|
Are You Bleeding Time?
Time is money . . . A
lawyers stock-in-trade is his time . . .Time waits for no man . . .Time flies.
It would appear from the
above that time is both valuable . . . and fleeting. Most lawyers profess to
value their time more than any other commodity. Yet their behavior belies the
concept.
Over 20 years ago “case
management” programs broke upon the scene. These programs promised to
centralize the management of cases within the law office and save time by making
almost all relevant information available to the entire firm. While originally
aimed at litigators, they could just as easily be adapted to transactional
practices.
Regardless of how they
could be used, in practice they weren’t. The technology lay dormant until the
end of the ‘90s, at which time they slowly began increasing in popularity. It
wasn’t that lawyers suddenly discovered these programs, it was just that the
mountains of electronic information with which they were faced had to be
organized.
At first, they started
using “personal information managers,” or PIMs, such as Lotus Organizer and
Microsoft Outlook. Many picked up on “contact managers,” such as Act! and
Goldmine, and calendar-centric programs, such as Ecco. These programs all
addressed, to a greater or lesser degree, the three tools used by almost
everyone: The Rolodex, the calendar, and the task list.
Today, modern case
management systems, (now more accurately dubbed “practice management systems”),
have taken the concept of the PIM and adapted it to the legal profession,
extending its scope to include all kinds of legal matters, and expanding its
functionality to encompass the management of all the different types of
information with which attorneys deal on a daily basis.
As a practical matter,
these systems did not break any new ground. All they did was integrate
functions performed by specialized programs designed to solve specific
problems. There are still many of these specialized programs being used, and
because of their dedicated purpose they are often more robust in their roles
than are the practice management programs.
However, the practice
management programs have evolved to the point where their individual components
satisfy the needs of all but the most specialized practices. Today, they
represent the greatest time saving, and hence income generating, tools available
to the profession.
Calendaring/Scheduling
Have you ever stopped off
at the courthouse to file a document while on the way to the office and bumped
into your partner who is attending a hearing, (or filing a document)? While
solo practitioners never experience this, it happens often in offices with two
or more attorneys. Result: Valuable time is wasted by having two people make a
trip to perform tasks that could have just as easily been done by one person.
A centralized scheduling
program would disclose such duplicate tasks. In some cases involving routine
appearances a single attorney can pinch hit for one or more other attorneys in
the office, thereby saving a LOT of valuable time.
Some firms go years without
a meeting of the attorneys because determining when the participants are
available at the same time is an almost impossible task, given the fact that
each attorney keeps his or her own calendar.
Some sophisticated
centralized scheduling programs have the ability to identify concurrent “free
time” among a group of attorneys. Even without such a feature, just the
existence of a single source of information about time commitments facilitates
scheduling much-needed “decision-making time.”
Scheduling programs go one
step further in that they track the availability of resources shared by members
of the firm, such as conference rooms, presentation tools, trial exhibits, etc.
Critical Dates
The consequences of missing
a hearing, failing to file a pleading, or letting a statute of limitations run
are disastrous. Run-of-the-mill calendar programs and PIMs do not recognize the
overwhelming importance of critical dates to a lawyer. Reminders, or ticklers,
must be scheduled just like the events themselves. Doing so is burdensome and
time-consuming, and is often forgone. Imagine the feeling of arriving at the
office and asking your secretary what is on the schedule for the day and
learning that you were supposed to attend a hearing at 9:00 AM in a courthouse
20 miles away.
All practice managements
systems provide for “automatic ticklers” . . . reminders alerting you to an
approaching deadline that appear on your calendar several times before it
arrives. There just aren’t any surprises.
Court rules, statutes,
regulations and task performance timetables often dictate when certain deadlines
must be met in order to avoid exposure to malpractice charges. The number,
variety and complexity of such rules often make determining such critical dates
a difficult and time-consuming task.
Legal docket/calendar
software can streamline the entire process. Event chains, (also called chain
templates, court rules, calendar plans, etc.), can be developed using built-in
date calculators. These programs take into consideration rules relating to
ticklers or reminders, calendar or work days, weekends and holidays, and even
“mail delivery days,” in determining the dates before which certain tasks must
be performed. More importantly, these event chains automatically recalculate
all related or dependent dates if a “key” date is changed.
While the time saved using
these programs is substantial, the risk management implications are even
greater.
Contact Management
Does your office maintain a
Rolodex file to keep track of people and organizations? Where is it kept? How
much time is spent requesting and waiting for information contained on the file?
How much time is spent collecting and disseminating that information? How many
red accordion files are in your room? How many of those files contain
information that may be important to others in your office? Why are they in
your room, instead of the file room where they would be available to others?
Each of the above questions
addresses sources of wasted time. The answers are predictable:
Almost every office
maintains some sort of contact list, and traditionally it has been on a
Rolodex. Common sense would place the Rolodex on the receptionist’s desk where
all the office contacts are concentrated. All too often there is a separate
Rolodex for each attorney, and it is maintained by his or her secretary. This
ensures that the time of at least two people will be consumed just finding a
telephone number or address.
Most attorneys are
surrounded by all the files on which they are currently working, and in some
cases those that they might have to work on. Even worse, some of the
files are HUGE, and represent matters in which several people in the office are
involved. The icing on the cake is that they are usually kept close only to
look up an address, social security number, or some other mundane piece of
information that may also be on the Rolodex.
Practice management
systems, and the PIMs that preceded them, provide instant access to all that
information by everyone in the office . . . simultaneously. In most cases,
there is simply no reason physical files must be kept in an attorney’s office.
!
Conflicts of Interest
Almo Alnost every office has a
conflict of interest checking system. In most cases it is called, “the lawyer’s
memory.” In some offices that have determined that a computer is necessary, the
client list on the firm’s time and billing system provides a ready list of
potential conflicts.
As a practical matter, the
first method is probably superior to the second because many conflicts have
their roots outside the client list. At least the lawyer’s memory isn’t
restricted to such a narrow class of individuals and companies.
Then there is the act of
actually checking for conflicts. In many offices a new matter memorandum is
circulated among the attorneys. If it gets read at all you are ahead of the
game. In many cases it is relegated to the “invisible pile”–a stack of “things
I’ve got to attend to”–where it disappears from the radar screen.
In smaller offices the
checking process is much more efficient: One partner yells down the hall to the
other partner, “Hey Joe! You ever heard of a company call Boeing?” or something
to that effect.
All this is pretty silly
when you consider that the indexing programs discussed below under Work
Product is capable of checking every word of every document on the firm’s
hard drive for any of the names that might give rise to a conflict of interest.
The entire process would take just a few seconds, and would be MUCH more
thorough.
Matter, or Case
Information
The majority of information
about a matter is maintained in predictable locations within a file:
Correspondence, Pleadings, Research, Notes, Pleadings, Discovery, etc. One of
the major distinctions between practice management systems and PIMs is the
ability to organize such matter-related information. A single matter may
contain information relating to many different contacts, and only a practice
management system can bring all that information together.
Apart from the obvious
information that must be displayed, such as parties, matter or case numbers,
opposing attorneys, etc., there are all the documents that embody the detail
necessary to handle the matter competently. Electronically associating those
documents with the appropriate matters represents a major benefit of a practice
management system. It is the equivalent of the red accordion file, but it
doesn’t take up any room in your office, it is easier to find things contained
in it, and it is available to all who are working on the same matter.
!
Document Management
Searching for documents
related to a particular matter is a standard law firm exercise. Correspondence,
pleadings, memoranda, phone messages, etc. are squirreled away by whoever last
looked at them. While the social interaction stimulated by the search may be
enjoyable, it is not very profitable. Document management programs are designed
to eliminate this.
The rationale for document
management is obvious: Documents should be associated with the matters to which
they are related. You don’t keep name and address information, correspondence,
pleadings, memoranda, etc. in separate file cabinets, and you shouldn’t do so
with the electronic forms of these documents.
Most attorneys already
maintain separate client or matter folders in which they store related
documents. However, like e-mail, this system is not related to the contact
manager, time and billing program, or calendar.
!
E-Mail Management
Tracking down E-Mail
messages is almost as bad as, and in some cases worse than, searching for other
types of documents, because the messages seldom find their way to a piece of
paper. Either they are buried somewhere in the electronic in-box of the
recipient, or are diligently filed in folders carefully maintained by the
recipient on his or her own personal computer, (which is usually password
protected).
Even people who rely
heavily on their computers will tell you that having a separate system for
keeping track of e-mail is a major inconvenience. Many practice management
systems have their own e-mail systems, (or link to commonly used e-mail
systems), that allow you to associate e-mail messages with contacts, matters, or
both.
Work Product
Duplicating intellectual
effort borders on criminality when it comes to evaluating time wasting
activities. Yet “reinventing the wheel” is the norm in offices that don’t share
work product among attorneys. The first thing a lawyer does when faced with a
research task is “tackle it.” While some lawyers “hit the books,” many, (if not
most), will log onto Lexis, WestLaw, or some other legal research service, and
use built in “search engines” to look up keywords associated with the issues
involved. In addition to the legal research services, Internet search engines,
such as Google, AltaVista, etc. often yield secondary sources supporting legal
arguments.
Wouldn’t it be great if a
lawyer could search all the files in the office for prior work product bearing
on the issues at hand? Well, guess what? It can be done with very little
effort and at no additional cost.
How? You ask. Recent
versions of Windows have built in “indexing” capabilities. What this means is
that you can tell your computer to examine every word on its hard drive and
create a searchable “index” that points directly to every occurrence of each
word. This is exactly what Lexis, Westlaw, Lois, Google, and all the other
search engines do on a colossal scale.
In addition, MS-Word comes
with a program called FastFind, and WordPerfect has Quickfinder, each of which
perform a similar indexing task. There are also “shareware” and public domain
(i.e. free) indexing programs.
Bottom line: There is no
excuse for duplicating the efforts of another person who has already performed
the same or a similar research task. If a relevant brief, memorandum, or other
document is stored on your computer system you should be able to locate it just
as quickly and easily as Westlaw locates precedent containing the search terms
you enter.
Conclusion
While virtually all the
practice management systems available today have many common features, some go
further and integrate other office functions, such as time and billing,
accounting, and research functions. Time Matters/Billing Matters and ProLaw
fall into this category. It is interesting to note that both of these programs
have been adopted by LexisNexis and Westlaw, respectively, as the preferred
programs for organizing research material and associating it with the matters to
which it applies..
Many of those that do not
integrate those functions link with programs that do. Amicus Attorney and
Abacus Law fall into this category. Still others are “modular,” in that the
various functions are embodied in programs that are designed to work in concert,
but are sold separately. Software Technology, Inc. produces tightly integrated
modules for time and billing, (TABS III), general ledger, (GLS), accounts
payable, (APS), trust accounting, and practice management, (Practice Master).
Many of these also afford the user the choice of using the integrated or modular
function, or linking to a more robust, specialized third party program. For
example, most of the programs mentioned in this paragraph, while providing the
various functions discussed in this article, also provide links to Worldox,
Outlook Express, Paperport, and other “best of breed” programs.
Regardless of the system
adopted, all practice management systems represent a major step forward in time
management capabilities. As more firms adopt these programs, the delivery of
legal services becomes more competitive. While adoption of more efficient
methods of practice is elective today, the time is fast approaching when failure
to make better use of time will result in the failure of a practice.
|
