Dissecting processes: How to create a legal process improvement programme

3 May 2012News

Kim R. Craig and Andrew M. Baker of Seyfarth Shaw share their insights on how to kick start a legal process improvement programme

Four things you will learn from this Masterclass:

How LPI can support other strategic foci
How to assess your firm’s legal processes
What to consider when planning for LPI
How to manage the internal change programme

The practise of law is a process. It may be an incredibly complex process with a large number of variables, but it is a process.

The complexity of some legal work can skew practitioners’ views of what they do, causing them to see the law largely as an art, rather than having some relation '¨to science.

Nevertheless, the general mindset in law firms has started to change over the past few years. Clients are focused on how legal work is going to be done. Processes are relevant.

As a result, a few law firms are taking this process-centric view of the practise of law very seriously. Flowing from that evolved view of legal work, firms are beginning to implement legal process improvement (LPI) programmes.

In this article, Kim R. Craig, director of legal project management, and Andrew M. Baker, director of legal technology innovations, examine the growing trend of LPI within law firms and discuss how to introduce an effective LPI programme.

Understanding processes

LPI involves the systematic review of current legal processes and then optimising those processes to achieve a desired end state. The impact of LPI is real, especially from the client’s perspective. LPI brings enhanced efficiency, consistency of experience, predictability in spend and transparency to the attorney-client relationship.

The first key step is understanding the current state of a specific legal process. This requires sitting down with your legal teams and getting a handle on a specific scope of the work. Ask yourselves questions like:

What tasks make up this type of work?
Who handles those tasks?
What precedential materials and tools are used in a given task?
How much time is necessary to execute a specific task?
What decisions do we have to make? '¨

It all needs to be catalogued and made digestible for those who are not experts in the area.

At Seyfarth Shaw, this is done through process mapping exercises.

First, a particular piece of legal work is pinpointed for the purpose of determining and capturing best practices. A team of approximately four to eight subject matter experts at all levels – partners, associates, paralegals and administrative assistants – is selected.

One person is then chosen to lead the mapping session. This needs to be someone who is an excellent facilitator, can engage participants at all levels and drive a team of highly-skilled professionals who typically have very strong opinions '¨to reach consensus on the most efficient '¨and effective means for delivering the '¨legal work.

As the team determines the appropriate-level timekeeper to be assigned to each task, it also estimates how long each task should take to complete. This is done by leveraging historical data and balancing it with the practical experience of the legal teams. Though each matter brings unique challenges, this approach improves our ability to plan for future engagements '¨(see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Sample excerpt from legal process map

If you’ve never done this before with a group of attorneys, it’s an interesting activity that yields many beneficial outcomes. The banter alone between attorneys on how best to complete a '¨given type of work can make process mapping worthwhile.

Once you understand your process, you can begin to improve it. The analysis around that review is fairly straightforward. For instance, you will want to:

determine if unnecessary rework is being done;
identify work that can be ‘pushed down’ to lower-cost resources without sacrificing quality; and
look for opportunities to inject technology to increase efficiency.

But, you will need a documented process to conduct this review.

Process mapping sessions provide a forum for knowledge sharing. In short order, each participant gains a sense of ownership in designing a process and develops a focus on efficiency and continuous improvement. The team will identify ‘best in class’ templates and sample documents that can be made accessible to clients and the legal team.

The investment and effort of the process mapping team is captured electronically and shared with others who deliver similar legal work. Most importantly, it is displayed graphically, making the process and its attributes easy to digest. The final map represents the collective knowledge of seasoned experts and is valuable as a training tool for novice legal team members.

No single person can master all substantive areas in which large or mid-sized law firms practise. It is because of that breadth in process that technologists, knowledge management professionals and others labour to provide solutions with precision. But, they may miss the context in which their solutions can be deployed.

A documented process changes the game. The organisation at large can better provide value to specific practices when a documented process is in hand. The lateral thinking and creative solutions generated by these maps can ‘wow’ attorneys and, most importantly, their clients. However, a documented process is necessary for that problem-solving to occur.

Supporting other strategic foci

Over the past five years, a slew of acronyms have come into focus for law firm management. The alphabet soup has become fairly thick.

For instance, the use of legal project management (LPM), legal process outsourcing (LPO), alternative fee arrangements (AFAs), knowledge management (KM) and business intelligence (BI) have trended up since the economy took a nosedive. LPI can now be squarely added to the mix.

At a macro level, there is much overlap between these areas. However, LPI may be the most powerful. It is the glue that binds other disciplines and brings forth the synergies that management teams seek.

LPM

The planning portion of LPM can be the most challenging aspect of the discipline. Work will often come in the door with immense pressure, and the amount of time available to plan a matter can be limited.

Furthermore, in-depth preliminary planning isn’t part of traditional attorneys’ genetic makeup. They rely on expertise and years of experience to do their work. Having processes memorialised and at the ready provides the right jumping-off point for the creation of project plans. Each process will have to be tailored to a given engagement and client need, but that starting point makes all the difference.

LPO

Price pressures within the industry have resulted in a greater exploration of the outsourcing market. Properly outsourcing legal work is a challenge for a number of reasons. Aside from the ethics, quality '¨and logistics involved, it can be difficult'¨to determine what the partnering organisation should do and how. Having '¨a documented process, however, provides a framework for that discussion and for subsequent action.

AFAs

Be it via fixed fees, success fees or portfolio pricing, law firms are carrying additional financial risks when executing legal work. Proper pricing is important '¨to landing deals, and the methods '¨of execution are proving crucial to '¨ensuring profitability.

Understanding your process enables you to price services more accurately and helps to ensure you are doing work in a manner that best positions your firm to end up on the right side of the ledger.

The focus of knowledge management groups varies, sometimes greatly, from firm to firm. Generally speaking, KM has had success tackling very broad problems, but groups sometimes falter in targeting specific areas of practice.

It can be difficult to pinpoint and select the right projects, to formulate approaches and then figure out how best to execute them. However, within a process-centric legal environment, KM teams can better implement powerful solutions that are narrowly tailored to a specific practice. A documented process brings these specialists closer to the legal work.

Like companies in virtually every industry, law firms are working to become more data-driven. However, getting data, formulating baselines and setting benchmarks for comparison are a challenge. LPI creates a basis for this. If matters are generally approached the same way and properly tracked, we can discern trends and patterns and make better business decisions.

Introducing LPI internally

Process improvement has a place within all law firms. However, only a handful of firms have made serious inroads. But, as they say, the journey begins with a single step.

First, recognise that this effort is fraught with change management hurdles. You’ll want to attack the problem from the top and bottom. You’ll need a champion or small team of attorney champions to help push efforts from above. They will need to be able to voice the rationale for the efforts and aid in the bending of ears.

Next, you’ll need a boots-on-the-ground tactician. This person will help to coordinate the process capture efforts and facilitate a knowledge transfer from legal teams. There are many disciplines from which you can pull talent, but six sigma, lean and total quality management are a few notable methodologies.

The number of people with legal context in these areas is small, so, if you do not have a resource on staff, you will likely have to reach outside of the legal vertical. If you go that route, you will need to find someone with flexibility in approach. Out of the gate, none of these approaches will work in a wholesale, formal manner.

After you have your ‘drivers’ and ‘doers’, you will need to target your first area for process improvement. Making that determination is not easy and there are a few key factors to weigh (see box: Getting started with process improvement).

All change requires an element of ‘sales’. You are going to need someone who can articulate – in terms legal '¨teams understand – what this effort '¨brings and how important it is. It needs '¨to be persuasive.

With most attorneys, the client angle will need to be a key thread in your story. Altruistic messages touting the broad firm impact may not garner much appreciation – at least at first. The effort needs to be real to your participants – real situations, real impact and real goals.

However, as with all things, those leading the effort will need to properly set expectations. No documented process will be perfect. As you capture processes, you will have to be cognisant of the level at which you operate.

If you come in too high, the output will not be helpful and the value will be lost upon your constituents. On the flipside, fly too low at first and the process capture can be too daunting and time-consuming.

Taking it to the next level

Once you have your process improvement programme up and running, you will then be primed to set your sights on more advanced goals. There is an almost unlimited number of directions that your organisation can take, but two large challenges should be on your radar early in your journey:

the ability to institutionalise your processes; and
whether you can provide transparency to your clients.

Seyfarth Shaw has been systematically capturing and improving legal processes for over six years through its SeyfarthLean programme. Institutionalising a process-focused approach to legal work has taken significant effort. There is no silver bullet.

Changing culture is hard, and simply throwing money at the problem does not move the needle much. It was only through broad attorney and staff trainings, small group awareness sessions and targeted one-on-one sessions that we were able to get penetration within the organisation. And, at all points, we routed positive client feedback to the broader organisation for inspiration and reinforcement.

While fighting the cultural battle, we also developed a number of custom, technical solutions to provide transparency to clients. We abhor the idea of the black box. Through an elegant combination of extranets, financial reporting and matter management, we provide a means for clients to stay apprised of our processes and progress.

Further, these systems underpin our legal teams’ approaches and enhance the consistency of the client experience. We have made great headway and we have more creative solutions on the horizon.

In surveying different industries, it’s the overlap of distinct disciplines that is proving to be exciting and powerful. The examples are numerous and include:

statistics and graphic design (data visualisation);
computer science and biology (bioinformatics); and
physical exercise and technology (personal metrics).

Will the crossroads of law and process engineering be the next multidisciplinary domain to take off? Some firms are betting that it will, and it’s a bet that’s already paying off.

Getting started with process improvement

Frequency – How often do you do that type of work? The more frequently your firm does the work, the more value it will garner from its efforts.
Complexity – Your first foray into process improvement may not be the right time to tackle the most arduous area of work your firm undertakes. Cut your teeth on an area that isn’t dizzyingly complex.
Currency – Are there areas of work that are hot right now and for which you are experiencing increased requests?
Client partnerships – Do you have a client that has particular interest in process improvement? You may consider it a partner on your legal process improvement work and focus on a type of work you handle for it.
Pain points – Is there a type of work that is less profitable than desired but that you want to maintain for strategic reasons? Imbuing process rigour here may help to increase margins and make this work more attractive.
Involved experts – The personalities of the experts involved in your first project will be supremely important. To one extent or another, all lawyers are driven by precedent. As such, many can be apprehensive about being a test subject. Ensure it’s a receptive party. And, make sure they know that they’re about to be your Project Mercury – not a guinea pig.

kcraig@seyfarth.com

'¨abaker@seyfarth.com