure skill sets to business analysis or Project Management roles.

Janet Day

Janet's firm has very strong business process management. They have binders and binders full of documentation of their business processes and projects. Project management include rigorous change management and measurement of return on investment. Her bailiwick is a little larger than a typical IT director's, and extends to such functions as facilities, know-how (KM), and copying.

The extensive documentation extends to people. Each IT staff person has a publicly exposed career development framework.

These rigorous processes have led to clear documented savings. One example she gave was an office move from one city to another in a foreign country. Where it might have required several IT staff to be present for a few weeks before, now they only had to be onsite for three days, because everything they needed to do was mapped out in advance. Another documented success was the implementation of time entry through mobile devices, which broke even after "29 days" where she was expecting it to do so after six months. ROI there included the 12 minutes (0.2 hours) each attorney had to spend to learn how to use the new system.

She is assisted in measuring ROI by her staff accountant. She also obtains sign-off for large project's proposed ROI from the finance chief.

Peter Bier

Peter ran a professional services firm in the technology space before coming to his current law firm. The IT organization had been focused 95-99% on operations / plumbing. He runs the project management office, which is a separate organization, as well as IT.

He is trying to work at role definitions. The wrong mentality is “I sit at my desk until I get a call.”

He sold the idea of having a chief architect as part of his interview process. He hired one to set up a good process, and develop longer-term vision for IT. His information architect looks at issues like data in more than one place and overlapping functionality. He wanted to make sure that all of the designs were being reviewed by one person. It was harder to sell the position to the rest of the IT team than to get the position approved. It’s a risk management issue for him.
They had data centers in each office, but are centralizing them. People information was scattered in 25 silos, may have been inaccurate in some of them.

They’ve split off some people into a project services team. Some IT staff will be more applications experts, some will become project experts. The project people develop the requirements first and then later get the high-powered tech people involved. People can’t all be involved in all the projects.

He has taken over the intake process on projects. He was able to start pushing back on projects that IT couldn’t do or that didn’t have business value. Some projects are clear & simple to do. It’s better to get out in front of what attorneys are asking for. They have some Microsoft project software. It manages intake, review, approvals, and status reporting after project is complete. They are progressing in IT, but the business side of the firm is moving a little slower.

He’s had to sell the concept that projects are a way of adding value to the organization. People take a long time to get this, and are used to working in the old reactive way.

He thinks that law firms are behind corporate America in incorporating architecture and project planning into their work.

All the managers and directors have been sold on project management skills, and took 5 2-to-3 hour project management classes (10-15 hours).

The Project Management Office is one person. Project Management is embedded in every project. Each “large” project has a dedicated project manager.

Brent Snow

The global Baker & McKenzie operations does an audit of each area every few years. They’ve centralized information management on a global basis. It has worked really well.

They are using Sharepoint to develop workflows. Staff intake and departure processes are both getting set up in Sharepoint.

He gave as a sample facilities project their server virtualization project that started in January 2007. (They moved from a level 2 to level 3 on the CMMI scale). They needed to scale up staff to support virtualization, and hired staff with experience in that process and invested up front in lots of training. It was hard to measure time-based ROI because the “virtual” servers are all mingled together on hardware. There were clearly saving financial benefits and attained a 10:1 server ratio, whatever that is.

Another benefit was 83% power savings. They develop data on carbon footprints, but Brent couldn't reveal how the calculations were made.

His office virtualized every server but those for Elite and DMS. They have virtualized their SQL databases.

Brent developed his own office's project management complete with dedicated project coordinators. Project sites set up in Sharepoint. Things are centralized in one place. They’ve sent all management staff to project management training. PM is getting pushed onto IT. One person oversees tracking of all projects, but the project coordinators are responsible for the projects.

This was an outstanding session, with real CIOs talking about real issues they faced and overcame. I called my firm's resident project manager into this session from another one, and he was quite happy that I did so, even though he only caught the last 40 minutes.