Blogs

Law Firm Attorneys and Business Professionals Survey Results: Bridging the Divide is Good Business

By Brian Balistreri posted 02-14-2023
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***Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the co-authors, Kristin Rhodes, Senior Practice Manager, Paul Hastings LLP and Harriet Joubert-Vaklyes, Senior Project Manager - Legal Operations, CBRE Group. I am going to admit something embarrassing to you: I’ve been in legal for more than 15 years and I’m not an attorney. I thought about going to law school but at that time the economy had recently tanked and many of the associates I worked with seemed unhappy. Instead, I got my Master’s degree in philosophy and public policy. It’s important for you to know that because I work in a profession where degrees and pedigree matter . They matter so much ...
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The Vital Role of Emotional Intelligence and Interpersonal Skills in Today's Legal Field

By Brian Balistreri posted 02-13-2023
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Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the author Ricci Masero, Marketing Manager, Intellek. In his role as Marketing Manager at Intellek, Ricci helps firms to access technology that will revolutionize training, accelerate digital transformation, boost adoption, and streamline employee onboarding. The demand for employees with strong soft skills, such as emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills , is on the rise in today's professional world. Organizations are recognizing the importance of these skills in creating a positive and productive workplace culture, fostering better communication and conflict resolution, and improving overall ...
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Tools to Tackle the To-Do List in Law Firms

By Brian Balistreri posted 01-23-2023
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***Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the author, Sachin Gupta, Knowledge Management Attorney, Latham & Watkins LLP.' The “to-do” list has been around since, well, since lists have been around. Yet many businesses still struggle with managing an ever-growing task list and copious amounts of email. The marketplace for solutions in this space has seen explosive. There are multitude of tools available from kanban-based Trello to software development-oriented Jira. Yet a recent ILTA survey revealed that many law firms have not implemented any project management software and still heavily rely on email. Even at firms that have implemented solutions, ...
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Future of Practice Management Tools: Automation, Integration, AI

By Brian Balistreri posted 01-17-2023
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***Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the author, Bill Bice, CEO, nQ Zebraworks. I’ve spent my career in legal tech working on practice management tools. I believe we are on the verge of a revolution in this space, driven by advances in automation, integration, and AI. Automation – No-code and Low-code Automation doesn’t sound like a new element since it is inherent in why you use these tools. Too often, however, it requires the law firm or specific practice areas to conform to the tool instead of the other way around. In the past, custom programming would be required to meet those specific needs. And then when the requirements changed, ...
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May the RPA Force Be With You

By Gordon Moffat posted 10-25-2022
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Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the author, Emily McIntosh , D.Eng., Senior Manager | Forensics, Ernst & Young, LLP. A quick internet search will return pages of results with impressive statistics about how many organizations have either successfully deployed RPA solutions or are planning to do so. Yet, most of us have encountered “bots” in our personal lives through only (sometimes painful) chat bots. Since the main benefits of automation include cost and time savings, you would expect to see more implementations in the legal industry, where we constantly feel the pressure to “do more with less.” In this blog post, we will discuss how ...
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COVID-19 Was a Big Catalyst for Law Firms, Is It Still? Or What Will Move the Needle Next?

By Christiane Matuch posted 09-09-2022
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Please enjoy this blog post which is posted on behalf of the author, Ann Rainhart, Chief Strategy Officer, Taft Law. Evolving takes time. In fact, lasting evolutionary change takes about one million years. Of course when we talk about change in law firms we don’t really mean the “Darwin” kind of evolution. For those of us who focus on doing things better and faster, and who care about helping people find meaning and success in their professional lives, we’ve spent most of our careers talking about helping lawyers and law firms evolve the practice of law in innovative and successful ways. And many of us might confess to feeling like significant change would ...
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Legal Project Management and Practice Management - They Sound Similar, But How Are They Different and How Do They Complement Each Other?

By Kristin Rhodes posted 06-29-2022
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Please enjoy this co-authored blog post by Kristin Rhodes, Senior Practice Manager, Paul Hastings LLP, Mike Ertel, KM Attorney, Paul Hastings LLP and Lori Millang, Legal Project Manager, Paul Hastings LLP. Introduction Legal Project Management (“LPM”) and Practice Management (“PM”) are two terms that are commonly interchanged or misused. This blog post offers a concise recitation of the differences and similarities between LPM and PM. There is often synergy between the roles, but they each bring their own value to the practice. This blog focuses on their unique contributions. In broad strokes, Practice Management (“PM”) is the global ...
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How to Implement an Embedded Practice Management Program

By Kristin Rhodes posted 04-27-2022
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Please enjoy this blog post co-authored by Kristin Rhodes, Senior Practice Manager, Paul Hastings LLP and Mike Ertel, KM Attorney, Paul Hastings LLP. Our previous posts discussed practice management generally and how it adds value to law firms . This post discusses how to introduce an embedded practice manager. A new practice manager has several process goals, including: Obtain holistic view of priorities Generate simple and high value wins Gain champions Build trust Reaching these goals is an iterative process requiring a slow build of reliance over time. They are also non-sequential and can inform each other. As you learn about priorities, ...
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Practice Management: What are the Practical Benefits?

By Kristin Rhodes posted 01-28-2022
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Please enjoy this co-authored blog post by Kristin Rhodes, Senior Practice Manager, Paul Hastings LLP and Mike Ertel, KM Attorney, Paul Hastings LLP. A properly implemented practice management program is an arrow in your firm’s quiver that helps maintain efficient and profitable practices. We discussed practice management generally in a previous post ( Practice Management: What Is It and Why Do You Need It? ), but will now take a deeper dive into the day-to-day practical value it adds to the firm’s partners and employees. The Benefits of Practice Management to Practice Group Leadership The practice manager is the right-hand person, or chief of ...
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The Impact of Staffing on the Adoption of Legal Innovation

By Christiane Matuch posted 12-20-2021
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By Christiane Matuch, LL.M., ALPM and Harriet Joubert-Vaklyes Have you ever found yourself in the situation where the firm has bought or developed a new legal tech tool, but nobody knows how to make the most of it? Or maybe one person knows but just can’t handle the volume of support? Who are the first adopters of new, legal technology solutions in your firm, and does it matter what kind of support you provide? It sure does! (At least that is what our latest survey shows.) Let’s get into it. Our survey shows that there are different levels of adoption between shareholders/partners, associates, paralegals, and staff. Almost 90% of respondents stated that ...
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Practice Management: What Is It and Why Do You Need It?

By Kristin Rhodes posted 12-17-2021
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Please enjoy this blog post co-authored by Kristin Rhodes, Senior Practice Manager, Paul Hastings LLP and Mike Ertel, KM Attorney, Paul Hastings LLP. Introduction Practice management in law firms is not new. While some firms have had practice management programs for decades, many still do not. The definition and implementation of the program varies widely across firms, and even across practice groups within the same firm. This is the first in a series of blog posts designed to provide an overview practice management to help you consider whether your firm should implement or bolster its practice management efforts. What is Practice Management? ...
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How the Low-Tech, 30-Year-Old PDF Became Dominant—And What Should We Do About It?

By Bill Bice posted 11-04-2021
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Please enjoy this blog post authored by Bill Bice, CEO, nQ Zebraworks. Now is the time to leverage the accelerated change fostered by the pandemic to push your firm forward in your digital transformation, leveraging a rage example of technology that has aged well, the PDF. In legal, we constantly work with PDFs, but when was the last time you actually thought about the PDF itself? Why is this 30-year-old technology the dominant way that we share and store documents? It certainly wasn't obvious at the start that the PDF format would even survive, never mind become dominant. It all started with a rather noble goal back in the early 1990s, which ...
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Be Selfish! Break Down a Silo—or At Least Start Melting One Down a Bit

By Christiane Matuch posted 07-27-2021
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Co-Authored by Christiane Matuch, Innovation Project Manager, Greenberg Traurig and Michael Ertel, Practice Innovation & Knowledge Attorney, Paul Hastings LLP. Silos in the Delivery of Legal Services When groups of people or departments with varying expertise need to respond uniformly to customers, silos can get in the way and lead to a miserable customer experience. When we discuss breaking down silos, what we really mean is fostering collaboration. Collaboration is the process where two or more people, entities, or organizations work together to achieve a goal. Sounds simple, but it is not! Collaboration requires hard work—every day! That ...
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What’s Your Problem? Don’t Solutionize!

By Michael Ertel posted 07-26-2021
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Introduction Understanding the concept of solutionizing—and avoiding it—can protect you from creating solutions that fail to solve your end users’ actual problems. On its face, this seems like a simple common sense concept, but many people still unknowingly solutionize. If you take a deep dive, I bet you can find failed solutions that resulted from solutionizing. What is Solutionizing? Solutionizing is when you create a solution, but the problem your solution is trying to solve has not been defined or, even worse, might not even exist. This happens when you make presumptions about what a problem may (or may not) be, and then you create a solution without ...
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Apps for Career Development

By Tracey Pardo posted 05-17-2021
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In a recent ILTA podcast featuring Josh Lazar, Chief Information Officer, 18th Judicial Circuit, Florida and Sean McGinty, Learning Product Engineer, Simplify Compliance, they touched upon several great resources to enhance your skills and how to go about taking that first step forward in investing in yourself and your career. Edx (www.edx.org) Edx offers free online courses from over 160 of the world’s best universities, colleges and organizations. Originally founded by professors from by MIT and Harvard. The courses are taught by leaders in the industry and credential professors. They also provide an option to pay for verified course certificates. ...
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What Matters Most in Proving the ROI in Legal Innovation - Summary Notes

By Christiane Matuch posted 03-26-2021
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Please enjoy the summary notes from the 3/25 Twitter Discussion entitled " What Matters Most in Proving the ROI in Legal Innovation " authored by Christiane Matuch, Innovation Project Manager, Greenberg Traurig. What matters most in proving the ROI in legal innovation? Meet the needs (genuine use case, scoped and built out) Identify the User (who are you setting out to serve, identify THEIR needs) Adoption (mostly within the intended group) Gather metrics about your innovative solution Quantitative v. qualitative value? How do you measure that? Increased revenue or client engagement Risk reduction Define what end stage success ...
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Using Too Many Productivity Apps May Actually Decrease Productivity!

By Michael Ertel posted 03-11-2021
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Please enjoy this blog post authored by Mike Ertel, Practice Innovation & Knowledge Attorney, Paul Hastings, LLP. “App Fatigue” is annoying, frustrating, and decreases productivity. Don’t be fooled into thinking you are productive just because you are using an app marketed as an efficiency booster. The purpose of this blog entry is two-fold. First, to get you thinking about whether the multiple apps you are using at your firm are actually helping your employees. Second, to help foster empathy for your end users who may suffer from app fatigue, which may help you offer better (not necessarily more!) solutions. App Fatigue at Home In your personal ...
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Law Firm-Client Successful Collaboration Stories

By Barbara Gondim da Rocha posted 11-23-2020
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“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” – Charles Darwin The Underrated Skill of Listening to Your Clients. A few weeks ago, in October 2020, I had the opportunity to interview @Greg Lambert , Chief Knowledge Services Officer at Jackson Walker, on a podcast entitled “ Separating True Innovation from Hype ”. We had a very exciting conversation on how truly innovative law firms can differentiate themselves by delivering value and enhancing customer satisfaction. One of the things I asked Greg to comment on was how law firms can foster innovation to meet ...
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Selecting Projects that Provide Value to an Organization

By Allison Kennedy posted 10-13-2020
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Selecting Projects that Provide Value to an Organization Each day, projects are selected within an organization for a variety of reasons and not all of them have straightforward purpose or value. The role of a project manager is to understand and illustrate why the project was prioritized in order to align the project team toward executing the initiative that has been made by leadership. In order to draw enough justification to select a project, every organization needs strategic business goals, which offer a purpose and a prioritized hierarchy of potential added business value. For this article, Cooley LLP's business value has been defined as the net-benefits ...
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How Firms are Tracking Client Requirements and Managing Changes Over Time

By Daniel Wood posted 06-30-2020
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“The bane of our existence.” That is how one law firm general counsel described outside counsel guidelines (OCGs) at last year’s Law Firm General Counsel Forum at the Aon Law Firm Symposium. Bane or boon, if you work in a law firm environment, OCGs are a daily fact of life. Clients use OCGs to communicate expectations regarding the handling of their matters. Ensuring that OCGs make it to the right people is critical. Accuracy in timekeeping along with a proper understanding of correct phase/task/activity codes, narrative requirements, and timing restrictions cannot be overstated. Knowing and doing are two different things, however, which points to an even larger ...
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