Strategic Legal Technology 
Can lawyers match the productivity growth in the rest of the global economy?
I thought about this after reading a Wall Street Journal article last week, Robots Get a Makeover in Factories, which describe a new generation of robots that help assemble delicate devices, a big change from the early, giant welding robots. This is just another example of the continuous improvement in manufacturing productivity.
Would that we could say lawyer and law firm productivity improves continuously. Of course, measuring legal productivity and quality is hard, a problem Paul Lippe addressed in What if Someone Could Measure What Lawyers Do? in his New Normal column in the ABA Journal (8 Feb 2012). And Fred Bartlit reminds us in his New Normal column last week (30 May 2012) that we should not confuse amount of lawyer time spent with quality of output or productivity.
Improving service productivity is harder than improving manufacturing productivity. Yet consider a host of process- and technology-driven improvements in efficiency, quality, or customer experience:
- Architects’ work was revolutionized by computer-aided design systems.
- Medical care improves demonstrably when doctors and other health care workers follow checklists (as I noted here in a 2003 blog post).
- Customers usually have a better experience waiting in a single line that feeds multiple check-out stations than choosing a single check-out line. (Some of us remember the misery before “jet lines” were introduced.)
- Companies invest significant research dollars to speed up processes. Fast food chains have successfully found ways to shave seconds off the time required to fulfill drive-through orders, which turns out to be critical to profitability. Airlines continue to research how best to board planes efficiently, though the optimal answer appears elusive.
- Technology has improved service experience everywhere. Common examples include the ATM, insurance agents equipped to pay claims in the field, picking up a rental car from a special aisle without having to stop at the service counter, the Apple Store experience of paying the person who helps you via a hand-held credit card reader, and the option to shop on the web instead of a store.
In the legal market, word processing and e-mail were probably the biggest and most ubiquitous productivity boosters over the last two decades Both are about 20 years old and both raise some productivity questions as well. (Arguably, lawyers should delegate more work on document processing than they do. And many lawyers lose time managing e-mail.)
More recently, predictive coding in e-discovery has significantly boosted lawyer productivity, though it remains controversial. I expect that legal project management and process improvement will have a bigger impact but it is early days. Can we expect to see the regular introduction of new processes, techniques, business models, and technology in law that we see in many other economic sectors? As clients continue demand higher value from outside counsel, law firms that improve productivity will win market and mind share.
Think there are a lot of productivity gains to come in legal practice, and that these will relatively outpace gains in other sectors of the economy. From my experience as a Biglaw corporate associate, much Biglaw junior associate work is especially ripe for automation through software: (i) details in the work need to be perfect–there is little tolerance for error, (ii) the work is often not nuanced and is highly repetitive, (iii) many tasks are high volume, and (iv) junior associates are very expensive (for more on these points, see “Automating Law” on the DiligenceEngine blog). I think software is and will be built to meet this need, increasing lawyer productivity and work product quality. And while other sectors of the economy (including those you list above) have already experienced significant automation and productivity gains, law has generally not. Meaning lawyers should be able to outpace others in productivity gains over the coming years as new legal tech comes on.
Comment by Noah Waisberg - DiligenceEngine 6/4/2012 @ 12:34 pm
Ron: As always, you hit the issues that are driving change in the legal industry. Even though we have been and still are in economic times that require new thinking, that new thinking has largely been confined to corporations. The practice of continuous improvement is an essential aspect in business and a major component of driving increased profitability.
Now, contrast that mentality (continuous improvement) to the one a managing partner demonstrated last week - “we know how to deal with clients who need to show discounted rates to their management: we add more timekeepers to the matter.” No wonder clients are exploring how to un-bundle legal services (to send the right work to the right vendor) and reduce reliance on outside law firms. Rather than meeting clients needs, fostering efficiency, and building trust, too many law firms are just gaming the system for as long as they can get away with it.
Of course, there are a few firms that “get it” and, Fred Bartlit had the vision to get there before the rest. I agree with you that firms and lawyers who offer improved methods of service delivery, and that can demonstrate they are truly aligned with client needs, will be the ones that gain market share and succeed.
Comment by Pamela Woldow 6/4/2012 @ 12:40 pm
What about Matter/Case Management??? These tools have been in use for over 15 years now – If you want to find legal productivity tools, I think the first place to look are practices that work on fixed fee or % basis, where they have everything to gain by being productive! And don’t even get me started on eBilling - that alone has probably been the most productive technology to be implemented in in-house corporate legal departments!
Comment by Cathi Collins 6/5/2012 @ 8:21 am
Great article Ron. In my experience working within the software industry, I can say that we are seeing more and more legal firms starting to embrace virtual data rooms(VDRs) as a means of boosting productivity. VDRs offer a cost-effective and nimble solution for sharing documents, collaborating with clients and third parties, and streamlining specific legal processes (e.g. due diligence, litigation, restructuring and insolvency etc). Interestingly, our first client was a law firm that approached us to design a VDR for them back in 2007. Our business has really evolved from there.
I agree that many firms still heavily rely on email for document sharing, but as you mentioned, this technology is now seriously outdated – not to mention unsecure. Think of all the time it takes uploading, sending and downloading large email attachments. Or the time spent locating the most current version of a document and then routing it to the right person. It’s not productive and it’s definitely not what the client wants to be paying for.
Like you said, the firms that can improve productivity for their clients will inevitably be the winners in terms of market and mind share. I think that VDRs definitely arm law firms with the right tools for achieving this and it’s encouraging to see more and more firms starting to embrace such technology.
Comment by Debbie Stephenson 6/5/2012 @ 12:32 pm
Piggybacking off of Cathi Collins’ comment, I think case management helps the profession take a big step forward. But, I think it looks and behaves differently than what we have in that space today. Think process-driven case management. It will help usher practitioners through their work, mitigate drudgery and, all the while, enable us to measure work in new, more powerful ways.
Case management + workflow + non-intrusive data collection + sophisticated UX.
Comment by Andrew Baker 6/6/2012 @ 7:48 pm
Just as Atul Gawande looked at other industries’ checklist approaches in developing his surgery checklist approach, you’re looking here at other industries for ways in which technology has greatly improved service productivity.
I agree with Debbie Stephenson that workspaces which can be shared with cocounsel, experts, or clients can lead to some productivity improvement (my firm is using PBWorks Legal Hub for that purpose.)
I suspect that other technologies will have a more significant impact long-term on productivity, because of their ability to draw on sophisticated legal insight in producing answers to many real-world legal challenges.
One is document assembly. Tools such as kiiac that support the development of document assembly packages hold significant promise for improving the speed and reducing the cost of document assembly package creation. My firm has demonstrated the power of document assembly as a public-facing service by developing the Founder’s Workbench, which leverages Contract Express’ document assembly software to assemble executable Delaware corporation formation documents. The legal insight drawn on is my firm’s understanding of the available options for that type of company, with the user deciding for himself/herself which option to follow for his/her new company.
A second is a type of software so new I’m not sure it has a commonly accepted name–I consider them “expert systems,” most notably including Neota Logic, with previous examples coming from reports from Bryan Cave. As Neota says on their web site, the software allows the translation of legal expertise into answers, most effectively in areas that involve complex regulations.
Comment by David Hobbie 6/8/2012 @ 11:28 am
Ron, as always, you crystallize an issue like no other. Thank you for helping us all find our thinking caps!
From where I stand as a BigLaw and LPO veteran, the biggest challenges to improving productivity are lawyers themselves - meaning, the manner in which we believe we’re supposed to be working.
There are many fantastic tools available, but few are being utilized to their full capability, even though this would ultimately benefit the client community. That’s due to how lawyers are wired - most of us cannot fathom that a software program or easy-to-follow process can create output that’s just as good as the work product that the lawyer’s “special skills” have been creating for generations. There’s an insane amount of hubris in our practice, mostly because we’ve been conditioned to think we’re irreplaceable.
So, from my perspective, while improvements realized in other service sectors are indeed fantastic precedent, no amount of technological advancements or thoughtful re-training will raise the bar on productivity in our profession until lawyers themselves are reconditioned (rebooted might be a better term).
This will likely take some years to achieve but as Pam mentions there are pockets of lawyers and even some firms staking out this territory. These “first movers’ have a massive advantage right now, but the implication of being a “first mover” is that you’re blazing a path for the majority to follow.
So, it’s up to the rest of the profession to determine whether they can retrain themselves and become followers (of the first movers) in order to remain leaders. Time will tell. Thanks again, Ron.
Comment by Kevin Colangelo 6/8/2012 @ 4:00 pm