Magic for Muggles: Embedding Analytical Power Into Everyday (Legal) Work

 

[T]he emphasis on real-time data is kind of a red herring in some ways. I think we need just-in-time information. So if they close the books 30 minutes, isn't that just as good if they close it in real time? If it's an hour, would it really make any difference to the corporation?
...

Remember, real time to those of us in IT means something very different than real time to your typical chief operating officer. The COO doesn't care how many computer cycles it take before data is up to date. From a business perspective, we need it real time enough. The real important consideration is not that its real time, but that its deeply embedded in how you work naturally.

As for applying IT to business decisions, Ms Harris believes that this will be natural for the next generation of business executives, who have "grown up with the personal computer":

They've used Excel in an MBA class. They're much more comfortable with data, and analytics and technologies than their predecessors.

Analytics, metrics, and technology are often wands wielded by LPM-consulting wizards to intimidate innumerate and technophobic attorneys. This often leads to resistance to LPM by attorneys who see LPM consultants as snake-oil salesmen peddling the latest management potion, which at best is a placebo. This has led some LPM consultants, trainers, and authors to go to the other extreme. 

Hiding the wands and dressing like ordinary folk, they comfort muggle lawyers with platitudes of how common sense LPM is. You don't need any of that metrics mumbo-jumbo, nosiree! It's all about good communication, humor, leadership, and bit of organizational skills and record-keeping. They mix client-relations 101 with Introduction to Team-Building and rehash productivity tips from the 1980s into a one or two hour lecture, repackaged as "Legal Project Management."

Yet metrics, analytics, and technology are important to Legal Project Management. Experienced and ethical consultants, however, present them not as magic requiring the dark arts of certified acolytes, but as the helpful tools they are. The sticks that genuine project-management consultants are waiving around are rulers not wands. The barriers to adoption of these tools has little to do with the difficulty of learning them and everything to do difficulty in changing attitudes and habits.  

Does Ms Harris's observation about the next generation of business executives apply to the next generation of law-firm partners and general counsel? Certainly, the up-and-coming generation of legal leadership has grown up with the personal computer. I believe we'll see the next generation of legal leadership eagerly adopt legal collaboration and knowledge management technologies and processes. I'm not sure, however, that the next generation of legal leadership has been as exposed to analytics. I don't see any evidence that they are much more comfortable with data than their predecessors. Unless a lawyer's studies or work prior to law school (which is a graduate-level program in the United States) was in a field that emphasizes these skills, he isn't going to be comfortable applying analytics to his practice. 

For the foreseeable future, I believe that analytics will be outside of the typical lawyer's comfort zone. Those who step out of their comfort zone, however, will find that embedding analytics into their everyday practice is not as difficult as they expected and well worth the competitive advantage they'll enjoy.

 

---