No option for Law Firm

I sometimes think international law firms are a little like sheep, one sets up in a country and many more follow. But I suspect this is the same in any industry when new markets open, someone is first in but the others soon follow.

The current trend is clearly the BRIC (Brazil Russia India and China) economies, with many firms already established in China and Russia it was Brazil’s turn to be the current destination of choice.

That was until last week when the Brazilian Bar ruled against associations with foreign law firms. This decision isn’t the eviction of all the international firms yet, but it’s a possible step in that direction. As with the continued block on foreign law firms praticing in India it seems a tale of two halves in BRIC. China and Russia happy to accept the foreign law firms, India and Brazil not.

So who’s got it right?

Clearly from a free market point of view, China and Russia are right. And it’s suggested that merger activity in the trans-atlantic market is being driven by the lure of China. But clearly India and Brazil are using the infant industry argument for protectionism. Can this work though for a service firm? In a globalised world won’t business in these countries suffer through lack of access to the global reach of international law firms?

My personal view is that the markets need to open up.

The main asset of a law firm is the lawyers, whichever market the big law firms go into they will need lawyers and most of the time it’s local lawyers that will be used along with a few lawyers transferred to the country. So I think that the access to knowledge in these global firms will accelerate the development of the local lawyers in these markets. And eventually lead to experienced local lawyers leaving and setting up their own Indian and Brazilian firms. Using the knowledge of global markets they have gained they will be better prepared when they decide to expand and set up shop in London and New York.

India should really look at their own IT industry as an example, it’s now the development centre of many global IT organisations (Microsoft employs about 5000 people in India and even Legal IT provider Autonomy has an R&D centre in Bangalore). This has led to a rapid growth in the IT sector in India, not just in global firms but home grown enterprises.

We’ve been away this Easter weekend to visit my wife’s family and whilst out yesterday I happened to get into a conversation with an ex-trainee of a Big Law firm. As I got on to explaining that I worked in the IT dept of a rival firm it was interesting to hear his questions and thoughts on Legal IT.

It left me thinking that anyone waiting for the current tech savvy trainees to give us Legal IT professionals an easier time ought to stop reading this post now as I’m about to depress you!

In fact if this trainee was typical of those joining law firms then the demands on Legal IT are going to get worse (or better if you’re up for the challenge). A couple of points stood out:

1. Frustration at the pace of change in corporate IT. The bemusement at why law firms can’t keep up with software like he could at home. “We were still on Office 2003!” he commented as though this was a ridiculous situation. My comments on the difficulties of upgrading thousands of PC’s got a kind of “So what?” reaction.
2. They do understand the IT dept but only the roles of those at the coal face. The service desks and IT support staff. They are unaware of the size and roles in the rest of IT.

Now this may have just been the situation in that particular law firm, but I doubt it. The challenge that stands out to me from this is twofold:

1. The struggle of getting the old lawyers to use computers is going to change rapidly into a demand from new lawyers to use the latest computers and software. This I’m sure is starting to happen already, but it will only increase. Why shouldn’t a lawyer be able to do with his work kit what I’m doing now with my own kit (writing a blog post on my laptop travelling up the M5 whilst connected to the internet via my windows phone which is acting as a wireless hotspot! **).
2. There needs to be better engagement at the trainee stage with IT. Get the trainees involved in the IT strategy early in their careers may reap benefits later.

Things are not going to get any easier for Legal IT, the demands on the corporate IT dept won’t drop off they’ll just be different.

Oh and the challenges for Law Firms generally won’t get easier either. This guy got disillusioned with the long hours, no life culture of city law and quit to pursue other interests. Generation Y is going to shake things up in law in more ways than one!

** to the iPhone users out there. That windows phone is not only acting as a wireless hotspot, it’s also playing MP3’s through the car stereo and scrobbling to tracks to last.fm. That’s multitasking!

Well after a week of snow and disruption it’s back to work today (or perhaps not as for some of the UK there is forecast for another day of snow).

The business headlines though have been full of the cost to the UK economy, quotes range from a general £1.2bn cost to the economy to a daily cost of £0.5bn due to absenteeism. The feeling from a lot of these articles is that it’s the employees fault for not trying or the local governments fault for not gritting the road, but it never seems to be the employers fault…no they’re the ones suffering.

Wakefield under snow

Isn’t it about time we had a revolution in work days in the UK? A move from the practices and procedures in place to support an office in a city centre with set working hours? An abolition of the 9 to 5 … and for those who are about to say “if only” can I say we should also do away with the long hours culture too. Sure, work the long hours when you need to (finishing projects, completing deals) but not to impress your boss or worse, just to be seen in the office.

I mean this week how many like me have spent hours wasted standing on freezing platforms? Or struggling to get through the roads on buses and in cars? If you managed to get in at all, how many have been “late in”?

So will this cold snap finally kick start a new wave of forward thinking employers that shift to a flexible working model, not just in terms of working hours but also in working location? Law firms are ideally placed to take advantage as they don’t have the necessity of a set working hour like say retail.

The technology is there to enable lawyers to work anywhere:

• Remote access – how many firms don’t have some form of remote access to either connect your work laptop from your home broadband or even to use your home PC to connect through to your work environment?
• IM (Instant Messaging) – on my top 5 for 2010, IM has the ability to replace those adhoc chats in the office. Also bringing video to the desktop makes communicating more successful than with just the telephone. Also when you consider Skype’s recent announcement for their HD video it’ll be much better than the grainy pictures of old.
• Workflow – in dictation and other systems, workflow is built in. Meaning you can do your dictation or task, submit it and it can go on to a pool of people to complete (either in their home, another office or another country).

The benefits during this last week are so obvious!

Your employees firstly can get to work (no snow between bedroom and study and even if for whatever reason there is, then just use the laptop in your bedroom!). Your employees who got to work this week were probably late, cold and rather un-motivated due to expending all their energy on their commute!

The cost benefits are there too. By providing flexible working a percentage of the firm will always be working out of the office, this should enable firms to redesign their office space requirements to utilise less desks and less space. Less space = less cost, a big saving for a lot of law firms whose offices tend to be in prime real estate locations.

Yes there are the common complaints:

• People aren’t working, but having a “jolly” at home. This perhaps will require the most effort to resolve as it will require a shift in the way we manage people. But surely we should be managing for results/deliverables anyway, rather than by how long someone is at their desk or in the office? After all lawyers work with clients very effectively and they’re offsite, so surely it’s as easy if not easier to do that with colleagues?
• Missing the day to day chats. This can be alleviated with IM as previously mentioned, but I’m not advocating sole home working. So the adhoc chats will still happen when people are in the office. If there is a need for a team to keep in regular contact then the team probably needs to be together in the office but it won’t be all the time.
• Some people can’t due to the nature of their work. That’s right, but my answer is so what? Why should there be one policy for all employees? In Law firms more can. Take Legal IT departments as an example:
  • Help Desk – there is technology to allow switch board numbers to be routed to any phone any where. The AA do this for their call centre operators, as do many other forward thinking companies.
  • Server Support – a lot of firms utilise remote data centres anyway, so what is the difference if their “home base” is elsewhere?

So stop the complaining about the cost of the snow and do something about it. It’s time for a flexible working revolution. Let’s get rid of 9 to 5 and get rid of the concept of needing a permanent desk in an office to do your work!

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication", Leonardo Da Vinci.

Has your law firm got a social media policy or a set of social media guidelines?

If not it is surely only a matter of time before they do. The rise of the risk management function in firms (not just law firms) means that as social media takes off, guidelines and policies will be put in place (take a look at this site for a raft of policies out there for various companies!).

I’ve been blogging (on this site) for a little under a year now and have already fallen foul a number of times, I have posted something I maybe shouldn’t have or ended up agreeing that it may be best I didn’t say what I had. So I think it’s in the interest of the blogger as well as the firm to have a few guidelines in place.

I recently caught a tweet that led me to a web page that outlined the guidelines for ABC in Australia, these were the best guidelines I have yet seen! The beauty is the simplicity:

• Do not mix the professional and the personal in ways likely to bring the ABC into disrepute.
• Do not undermine your effectiveness at work.
• Do not imply ABC endorsement of your personal views.
• Do not disclose confidential information obtained through work.

That’s it! Four bullets, brilliant!

If I had abided by these guidelines I would have checked myself in all my afore mentioned cases. As well as offering a good guideline for social media use they underline a trust and belief in the professionalism of their staff.

Those that are following this blog and/or my twitter feed know that I’m working on a number of things around email management at the moment. And this set of guidelines got me thinking, maybe this is the way forward for all policies?

So I had a go at a few points for managing the electronic file:

• File electronic documents and email in a manner:
• that would allow you to find and display any document/email on your PC should your client call unexpectedly and refer to that document/email
• that you’d be happy to show your clients the electronic file

I think that would be enough to ensure a full and proper well organised electronic matter file, stored with others in an easy to find structure.

“Perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away", Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

"Simplify, and add lightness", Colin Chapman.

or simply KISS! (Keep it Simple, Stupid!)

Did you see the #trafigura storm on twitter yesterday? It was down to the “Guardian gagged” story in the press (Go over the editors blog post for a good synopsis of what went on or if you want a shorter version take a look at Peninsulawyer’s post)

Now I’m not going to get into political commentary (if you want to read the political blogosphere’s take on the story try Iain Dale or Guido Fawkes blogs) or touch on the legal ramifications, I wanted to do a quick post on it from a Legal IT point of view.

In fact one twitter post stood out for me yesterday and this kind of sums up my thoughts:

The Carter-Ruck/Guardian/Trafigura press censorship story is classic example of what happens when old time lawyers meet Web 2.0 media

It’s not about actually using web 2.0. I really don’t believe that every lawyer should have a blog, be on facebook or linked in, update twitter, use instant messaging (IM). To me these are all just tools, just as the old telephone is. In fact think about it, you wouldn’t evangelise about the telephone and how everyone really must use it would you? People either use it or they don’t. The key point is that they know what it is and what it is useful for (and as important what it’s useless for).

The same goes with blogs, micro blogs, wikis, social networking, IM etc. Lawyers need to know what it is, how it is used and how it is now mainstream (don’t believe me? Read “Youth can’t live without web” and “Finland makes broadband legal right“). If they choose to use it great, but it doesn’t matter as long as they know and understand what it is.

And this is where I believe Legal IT departments can help.

I remember, back in the late 90′s when the Internet was still fairly new, doing a series of presentations with a colleague around our firms UK offices. The aim was to talk to lawyers about the technology behind the web. This was mainly for technology and media lawyers, but it was giving them an insight into the technologies that their clients would be talking about. This is what law firm IT people need to be doing now. Not necessarily advocating they use it, but talking to lawyers and helping them to understand the web 2.0 technologies, how they are used and in this case how it is impossible to “gag” a story anymore (the “Streisand effect”).

Final thought, the term “web 2.0″ or “new media”. Is it me or does this seem really dated? Surely it’s just “web” and “media” now?