LawHawk Blog

I found this recent blog by Robert Ambrogi fascinating: More Exclusive Survey Results: Few Small Firms Implementing New Technology. In it he reviews findings of a new survey of small-solo law firm management in the United Stated conducted by Thomson Reuters Solo and Small Law Firm group, to which he has been given exclusive access. The survey covered firms of 1-29 lawyers, which would be the size of most law firms in New Zealand (85% of which have 5 or fewer lawyers).

The results showed that two-thirds of firms will implement no changes in technology for at least a two-year span. Supporting this, only a quarter of small firms say they will spend more on technology and infrastructure, while 72% say their spend will remain the same, and 4% say they will spend less. More optimistically, this could indicate that it is increasingly becoming possible to access great technology, via the cloud, much more cheaply than used to be the case, but I don’t think that is what they meant!

When I first read this article in HBR, Why Your Innovation Team Needs a Lawyer, I liked it. All lawyers have probably experienced at least once the dismay of being brought in at the tail end of a new initiative, when all the key decisions have already been made and the deadline for sign-off is…5pm today. Nobody wants you to ask any questions, they don’t want to (and probably can’t) make any changes, and they’re scared that you will “kill the project – or reduce it to a shadow of its potential”. All they really want is a sign-off.

So an article identifying that the real problem is often that “not a single legal representative had been involved in these new business initiatives from the beginning” is a good thing. As the article says

This is where the opportunity lies – in collaboration that includes the final approvers, embedding the legal teams in the design and innovation process.

The problem is that the more I reflect on it, this article – and many people’s views of lawyers in general – is based on a view that the lawyers need to be on the team so they can understand it – if you explain it in simple terms - and not kill it, but there is no suggestion that the lawyers might themselves have the creativity to actually add to and enhance the underlying initiative.

In my earlier blog on how to attract and retain staff, I noted that there are 5 key factors that I tried to focus on to make work more satisfying for myself and my team, and which will help with attracting and retaining staff. One of these is variety of work.

This is a difficult one to manage, as there is an inherent tension between variety (which most people enjoy) and increasing demands from clients for genuine specialisation and expertise. I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in Are you straddling in your legal practice? You have to get the balance right, and it will vary from person to person.  Here's my thoughts on how you can do this. 

Great to chat with Giles Beckford of Radio New Zealand's Business News  recently about the opportunities legal document automation creates for New Zealand's predominantly smaller legal practices.

You can listen to the interview here:

A transcript of the interview is set out below:

Is your firm one of “a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality.” (Jonas Ridderstrale and Kjell Nordström, Funky Business).

One of the key challenges any law firm (and any business in general) faces is working out where to play. There are a number of approaches.

 Last week I focused on how to encourage great people to want to join your team. This week I want to look at 8 things you can do once you’ve hired them.

These include:

- remembering the wider team, not just the lawyers;

- working hard for your team;

- focusing on the individual;

- considering whether you are contributing to any struggles they are having;

- using Hackman & Oldham's Job Characteristics Model as a framework;

- including them in the business, while remembering they care about more than just business; and

- use technology wherever possible to help them do a better job.

The art of coaching is this: all your athletes are highly motivated when they first start, but your job as a coach is to create an environment that inspires them to use that motivation to get better and you do that by having the right balance of stimulation and fun.

Steve Hansen