Law firm leaders are more than aware of the perfect storm of fundamental industry shifts that have shaken the legal industry from to its core.

Let's Review...

• Revenue pressure
• Challenged profitability
• Cash flow pressure
• Reduced realization
• Reduced leverage

Leading Indicators - More Turbulence on the Way

• Large firm shutdowns and Mid-size firm shutdown threats
• Significant reduction in law firm student enrollment - this indicates broader recognition that becoming a lawyer isn't the sure thing it used to be
• Higher partner versus associate billable hours ratio - indicates experience is key to continued revenue and profitability

Culture May Be the Biggest 'Hidden' Threat

Perhaps one of the most dangerous threats to law firm survival are the long-term cultural considerations that directly impact the ability of firms to respond to the real-world current and coming survival threats.

I've been consulting nearly 20 years with law firms and other corporations, so have had a third-party observer seat to the differences between other industries and the legal industry.  It has become crystal clear to me that the legal industry, more than any other I've worked with, operates on a 'follower' approach to both strategic and tactical decision-making.  

"What are other law firms doing?" is the most common question I hear when a firm is considering any perceived 'new' thing.  

I suppose that approach may work well when pretty much every law firm is fat and happy doing what they've been doing in essentially the same way they've been doing it for decades.  And, of course, when your only real competitors are other law firms - but those days are over.

Very quickly this deeply embedded 'follower mentality' has become the enemy of survival and the ability to thrive.  That's because INNOVATION and UNIQUE DIFFERNTIATION are the attributes now key to success.  You can't get either of those things when you are following - because that means you are already behind and in danger of being tromped by what are now deeply intensive competitors - and not just other law firms!  

The fact is, that firms that will survive and thrive in these new (and forever evolving) market conditions are those that are able to transform (not just 'change') the way they operate and deliver services (and products!) to their clients.  Fundamentally, it will be the firms that lead the charge in innovating and effecting these transformations that win and win big (with a bigger chunk of the pie becoming available as other firms fall off).  Those that don't innovate, but follow, will enter the 'spiral down decline' spin cycle from which they won't be able to recover - it will simply be too late.

Learn How to Win As a Law Firm Leader

We help law firm leaders and their teams think differently on a strategic level - but we don't abandon them there.  We keep going - helping them implement their transformational strategies in ways that are 'digestible' inside the law firm culture that exists today.  Our customers leverage our experience in introducing 'disruptive' ways of conducting the business of law while maintaining the cohesiveness of the running firm.  Its an art form to say the least...because you have to push the envelope, while at the same time bring everyone along with you.  We know how to do that strategically, incrementally and over the long-term.  

If this discussion resonates for you, I encourage you to schedule a strategy session with us.  If nothing else, our experts can help you vet your thoughts and ideas and provide some key lessons learned that will help you not just weather the storm, but come out cleansed and ready to take on the new world!

With the ever-accelerating commoditization of products and services in the legal industry, it is clear that the new key intellectual property of law firms is the HOW legal products and services get delivered as much as or more so than the WHAT. 

Success today and in the future relies on a law firm's ability to market, sell and then execute delivery of legal services and/or products more efficiently, with predictable cost structures and with better corporate governance than their competitors (other law firms; on-line legal sites; outsourcing organizations).

To do this requires 3 Core Capabilities:

1. The ability to strategically define optimized business processes (governance, core and supporting) focused on enhancing efficiency while simultaneously mitigating risk. 
2. The ability to codify defined processes using technology that automates where feasible, and coordinates and informs work (with meaningful information needed to complete work) for individuals and teams of workers where automation is not feasible or worthwhile.  And of course, the discernment to know the difference.
3. The ability to define and effectively coalesce and manage new types of teams (permanent and transient) made up of cross-functional; cross-corporate; free-lance and globally dispersed and mobile resources made quickly and safely productive by plugging them into the codified processes you have implemented.

Moving your firm towards this new way of working requires a step-by-step, not an all-at-once approach.  The way to start is to find one key business process and positively effect it with application of all three of the above described capabilities. 

This is your 'building and flexing' of your firm's new muscles.  And just like getting in shape, it takes time and persistence, but the results become noticeable pretty quickly if you just stick with it a little while. 

See our other blogs and free whitepapers for more information on how to get your firm on the road to getting in shape in 2012.  Happy New Year!

One of my blog readers and I were exchanging thoughts around Rate Exception Management and he raised a great point that we haven't discussed directly yet...the new competitive forces facing law firms. 

One of the biggest competitors to Law Firms? - Their clients.  I talk about it all the time with our Corporate Legal clients, but not too much with law firms - and I have no idea why! 

It's a tough question:  How can today's law firms increase profitability when their clients are increasingly becoming one of their top competitors?

Drivers For Decreased Utilization of Outside Counsel

Corporate General Counsel know that using their in-house team effectively (for the highest strategic value and highest risk legal services) for their corporation is ideal.  Not just because it's more cost-effective.  They look to leverage the innate understanding in-house teams have about the company's strategic objectives and their more visceral understanding of appropriate risk profiles for their organization.  General Counsel often believe these key factors can contribute to better, faster and more aligned results with less overall effort.  Although this perhaps has always been true, it's risen rapidly to the forefront of their minds over the last 3-4 years as a result of:

• Economic conditions and pressure on them to lower the unit cost of legal

• Globalization of their corporation's business and the new complexities it brings

• Innovative options for either automating or outsourcing transactional, repetitive tasks (e.g., e-discovery reviews)

So how are law firms going to succeed in maintaining profitability when their clients become increasingly effective competitors? 

1. By showcasing depth of expertise, value and calculated return-on-investment

2. Through the ability to nimbly move on a firmwide basis towards the ever-changing 'gaps' that get opened up due to the rapid market and legal changes impacting clients

3. Via intelligent and proactive marketing, leveraging experience and successes for deeper client penetration and cross-pollination into similar prospects

4. With packaged service offerings that provide budget and value certainty to clients that would not be achievable internally

5. By demonstrating excellence through efficient and streamlined business operations

As we work with law firms to manage their business on an enterprise basis (as opposed to the more traditional siloes), we empower them to make intelligence-based strategy shifts across the firm based on real-time information in a predictive, not retrospective manner. And, because processes are codified, but maleable, these strategic shifts can be very quickly 'embedded' into the daily operations of the law firm. It is true enterprise agility - and it's a must, not an optional component of any viable law firm today.

Of course, law firm management has the added challenge of managing not just the business change, but the serious cultural and mindset change that is magnified for them due to their corporate make-up. As a result, law firm executives identify the areas of change required, and then wrestle with how to introduce those changes without prompting the feared diaspora of partners which can quickly snowball into shutdown. See our blog post on "Behavioral Modification:  A Real Law Firm Management Strategy” to learn how BPM helps firms do both at the same time.

Thanks to our blog readers for adding so much great fodder to this conversation - Keep the comments coming!

Our work with customers has proven over and over again that a process-driven approach, applied thoughtfully, is the best way to achieve almost immediate and, most importantly, sustainable (self-enforcing) change. 

We've all had the experience of what it's like implementing and manually enforcing change without the benefit of a process-driven approach. I'm sure you've got a story like this one:

A few weeks back, I was talking to a Finance person at a firm who was relating to me the pain they are having in managing, monitoring and tracking Alternative Fee Arrangements. His finance team went to great lengths to put together a spreadsheet and provided it to the accounting team.  Of course, the 'assumption' was that the accounting team would maintain the spreadsheet going forward and that this would allow at least the basic tracking they needed.  But...well, you know the answer - it didn't happen and in a few months they were right back into the confused, chaotic world they had tried to address.  They essentially got no where.

So what happened? 

This example is a classic one - you spend time putting something like that spreadsheet together and 'expect' it will continue to be used, but very often those kinds of mechanisms fall by the way side.  The reason is that the usage is not codified and enforced, and therefore does not become a natural part of the day-to-day business process. 

The Policy Police

Aren't you exhausted from manual policing of procedures and policies?? That's what a process-driven approach fixes!

The Big 3 

There are a plethora of reasons why a process-driven strategy and approach makes a fundamental difference in the way businesses are managed, but let's look at what I consider to be the 'Big 3'.

1.  Enterprise Agility through self-enforcing procedures and policies.  Business process management ensures that adherence to procedures and policies becomes part of the natural way business is conducted, alleviating the need for 'manual' follow-ups or policing.  That is not to say oversight is removed, but instead is just another coordinated part of day-to-day activities.  

And, of course, processes are not stagnant!  Once you've applied a process-driven approach using BPM strategies and technologies, you've now got a built-in mechanism for 'tweaking' procedures and policies, or introducing new ones.  This means a new kind of fluidity and agility for your business now and forever!

2.  Enterprise-Awareness Built-In through holistic thought processes.  

Thinking about business activities within the context of a process, and then thinking about the process in the context of an entire LIFECYCLE of processes in which it lives forces transformative thinking in any organization.  Siloes naturally begin to melt away as cross-functional understandings are forged.  

3.  Enhanced Risk Management and substantial efficiency gains as a natural by-product of how the business is run.  While your codified policies ensure adherence to risk management and loss prevention strategies - you are getting incredible monetary benefits at the same time!  Raising visibility into information locked up in existing business systems provides inreased Return-On-Investment on business systems that you thought had given all they could!  Most notably, your most important assets - your people, are being empowered with meaningful, relevant and real-time information and provided new bandwidth to be applied to higher-value work (as opposed to labor-intensive manual workflow management or duplicative data entry).  

These 'Big 3' are the core reason Law Firms around the globe have identified Business Process Management as integral to their survival and competitiveness.  Read more about Law Firm BPM in our FREE whitepaper - Why Law Firms Can't Survive Without BPM.

We've all heard and experienced the hub-bub about Alternative Fee Arrangements.  You can read more about our thoughts and work with customers relating to AFAs in other posts in this blog.

The reality, though, is that most law firms are still reliant upon and use billing rates for the majority of their matters.  Seems like old hat, nothing changed...but that's simply not true.  Even if you are still billing hourly, you can't escape the impact of the new industry expectations for legal services costs.  Maybe your firm has experienced the situation...

The new rates memo goes out, and things seem fairly quiet.  And then...first year billing time hits.  You send out the proformas for attorney review reflecting the new rates, and low and behold the accounting team is FLOODED with Rate Exception requests.

These have to be worked out, negotiations accomplished and bills updated and reviewed (AGAIN) before you can even get the bill out to the customer. 

And, in addition, lack of oversight of these negotiated rates may mean your firm is 'giving away' more than you realize until it's too late!

Poor Rate Exception Management Leads to Decayed Profitability and More

Increasingly, today’s law firm executives are turning to Business Process Management to deliver the efficiencies and enhanced loss prevention they know are required to maintain competitive advantage.

Those of you used to reading this blog already know how we at Elegrity feel about this idea – we agree! 

That said, we never said being successful at implementing BPM doesn’t take effort and know-how.

Recently I was talking with a mid-tier firm on the east coast, and they asked me if it would take the 18 months another firm spent implementing their New Business Intake process.  “18 months?!”, I said.  “If it takes 18 months to implement your New Business Intake process, then we shouldn’t even try…because that would mean the value you should get from this implementation would be lost before you ever got to production!”

So why is it that so many law firms recognize the almost unparalleled benefit of a needed business process management project, but yet fail to reap the rewards they should?  Ok – the easy answer is, because they didn’t work with us…but I know you won’t just buy that, so let’s explore a bit deeper.

In talking with firms around the country, I’ve been able to discern 3 main reasons for these misses:

1.        BPM projects are hard to scope. No less of an authority than Gartner calls proper scoping one of the seven keys to BPM success. If you want to scope correctly, you’ll need experience in identifying the highest-value automation improvements that can deliver the greatest ROI in the shortest amount of time. Scope wrong and you’ll set your firm up for cost overruns, missed deadlines, and reduced overall value.  See my previous post for some tips on BPM project scoping.

2.        Law firms pick the wrong technology. Law firm IT departments often figure they’ll build their dream BPM solution around an off-the-shelf workflow or BPM tool. But these tools are incomplete by themselves – and they can lead IT on a years-long quest to fill in all the technical holes. Only if there’s time left over will they actually be able to address business users’ many requests for additional business-focused functionality. 

3.        Law firms use the wrong methodology. Running a BPM project isn’t quite like any other type of technology project. Unfortunately, many law firms head into BPM implementations with the faulty assumption that they’re really just embarking on a software development, systems integration, workflow, or other type of project. They figure they won’t need any specialized expertise – and that’s when things get hairy.

Avoid these Pitfalls with a Safer, More Cost-Effective Approach

Scoping errors can easily blow a hole in your budget. Using the wrong off-the-shelf tool can set you up for many months of tedious, frustrating rework. Treating a BPM project like just another software installation can leave you to face complex business process challenges alone – without the BPM experts who have been through it all before.

So, what’s the alternative? Whatever you do, don’t give up on BPM. Instead, take a safer, more cost-effective approach. We at Elegrity have written a white paper that outlines how to get started.

For more information on how you can launch a BPM automation project that takes your firm’s efficiency to a new level, download the free Elegrity white paper  LBMS: Platform for Streamlining Law Firm Business Processes.

Gartner has named effective scoping as one of the primary contributing factors to the success (or failure) of a Business Process Management (BPM) project.

This seems a strange thing to highlight, since every undertaken project has to have a valid scope, right?  The reason it got listed specifically for BPM is because it is a wholly different exercise with a wholly different impact on project success than a scope for a more traditional IT project. 

In this blog, we'll explore why this is the case, provide you with some basic pointers on how to be successful, as well as an innovative option for quickly getting to an ensured end-result.

1.  The Cost-Benefit and speed and scale of the Return-On-Investment for BPM projects is, more than any other type of IT project, directly tied to scope! 

Get your scoping wrong and you could end up spending an exorbitant amount of time and money on low-value or slow-value process improvements and completely miss the low-hanging fruit, high-value improvements.

ROI on a successful BPM project is IMMEDIATE, but only if the scoping is correct.

2.  Every business process can (and should be) viewed within the context of the LIFECYLE of its subject. 

Let's take the New Business Intake process.  It has two subjects...a client and a matter.  Both of these have a lifecycle of various processes relating to them (from pre-intake through closure).  These lifecycles are even more interesting, because they relate to each other.  Another example would be your New Hire process, which is, of course, part of the employee lifecycle.

If your scoping of one process is not considerate of the other processes it touches or impacts as part of the overall lifecycle, you just cost yourself money and lost value.  It's as simple and fast as that.

BUT, if you get this right...you essentially just MADE money, because you have ensured yourself that every ounce of the investment in this project is DIRECTLY LEVERAGABLE into process improvements in the future. 

Refer to our earlier blog "Managing Law Firm Nightmare: I Don't Even Know What is Going On!" for information about how lifecyle-cognizant process improvement provides transformative controls and visibility for law firms.

3.  Organizational Change Management considerations must be incorporated into your scoping. 

There is no single greater and swifter change that you can make in your firm than implementing a well-orchestrated business process.  That's a great thing!  BUT, it also means that you had better be cognizant of the organizational impacts firm-wide.  If you go too slowly, you didn't get the value you should have reaped as quickly as you should have reaped it.  If you go too fast the resistance to the changes may slow down the adoption rate, further implicating your ROI timeframe. 

Refer to our earlier blog post "Behavioral Modification - A Real Law Firm Management Strategy"  which discusses using BPM as a valid law firm management tool.

An Innovative Approach to BPM Scoping

Elegrity has been helping law firms and other customers scope BPM projects for success for over 8 years.  As a result, we have a highly developed methodology and a broad base of experience that we bring to bear to achieve effective scoping for BPM projects in a FRACTION of the time and with ensured fidelity of high-value return.

And here's the kicker...we do it for FREE for customers and qualified prospects who are serious about moving forward with transforming their firms with BPM.

Our approach is 100% focused on ensuring the highest value, most cost-effective scope is identified and budgeted.  In addition, we proactively calculate Return-On-Investment (ROI) to be used by the internal team to provide business justification to executives to ensure alignment at all levels of the firm.

If you are interested, contact us to see if your firm qualifies for this innovative, valuable and no-commitment scoping (a $10,000 value).

I can't tell you how many times over the past few years I've had CFOs, COOs, General Counsel, Managing Partners and other firm executives tell me that we could really help them if we could just "modify the behavior of their firm's users".  Of course, they are joking...well, at least partially!  But it turns out, we can help!  Don't believe me?  Read on...

About a month ago, I was talking to the CFO of a large, global law firm for which we have been implementing incremental process improvements over the past 2 years.  The firm started with the process automation of New Business Intake, which they have continued to extend and improve over time.  In addition, they have implemented subsequent process automation, like Lateral Hire and Matter Party Management, among others. The firm has been very successful at continuous process improvement, because they astutely target key strategic changes as they become priorities.

As a result, the CFO and Risk Management teams are, in fact, modifying behaviors within the firm as they go! 

This is exactly the approach we advocate and implement with our clients - introduce change incrementally and intelligently within a single user-friendly framework (our LBMS product).  Every change implemented further indoctrinates firm users, and their acceptance and tolerance of change increases, as they recognize the value in overall efficiency it is bringing them and the firm as a whole. 

Sound farfetched for your firm?  It's not as far away or hard as you may think!

Take a look at some of the most basic organizational change techniques we help law firm management employ:

1.  Implement business processes that have embedded business rules that ensure the process is followed in complete compliance with firm policies, but with the built-in flexibility necessary to accommodate the nuances that always exist within business environments.

• Example:  ensure that credit checks occur for all new clients, and enforce retainer check obtainment before intake process completes.

2.  Provide oversight visibility (and alerting) to key risk management, financial management and strategic management teams for proactive and intelligent adjustments.

• Example:  If Alternative Fee Arrangement is being utilized (and it was not previously reviewed by Finance), prompt immediate Finance Review by a Financial Analyst.

3. Hold the line of accountability consistently, across the firm.

• Example:  Provide ability for operational teams to return requests back to requestors if information is inaccurate or incomplete.  Even with the best business rules, requestors can sometimes send in a request that just isn't quite right.  Historically, central operational teams would just 'clean them up' because it was so arduous to send paper forms back, or email back and forth with the requestor.  But with effective business automation, 'training' of requestors by returning the request back for the additional information required is a fantastic way to change behavior and increase overall efficiency!

4.  'Bug' them just enough to act in a timely manner, and make it easy for them to do the work and move on so they can continue to focus on the practice of law! 

• Example:  Automate reminders and ticklers to ensure the users are timely in responding to information requests or approval requests.  Includes mobile review and approval.

5.  Ensure visibility into back-end business system information is provided securely to decision-makers to increase efficiency and accurate decision making.

• Example:  Provide Accounts Receivable Aging directly within new business intake for an existing client if firm A/R thresholds are exceeded to enable timely collection reviews or better decision-making regarding required retainer amounts.

I understand that those of you responsible for managing law firms have a hard balancing act to maintain in terms of transforming your firm's business model while at the same time ensuring you don't over-tip the scales of your firm's cultural norms. But, given the accelerated transformation the legal industry is undergoing, it is clear that sticking with the 'status quo' is more dangerous than doing something that provides the ability to phase change in thoughtfully.  The end game?  Getting the business of your law firm happening concertedly, and in an enterprise-aware fashion.

We’ve written a special report  that outlines how you can improve your business processes, increase your efficiency, and boost your bottom-line profits – even in this economy.

“7 Steps to Efficiency Gains and Enhanced Loss Prevention at Law Firms”  focuses on the new business intake process as an example and describes how to use a seven-step process to do more with less. Download the special report.

If you carry any responsibility for managing a law firm these days you might find yourself waking up in cold sweats (or not sleeping at all) thinking to yourself:  "How am I supposed to manage the firm when I don't even know what is going on out there until AFTER it's happened!"

If it helps, you should know you aren't alone...but it probably doesn't help.

Industry forces such as rate compression, profitability decay, value-driven service delivery, globalization and many more are accelerating at increasing velocity. 

The problem is, law firm management's ability to not just see, but AFFECT change through timely adjustments has not come even close to keeping pace in most firms. 

And so there you are, lying awake in bed at night wondering how on earth you can catch up to the speed of change you are tasked with 'managing'.

Maybe some of these common questions are spinning around in your mind:

• Who is out there in our firm entering Alternative Fee Arrangements that may be putting firm profits at risk?  
• Is everyone prioritizing collections like they should to accelerate cash flow? 
• Are the right retainer amounts getting requested as new matters are being brought in? 
• Are client rate exceptions getting examined properly to ensure consistency across offices in our key client base?
• Is our loss prevention good enough to protect our profits?
• How much more bandwidth could we get from our employees if we got more efficient?
• What can help us get deeper penetration into our existing customer base faster and more effectively?

So what's the answer to getting a handle on the things that are the most important?  Well, the fact is, there isn't just one answer.  The industry forces are complex and shifting, so the answer to combating them can't, by definition, be some 'set it and forget it' solution.  Just the opposite, in fact.

That said...there is one absolutely beautiful fact (I think you'll like it)...ALL of the answers can be found within your firm.  How and where, you may ask?  Inside your most valuable assets...the minds of your colleagues and the business systems that contain (or can contain) the information you and your colleagues need to make more timely and better strategic decisions.

"Ok," you make ask, "but if I already have the answers, why am I still sitting here with these questions?" 

Think of it this way...just because you have all the tools you need to build a house, doesn't mean you can build a house.  You need a blueprint, a plan and the expertise and knowledge of how and when to yield the right tool for the right job.  And because you have no idea how many and what kind of changes you may need or want to make in the future to your house, you must have a base platform (foundation) capable of evolving to support your shifting needs.

For enterprises, like law firms, in need of exceptional agility and visibility, a new 'orchestration' layer must be added on top of the people and systems (technology) that already exist.  The role of this layer is three-fold:

1.  To make sure the right people are doing the right work at the right time for increased efficiency, risk mitigation and loss prevention.

2.  To arm the right people doing the right work at the right time with the right information so they can make better decisions faster.  This information is pulled together (or 'aggregated') from your existing back-end business systems.  But what's different from what you have today, is that now this information can be presented in ways that are meaningful to the EXACT decision being made at the EXACT time and to the EXACT decision-makers that need it.  In reality, much of this information is 'locked away' in your firm today, not accessible to the 'masses'.  So the trick is to 'unlock' it in a secure way to provide the visibility needed for enterprise agility.

3. To codify key firm policies, procedures and business rules to ensure consistency, effective oversight when needed and enhanced efficiency all leading to greater profitability. 

Enter the dragon:  Cradle-to-Grave Client/Matter Management

Cradle-to-Grave client/matter management means systematizing your firm’s core business processes to be as efficient as possible while at the same time enhancing your loss prevention effectiveness.  It requires coordinating and facilitating the involvement of your people and the information you have in your key business systems with the work being performed in accordance with your established strategies and policies.  By managing from inception to close you gain a whole new kind of visibility and control over the daily operations of your firm, while at the same time getting more leverage from the creativity and innovations of your firm’s most valuable assets. 

And this isn’t a ‘set it and forget it’ solution.  It’s an EVOLVING one.  This means that the rules you inject into the processes today can (and SHOULD) be morphed, added to or removed based on CHANGES as they occur in your organization.  You MUST maintain the ability to AFFECT CHANGE, today and tomorrow, to be successful in adapting your firm to the constant changes that will definitely be occurring in the marketplace.

Imagine:

1.  You can see what is happening throughout the entire lifecycle of the client and matter, from prospecting through closure.

2.  You can be sure that YOUR strategies, objectives, and policies are followed consistently with ultimate flexibility to account for necessary nuances (e.g., if you want clients and matters for European offices to go through extra checks to account for enhanced anti-money laundering legislation or other geographically-driven differences).

3.  You get enhanced value from your existing employees as their bandwidth increases to do high-value 'brain' work.

4.  You get immediate add-on leverage out of your existing technology investments, and in fact, see increased return-on-investment from them, even if you haven't 'touched' them for several years.

This is not nirvana or utopia...these are real, obtainable results.  And you can start getting them RIGHT NOW.  Immediate change is possible.  Of course, you don’t, can’t and shouldn’t tackle every process at the same time!  That is NOT feasible, or recommended.  You approach strategically to get the biggest value from each investment you make. 

This blog has only scratched the surface on this subject. 

Download the following FREE whitepapers for more in-depth coverage: 

Why Law Firms Can't Survive Without Business Process Management

7 Steps to Efficiency Gains and Enhanced Loss Prevention at Law Firms

Whatever you do, do something.  Inertia is the ultimate enemy in today's law firm marketplace!

The last thing any law firm needs is to waste time and money trying to increase efficiencies and enhanced profitability…doesn't that sound like an oxymoron? Well, that's because it is. But I see it happening every single day and it hurts me and it hurts the firms experiencing it.

I absolutely dread the phone call that comes from a law firm CFO or CIO AFTER they have tried and failed to implement business process improvement. I dread it because I know it means they wasted an enormous amount of money and time (which equates to loss of money since they didn’t get any value from their investment and now they are back at step #1. And it happens more often than any of us wants to know.

We’ve been successfully implementing business process improvements for over 8 years for global law firms and corporations. That real-world experience is invaluable in our work with our customers. For this blog, I decided to pull out 3 mistakes that I see law firms making consistently that, if avoided, will help firms get the value from their investment.

Don't spend so much time on how things are currently working! That's a waste of time, and we are trying to eliminate waste, not add to it. Absolutely, we need to understand it, but more importantly, we are looking to CHANGE IT, to move somewhere else.

Here’s where to focus:

1. Who is doing what
2. Where does that make sense and where doesn’t it?
3. What are the biggest areas of time lag?
4. What are the biggest challenges?
5. What business systems are involved / not involved.

Firms often fear that they will never get budget or time allotted by the firm again, so they try to cram as much into the initial process improvement project as possible. 

But the very essence of Business Process Improvement is that it is a CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT mechanism. 

We strongly encourage our clients, “Don’t tackle everything at once!” Instead, implement logically and practically scoped improvements. To do that, you utilize your ongoing, growing understanding of the various business processes in your firm, how they interrelate, and a prioritization of their value proposition as a guide.

This way, you deliver ongoing, incremental and intelligent value back into the firm in shorter, tighter timeframes and at a lower overall cost. 

It’s surprising how often law firms take on something as important as transforming their organization’s way of working without expert help. 

Would you want to walk around an unfamiliar forest blindfolded?  If you have never conceived and implemented a business process improvement project for sophisticated business processes, and you try to do the first one yourself, that's essentially what you are doing.

Business Process Improvement is a project unlike any other business / IT initiative your firm has ever attempted.  To succeed, you need real-world BPM expertise and experience on your team.

You need someone on your process improvement team that can guide you through how and what to gather during requirements, where to focus to get the most value out of process re-engineering and automation, and where to leave it alone.  How to coalesce the various cross-functional teams into the cohesive force of organizational change needed.  What to do to ensure fast and enterprise-wide adoption. 

The saddest part for me when I hear a law firm has failed in their business process improvement effort is the incredible opportunity I know they have forfeited.

In my first blog post I related the experience we have with just how much value a successful process improvement initiatve feeds back into a law firm quickly! But every time a law firm fails, it reduces the industry’s understanding of BPM's value proposition, and puts into question one of the most powerful change and management agents available.

The good news is, it doesn’t have to happen at all! It is more than just possible to be successful at business process improvement…in fact, it is infinitely doable and repeatable!

Making an investment is smart, wasting money is...well you get the idea.