New Directions in Technology: Process Engineering vs. “Just Doing Things the Way We’ve Always Done Them”

By Lily G. Casura

I’m a tremendous fan of New Years’ resolutions, so much so that I can hardly wait to get the old year over with in order to start the new one! And it’s not so much about the “resolution” part as the opportunity to review the current year, evaluate what about it was and wasn’t working, and the chance to set new, motivating and yet thoroughly accomplishable goals for the new year. Better systems, better efficiency, more control over your work environment, your output, your feelings of success. Yum...who could resist? Some thoughts on how you might approach technology in this regard.

Local lawyer Russ Mead, presented some interesting tidbits at a KCBA CLE in June. He’d surveyed solo practitioners in the area to find out what people were earning and spending, to see if he could figure out some patterns. Eventually he asked lawyers to submit their actual Schedule C’s from their tax returns. What he found was that people were spending roughly the same amount to run their offices (a spread of 2.5 times), but earning substantially different amounts of money doing it (a spread of 12.5 times).

Russ pointed to advertising as a differentiator, because he’s a firm believer in marketing, firmer than most. Russ’s sample size looked fairly small, so there is a question as to whether the results are statistically significant. And not everyone would agree with his thoughts on marketing making the ultimate difference.

Marketing expert Jon Spoelstra, author of Selling Ice to the Eskimos, Marketing Outrageously, and others, insists on the evidence-based model: track your marketing efforts closely to monitor their individual effectiveness, and then use a proven rate of return of 4:1-what you bring in as new or increased business from, say, an ad, should be at least four times what you spent on it, or you’re wasting your money.

What interested me, though, seeing Russ flip tax returns up on the overhead, was how few law firms were really investing in technology-something I see as a much bigger differentiator than marketing. Time after time as I speak to lawyers, I hear them say that they understand that technology, especially today, is what will ultimately level the playing field, what will help them work smarter, not harder, etc. But when it comes time to spending money on technology, is that really what they’re doing?

Having worked in law firms for years, few of them seemingly efficient enough, I’ll share what I’ve seen to be the “dirty little secret” benefit that enough technology confers-something no one wants to admit, but yet is its most direct and measurable benefit. Good technology allows you to make do with fewer staff.

In an era where most lawyers (roughly 70%) are solo practitioners, where it’s becoming harder and harder to find good staff, and where the single greatest expense of your practice (roughly 65%) is personnel-wouldn’t greater technological proficiency or better systems give you more control over the bottom line?

Some lawyers get this, but not enough, apparently. Lawyers are smart, busy, and overextended-does technology get the same attention that finances do, which means it gets delegated to someone else to understand and maintain, with all the risks that can imply?

At another recent CLE, lawyers in business for themselves were asked for a show of hands of how many people in the room had a business plan-and not a single hand was raised. How can it not be that “failing to plan, means planning to fail” in this area?

In their recent book on creativity and problem-solving, Why Not?: How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small, two Yale professors use the exercise “What Would Croesus Do?” to problem-solve. In other words, if money were no object, could you figure out how to solve a problem that’s been stymieing your progress? If envisioning throwing money at the problem shows you a new solution, great-now just downsize the solution to something you can afford, and you may have found a new solution. At the very least, you’ll have new insights into your current problems-and sometimes that’s the first step towards really being able to solve them.

It’s hard for me to be suitably impressed when I hear lawyers discussing technology. Frankly, it seems too superficial an acquaintance-too much gadget-happiness, and not enough real connection with the idea that this is make it or break it stuff when it comes to productivity, so it pays to learn what’s most useful for your practice. Every once in a while, though, I meet someone who does seem to get it.

I remember one such meeting last year. A prominent Seattle lawyer who’d left the big firm behind to strike out on his own in his 60s. Far from being chastened by the experience, or noncommittal while he awaited more data, he was a passionate, articulate advocate of making just such a move. He’d invested in systems and was thrilled with the control he was experiencing over his own bottom line. And he loved the fact that he could pump out things like client engagement letters in minutes, rather than waiting a day or two for them to make their way through the big firm pipeline. Another lawyer, this time from Olympia, estimates that he’s saved 100 hours of firm administration time a year by investing in, and learning how to use, case management software.

Another book, What’s the Big Idea?, this time written by a Harvard business school professor, touts the concept of “idea practitioners,” who move company cultures ahead by making ambitious ideas practical. The author points out, “dealing with the steady influx of new ideas, one way or the other, is now an integral part of business life.” So too is being able to separate the good ones from the bad.

But a crucial first step is familiarity based knowledge, and a deep, intentional and concerted look at current processes to see if any improvements suggest themselves from the inability to get something seemingly simple done in a timely manner. Is it staff that’s bogging down the process, or is the systems you have in place? Or the technology? Or a combination of all three.

Lawyers as a group seem slow to recognize the benefits of increasing efficiency-perhaps because the reigning model is still being paid by the hour, though inroads into that are being made, as more lawyers move towards value billing, or a combination of the two. It remains to be seen whether an increasing emphasis from the client side-businesspeople used to, and demanding, greater efficiency and accountability regarding time spent-will propel lawyers further along the technology road than many have felt comfortable going, yet.

I’m hopeful that when they do, what they’ll find won’t be more potholes, but better shortcuts and brighter vistas. And shorter commutes.