ILTA Webinar from Baker Robbins and Company and Traveling Coaches, Inc on September 28, 2009. The presentation focused on ways to improve outcomes in WorkSite and increase the value of software that you have already deployed.
4. Key Market Forces What’s Keeping IT Awake at Night… Client file now in digital form. Email contains 75% of business content Lawyers now being brought into Lit Holds + Discovery in ways that they were once protected Information Management, Digital reality 2009 Baker Robbins & Company Email Wellness survey revealed Only 9% survey respondents confident they can produce the entire electronic client file 86% complain they do not follow email management guidelines because the volume is too high See http://insight.brco.com/e2.0 for the 2009 email wellness survey
5. Take Advantage The key challenge for law firms in 2009 and beyond is to “shift gears” from a model premised on growth and expansion to one premised on the more efficient and cost effective delivery of legal services. The IT community must take this into consideration in planning and project delivery. You must enable lawyers to become an “enhanced practitioner” (Susskind) that blend legal skills with deal/project delivery. They need different tools for different times.
6. Deliver on the WorkSite Investment three steps to leverage your document management platform Lower system total cost of ownership Improve Productivity through learning Manage email with practical lifecycle + policy Leverage the existing investment in WorkSite 1 3 2
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8. Deliver on the WorkSite Investment three steps to leverage your document management platform 2 Lower system total cost of ownership Improve Productivity through learning Manage email with practical lifecycle + policy Leverage the existing investment in WorkSite 1 3 2
10. Email Lifecycle Management This workflow is realistic and easy to implement 1 2 3 File in <= 60 Days Store in personal folder or Inbox Deleted or Sent items Email created or received Purged by law firm >= 6 Months Life cycle retention managed via Records Management System Non-Record Limited Usefulness Convenience Materials Useful for some period Official Record Preserve Purged by law firm >= 2 Years Move to official client/matter Correspondence folder (DMS)
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12. Deliver on the WorkSite Investment three steps to leverage your document management platform 3 Lower system total cost of ownership Improve Productivity through learning Manage email with practical lifecycle + policy Leverage the existing investment in WorkSite 1 3 2
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This presentation is sponsored by ITLA. Peter Buck, Mark Denner, Liza Madden, JB Trexler and Marilyn Sink contributed to the content. For more information: http://insight.brco.com/worksmart/blog Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
Hildebrandt Peer Monitor and Citi Survey provide key metrics used in this presentation. Law firms see a flat to declining overall demand for services that impacts productivity. Productivity is defined as billable hours. There was modest rate increases, heavier discounting, and no uplift from premiums. 2009 YE revenue growth, in the aggregate, for law firms is expected to be in the 3% range. We expect continued cost cutting (including salary freezes and reductions). Expenses, despite cost reduction efforts, will rise at a faster rate than revenues. In effect, Firms are now forced to implement efficiencies they could have initiated years ago. Overall net income for 2009 will be flat to down 15% compared to 2008, depending on the law firm practice mix. The critical message to professionals is challenges to an hourly business model that has been untested for essentially the last 17 years will continue. Lawyers, and fee earners, are required to improve technology core competencies to add value to their client relationship and improve effectiveness. We are not saying that elapsed time to provide legal services will shorten. We are saying that smart distribution of work in a law firm is more urgent than ever. Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
Productivity levels are dropping across all staff levels of the organization. Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
Largest cost – after rent + compensation - is email access, management and retention. Need to classify information in order to maintain it. See http://insight.brco.com/e2.0 for continued discussion Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
Remember that a financial crisis is a terrible thing to waste. The current productivity drop is pushing firms to price, staff and deliver services differently. Some organizations are r e-think associate compensation, re-think staffing models for the delivery of legal services. The IT community must take this into consideration in planning and project delivery. You must enable lawyers to become an “enhanced practitioner” (Susskind) that blend legal skills with deal/project delivery. They need different tools for different times. We believe there is a shift in delivery models emerging, including Customized, project pricing for major transactions, “unbundling” legal services, push work to offices where it can be most efficiently performed and develop serious project management skills. The objective is to b lend Legal Services with effective project delivery. Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
Based on the economic backdrop in 2009, the mandate to IT is clear. With p roductivity drop is pushing firms to price and deliver differently – where do you start. IT has to demonstrate value to the business through prudent, cost effective innovation using existing tools Email communication demands clear policy and efficient product to respond to staff ratios and volume. Learning services have to respond with new techniques, including social networking and scenario based solutions. Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
The cost of distributed iManage WorkSite environments continues to increase. WAN reliability and price-performance ratios continue to drop. Tools to consolidate libraries are very strong with Shamrock and other solutions. Second, email filing initiatives will place more pressure on Worksite library growth. Successful organizations should be filing 5 emails for every document, year over year. Expect spikes as change management and email wellness campaigns are launched. Your WorkSite infrastructure must evolve to address centralization and growth. We recommend 64-bit hardware and operating systems. Even though WorkSite application server is (and will likely remain) 32-bit, critical pathways such as SQL Server and Autonomy IDOL should be deployed exclusively on 64-bit platforms to support larger memory address space. As your sites grow, performance is frequently connected with memory available. Chase the Space model to permit storage growth. Allocate LUNS on SANs is an art and a battle. DocServer balancing 500GB SAN LUNs (some much less), but it’s very awkward to add a new docserver if the first volume fills up (and most bigger firms doing email filing will file more than 500GB each year). Chase the Space is a best practice that pre-allocates ten or more document servers and randomly assigns these servers to users. Check with us for the docusers trigger that initiates Chase the Space for existing and new users. Enterprise Virtualization can save up to $100k over 2 years based on servers, maintenance and licensing in typical firm reducing server count by 30. This also provides built-in platform for disaster recovery. Reduce administrative overhead using Integration Appliance to automate key meta data. Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
Based on the economic backdrop in 2009, the mandate to IT is clear. With p roductivity drop is pushing firms to price and deliver differently – where do you start. IT has to demonstrate value to the business through prudent, cost effective innovation using existing tools Email communication demands clear policy and efficient product to respond to staff ratios and volume. Learning services have to respond with new techniques, including social networking and scenario based solutions. Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
The volume of business email is huge. Triage techniques vary widely and are covered in other presentations. See Email is the Killer App and it is Killing Me for an example. This section of the presentation is about what an organization can do today to address what we call the 20-million problem. Each year large firms will have to respond, process or discard up to 20 million email items. If done incorrectly or not at all, the results can be devastating. We recommend two things: Concise email policy. Practical, simple and must be achievable in the normal course of business. Lawyers cannot effectively delegate classification of business records to intermediaries. Less than 15% of law firms today have a policy that covers electronic communication; over 90% have policy governing paper. This lack of Guidance increases risk, increases potential cost of discovery, increases cost of email storage. Policy elements must address: Filing and retention guidelines Accommodate compliance obligations, privacy and confidentiality concerns, litigation readiness Reflect employee workflow and work habits Maximize the use of technology Minimize the use of manual classifications File substantive emails; they belong to the official file for client-representation and firm management correspondence File emails and attachments as a unit to preserve context File a separate copy of an attachment for drafting Implement BRCo Email Lifecycle Management. The user community is told “You file the email in a folder, we keep it. You file the email in the client file, we keep it longer.” We recommend iManage WorkSite controls the client file. The lifecycle address Classification of email as non-records, convenience records or official records Filing emails that are useful for some period of time but should not be part of the official client record into personal email folders where they’ll be purged after a period of time (typically 2 years) Emails that are not filed are purged after some period of time (typically 60 days) Filing substantive emails that belong to the official file to WorkSite Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
The challenge is to provide reasonable and realistic workflows – intuitive and promote adoption key. The BRCo Email Lifecycle Management. The user community is told “You file the email in a folder, we keep it. You file the email in the client file, we keep it longer.” We recommend iManage WorkSite controls the client file. The lifecycle address Classification of email as non-records, convenience records or official records Filing emails that are useful for some period of time but should not be part of the official client record into personal email folders where they’ll be purged after a period of time (typically 2 years) Emails that are not filed are purged after some period of time (typically 60 days) Filing substantive emails that belong to the official file to WorkSite We recommend filing email into WorkSite to co-exist with all other client work product. Productivity is improved by creating a single official record; filing effectiveness is improved using the BRCo WorkSmart tools to shave milliseconds off a processes that are repeated constantly… Our email Lifecycle management workflow has three branches: Non records. Purged if not filed based on time. Convenience records. Foldered by client or client-matter and available for archiving and future deletion Official records. Foldered for filed directly into the official repository. Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
See more at http://insight.brco.com/worksmart/blog/ Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
Based on the economic backdrop in 2009, the mandate to IT is clear. With p roductivity drop is pushing firms to price and deliver differently – where do you start. IT has to demonstrate value to the business through prudent, cost effective innovation using existing tools Email communication demands clear policy and efficient product to respond to staff ratios and volume. Learning services have to respond with new techniques, including social networking and scenario based solutions. Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
Professionals need learning resources that address: Training has to be relevant + timely. Think http://creative.brco.com/CrabbySnacks/index.htm is a great example Training has to be a resource to return to. See http://creative.brco.com/MCC/!SSL!/FlashHelp/Matter_Centric_Computing.htm Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
What’s best for the firm is best for me Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation
Remember that a financial crisis is a terrible thing to waste. The current productivity drop is pushing firms to price, staff and deliver services differently. Some organizations are re-think associate compensation, re-think staffing models for the delivery of legal services. The IT community must take this into consideration in planning and project delivery. You must enable lawyers to become an “enhanced practitioner” (Susskind) that blend legal skills with deal/project delivery. They need different tools for different times. We believe there is a shift in delivery models. Firms have a mandate to do more with less. Email and documents are your critical assets follow our key mandates to leverage your investment Push work to offices where it can be most efficiently performed and develop serious project management skills. The objective is to blend Legal Services with effective project delivery. WorkSite is the platform, our Extender and wiki tools provided with SmartStart make it simple to push work to the right staff level, while retaining control. Drive down the Worksite TCO through virtualization and chase the space. Manage email with a clear, frequently communicated Email Lifecycle Management story Plan and continue change management and learning Information as of Q3 2009 Contact Peter Buck | pbuck@brco.com about this presentation