Rethinking workflows: Re-engineering case management processes

Key takeaway points:

1. It really does take a village to implement meaningful change, so plan to include all relevant people early on.

2. Support from the firm’s management committee and senior leadership is critical.

3. Think big, start small: focus on a small area of a firm’s practice, demonstrate success and offer to replicate that success in other areas.

4. The ‘new normal’ poses challenges but also opportunities: consider dramatic approaches when rethinking your business strategies.

 

Over two years ago, we set out to re-engineer the way that Littler Mendelson handles the defence of administrative agency charges for our clients. Starting with a challenge posed by a major client and a desire to re-engineer the way our legal services could be delivered, we successfully developed and deployed Littler CaseSmart.

CaseSmart is an innovative case management process that has garnered new business for the firm, earned awards and accolades and taught us several lessons about the right way to implement change within a large law firm.

Challenge and opportunity

In early 2010, with the ongoing recession and legal departments across the country looking for ways to reduce their costs, the general counsel at one of our major clients asked all of its outside counsel to propose ways to reduce its annual legal spend.

Fortunately for Littler and, equally important, for the client, the shareholder responsible for managing the firm’s work for the client saw this as an opportunity, not an obstacle.

At the time, Littler was handling about 25 per cent of that client’s administrative agency charges (i.e. charges filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or state agencies alleging, among other things, discrimination, harassment or retaliation).

Recognising that, for large employers, administrative agency charges have become commodity work – while some charges may have merit, many are the employment law equivalent of slip-and-fall nuisance filings – the shareholder wondered whether he could propose handling all of the client’s administrative charges nationwide (over 1,000 charges annually) for a flat per-charge fee that would reduce the client’s per-charge legal spend and its overall legal spend using multiple law firms, as it had been doing.

Reviewing the economics of the hundreds of charges our firm had handled for that client over the years and relying on the ‘law of large numbers’, he calculated that a flat per-charge fee would enable the firm to balance those work-intensive cases (i.e. where the firm would lose money) against the charges that could be handled more expediently. However, handling this volume of charges profitably would require a much more efficient process than the firm had at the time.

The shareholder did not want to simply outsource portions of the work or to push the work down to the lowest-level associates; the firm’s longstanding relationship with the client depended on ensuring the highest quality work product and results – even on commodity work.

The proposal would have to demonstrate that we had a plan to ensure the work product and results – as well as the client’s relationship with the federal and state agencies – would not suffer.

The proposal would also have to demonstrate that this was not just a loss leader, an effort to get the client’s higher value work; the shareholder knew that ?this client would see through and reject ?such an approach as not sustainable over ?the long run.

Creating a new approach

We quickly brought together a small team to assess the technology and alternative staffing solutions that would be needed to make the proposal viable.

This initial working group consisted of attorneys intimately familiar with the client and several of the firm’s C-level executives. We also brought in some outside technology consultants that were already working with the firm on other projects.

The CaseSmart approach developed by our team consisted of four main components:

1. a comprehensive process-flow analysis ?of administrative agency charge work;

2. a proprietary case management technology platform;

3. an alternative staffing model; and

4. transparent access to all cases for ?the client.

 

1. Process-flow analysis

Our CaseSmart team brought together a number of the firm’s subject matter experts experienced in handling administrative agency charges in a series of meetings.

Working with technologists and business analysts, we developed a step-by-step work-process map of how most attorneys manage the defence of administrative agency charges, from the moment the charge is received by the client to the point at which the matter is finally closed – whether by a settlement or a decision by the agency that is either favourable or adverse to the employer.

2. Proprietary platform

Based on the work-process analysis, and working with both in-house applications developers and outside consultants, we developed and deployed an advanced, proprietary case management platform designed to streamline and automate ?many of the steps required to process and manage charges.

A charge-intake process was developed to enable highly skilled administrators to enter into the system pertinent information that the attorneys handling the charges would need ready access to, such as:

• biographical data concerning the charge;

• the alleged actors and the witnesses;

• the pertinent facts and legal theories set forth in the charge; and

• personnel information pulled from ?the client’s HR systems.

We then deployed document automation software to automate the production of standard, repetitive documents and also workflow tools to enable better case management and tracking of work product and deadlines.

We also developed a comprehensive Microsoft SharePoint TeamSite that would enable working attorneys to readily access client information, legal research and template documents, and to communicate efficiently using social networking tools.

The overall platform was designed to enable attorneys to work more efficiently and to ensure overall quality and performance standards were maintained.

3. Alternative staffing model

Our team had analysed the work processes, identifying inefficiencies. We had looked for:

• tasks being performed by shareholders that could be performed by associates;

• tasks being performed by associates that administrative staff could ?perform; and

• tasks administrative staff were performing that technology should ?be handling.

Based on this analysis, we recognised that the traditional shareholder-associate-secretary model of handling a matter would not enable the type of efficient task-based process we envisioned; we knew that CaseSmart would require an alternative staffing model.

The first step was to develop the highly skilled administrative staff that could perform the intake and initial discovery processes effectively and also oversee ?case management.

The next step was to recruit a cadre of flex-time attorneys (FTA) with substantial experience in handling administrative charges and who desired an alternative career path that included flexibility and greater control over their schedules and caseloads. We decided early on that these FTAs would be staff attorneys, not outsourced or contract attorneys.

One of our reasons for using FTAs, as opposed to traditional associates, was that FTAs could be deployed in a task-based, team structure; they would only work on CaseSmart charges and they would be dedicated to specific clients.

In this way, they would become extremely proficient at performing a specific set of tasks – investigating and defending administrative agency charges – and they would get to know their assigned client’s culture, operational issues and personnel extremely well, thus greatly increasing their efficiency.

A team of responsible supervising attorneys (RSA) – shareholders experienced in working with specific clients – would supervise the FTAs, assisting them in performing a risk analysis. This is a critical step in determining early on whether the charge should be settled or defended, based on parameters defined by the client in advance.

The RSAs would also be responsible for reviewing the FTAs’ work product, particularly statements of position submitted to the agency in defence ?of the employer’s position.

Finally, each client would be assigned an overall project director to oversee the work of the administrative team, the FTAs ?and the RSAs, and to be the client’s? primary point of contact for overall ?case management issues.

4. Matter transparency

One of the keys to the CaseSmart system is that it is an outsourced model: the client effectively turns over management of individual charge matters to our firm, enabling the client to focus, instead, on how we are handling its overall caseload.

This eliminates the inefficiencies that arise from back-and-forth decision-making on individual charges, enabling the client to deploy its internal legal team to handle higher-value matters.

But, to make this model work, the client has to have the management tools necessary to monitor how effectively the overall caseload is being handled. The client needs to feel confident that individual cases are not languishing, that the firm is not settling too many cases or spending too much on settlements, and that the quality of the work product meets the standards the client expects.

To enable the client to monitor these critical issues, the system was designed to provide transparent access through an online dashboard that enables the client to see the status of any given matter – the charge data, agency documents and the attorney’s work product – as well as see the status of all of its matters at a macro level.

It enables clients to see real-time key performance indicators showing, among other things, the number of charges being settled versus the number of charges being defended, the average settlement amount, and the length of time it takes to resolve charges.

More important, the dashboard provides clients with actionable intelligence about what is going on within their own organisations. Clients can see the types of claims being filed and the location of these claims (such as regions or facilities that are encountering larger numbers of charges), enabling them to make informed operational decisions (such as which regions or facilities require additional management training or which internal policies might require review and revision).

Lessons learned

Our approach has proven successful on many levels. Over the past two years, we have managed more than 3,400 administrative agency charges through the system, exceeding expectations in terms of quality of work product and results, efficiency, cost savings to the clients and realisation for the firm.

Our firm has brought new clients ?onto the system and has garnered ?industry accolades and industry honours, including the International Legal ?Technology Association’s 2011 project ?of the year award and the 2012 ?InnovAction award from the College ?of Law Practice Management.

While the accolades and the new business are, of course, tremendously rewarding, the success of the project has provided an opportunity to re-evaluate what really works in terms of legal process re-engineering and how law firms can adjust to the ‘new normal’ for delivering legal services.

What follows are just a few of the lessons we learned from the CaseSmart project.

1. It really does take a village to implement meaningful change

While our initial team consisted of a small core group, the real operational team would eventually involve over 60 individuals across virtually every corporate department in the firm and five outside technology providers.

For example, initial operational plans were adjusted once our chief information security officer and his team got involved and focused on the need to ensure ?client data was effectively protected, particularly with FTAs working remotely. Specific security precautions were implemented to ensure data security at every step in the process.

Our chief product officer and his team helped to develop the processes followed by the administrative team to ensure the efficient processing of client information.

The professional development staff were instrumental in designing a programme to ensure the FTAs were integrated into the firm’s training and development programmes.

Our finance and accounting department was critical in developing protocols to ensure there is meaningful case management reporting for both the ?firm’s and the client’s benefit.

2. Support from firm leadership is critical

From the very beginning, our management committee and senior leadership recognised the possibilities of the project and the potential future impact the project could have on the way we deliver legal services.

Indeed, our chief operating officer was a member of the CaseSmart leadership team from the outset and was involved in most of the major decision-making throughout the development phase.

3. Think big, start small

Any effort to entirely re-engineer the ?way a large well-established firm does business will encounter insurmountable obstacles. A better approach is to focus ?on a small area of the firm’s practice, demonstrate success and offer to replicate that success in other areas.

We were able to take one process (the management of administrative agency charges), improve it significantly and show it as a successful model for other areas of practice. Other practice groups have since requested help with re-engineering the way that they deliver legal services.

We are now looking at applying our CaseSmart approach to single plaintiff litigation, wage-hour class actions and other aspects of the labour and employment practice group.

4. The ‘new normal’ poses challenges, ?but also opportunities

Many attorneys have confronted the dramatic changes in the legal industry by hoping that the good old days of ever-rising rates and limited client pushback will return.

The firms that will have the greatest success in the new paradigm, however, will realise that the good old days are not coming back and they must try equally dramatic approaches to re-thinking their business strategies. By doing so, they can find new ways of generating increased revenue, realisation and profitability, as well as delivering greater value to their clients.

Scott Rechtschaffen is the chief knowledge officer at US law firm Littler Mendelson (www.littler.com)