colpm

Early case assessment (ECA) and 80 percent known in 60 days

The litigation group of Schering-Plough has begun to conduct early case assessments of its major disputes.  "Within the first 60 days our outside counsel is charged with giving us an early assessment of the case.  The firms are charged with looking at documents, interviewing witnesses, examining pleadings, preparing a damages analysis, and other steps as necessary.  According to PD Villareal the pharma company’s VP of Litigation and Conflicts Management, in an interview in Met. Corp. Counsel, Feb. 2006 at 47, 51, "in 60 days...  you will know 80 percent of what you will ever know about a case.”

Villareal, who came from General Electric, believes that “most of the time, that knowledge is enough to make rational and intelligent decisions about resolving a case."

A bold claim, it seems to me, and especially so if it is made regarding lawsuits that are deemed major.  Still, even if overstated, the rationale and goals of ECA are admirable.

A Lengthy Comment on Jordan's Post

Here is a paper that I co-wrote four years back for Dave Bilinsky's First PLTC:

TECHNOLOGY AND THE HOURLY BILLING CHALLENGE

The Pacific Legal Technology Conference

October 18, 2002

Simon Chester and Dale Robert Doan

For an audience like this one, I don’t really have to explain hourly billing. Except for government lawyers, I suspect that we all have grown accustomed to the practice. From a technological and efficiency perspective, it appears counter-intuitive. Certainly it permits clients to apply objective criteria to assess the basis of the probable cost of legal services, but it does not give them the essential element in the equation, a firm and reliable basis on which to assess how much it will all cost.

Innovation and the Billable Hour

If we're trying to identify and encourage innovation in the practice of law, it would seem like a good idea to start by citing previous examples of successful innovation within the profession. So let’s begin with what I think is the single most successful and enduring innovation in law practice history: the billable hour.

The billable hour, of course, is the bane of many a lawyer's existence – it's a phrase you normally hear spoken in tones of either clear contempt or plain resignation. But consider its origins.

In the early part of the last century, legal services were relatively simple and were usually billed by informal flat-fee methods: the lawyer judged how much his services were worth and invoiced the client accordingly. This approach eventually gave way, in the United States, to state bar-instituted fee schedules that reflected the law's growing complexity. But even these schedules were no match for the quantum leap in sophistication arising from the 1938 revisions to the federal rules of civil procedure. Lawyers needed a new way to value their ever-more-complicated services.

Glimpses of the Future from NY LegalTech

I hope that some fellows will live blog from the conference this week, but if you can't get there, our friends in Eagan have mounted a couple of podcasts with Monica Bay and Dennis Kennedy offering their predictions for what law firms can expect on the technology front this year.

College Launches 2007 InnovAction Awards

• Dear Fellows, The College of Law Practice Management is excited to announce the “official” launch of our 2007 InnovAction Awards. We are looking for lawyers, law firms, and other deliverers of legal services who are engaged in some extraordinary innovative efforts. The goal of the Awards is to demonstrate to the legal community what can be created when passionate professionals with big ideas are determined to solve the business challenges faced in today’s competitive markets. Award entries will be judged on the basis of four primary criteria:
• Absence of precedent (never been done or done quite this way before)
• Evidence of action (the innovative idea was transformed into action and not merely reflective of best intentions)
• Effectiveness of innovation (there is some measurable outcome that indicates the innovation is accomplishing what it was intended to do)
• Action must have taken place within no more than three years prior to this entry.

The 2007 InnovAction Awards are sponsored by the following organizations and companies which have a passion for innovation. Platinum Sponsors: Australian Lawyers Weekly; Greenfield/Belser Ltd.; Inside Counsel; Law.com; and LexisNexis. Gold Sponsors: ABA Law Practice Management Section; The Canadian Bar Association; International Legal Technology Association (ILTA); and Office Tiger, an RR Donnelley Company. Silver Sponsors: Altman Weil, Inc.; Compuware; Kraft & Kennedy, Inc.; Interwoven, Inc.; Project Leadership Associates; and Redwood Analytics. Levick Strategic Communications is providing media relations assistance.

Announcing the Innovaction Awards

The legal market is not known - yet - for embracing innovation.  And the life of a law practice management innovator can be lonely.  That can and will change… 

The College of Law Practice Management is pleased to announce this year's InnovAction Award, which is designed to identify and honor innovation in law practice management.

To get an idea of what we're up to, take a look at the ezine on Innovaction that Jordan Furlong edited, and which was discussed on my Slaw blog last year. 

If you are in a law firm, inhouse department, or other law practice (no consultants or vendors please) that has done something innovative - whether with client service, marketing, technology, knowledge management or otherwise - please take a moment to review the InnovAction web site and consider submitting an application.

The honour is a significant one.

Let a million flowers bloom.

Open Source Law?

Simon Chester recently wrote a thoughtful post about Open Access for the Law.  This reminds me that I see much more about the law of open source software than open source law.

That's a lot of "opens."  Software open source has taken technology by storm (e.g., Linux, Apache, and WordPress).   Why not "open source law?"  I've previously suggested that "from a client’s perspective, open source transaction documents could be a big cost saver."  Marc Lauritsen of Capstone Practice has proposed an open source approach for legal applications software.  The National Venture Capital Association has created a set of model documents for venture capital financing.  ISDA (International Swaps and Derivatives Association) has developed the ISDA Master Agreement, "publishing a wide range of related documentation materials and instruments covering a variety of transaction types."

Perhaps it's time for general counsels to pool their resources to share non-confidential legal documents.   To some extent, lawyers can do this by tapping into the documents attached to EDGAR filings.  But a concerted effort to share documents and reach for standards could lower legal costs significantly.

Ron Friedmann

Is there a Poet in Your Law Firm?

How many North American law firms would sponsor poetry readings in their offices, and have them attended by goodly numbers of practising lawyers?  I can't think of any - but look across the Atlantic where the City firms are developing quite a reputation for doing just that. 

At Linklaters the Poet Laureate Andrew Motion introduced an evening devoted to Keith Douglas,

As one journalist (somewhat breathlessly) put it:

Suddenly poetry is running wild across City law firms as lawyers recognise that their stock in trade is also the raw material of sublime art. Next up then is [Poet in the City's] super evening on Poetry and Identity... at the National Portrait Gallery [with] ... dazzling word play from Lynton Kwesi Johnson, Billy Bragg and George Szirtes, winner of the 2004 TS Eliot prize... So at last, an alliance between the lawyers and the "unacknowledged legislators of mankind". Long may it last.

Within the College, you may remember poet David Whyte who spoke inspiringly at the Vancouver Induction Weekend, and latterly in Denver

All of this has been covered in the German legal blogosphere, but you might have forgotten the link.

The Implications of Open Access for the Law

  One thing that the new technologies permit is ready dissemination of information, unfettered by the usual choke points of conventional publishing. 

George Soros has been promoting the idea of Open Access as empowering and liberating, and it is certainly transforming scientific scholarship.  But does the same hold true of the law.  What does open access mean for a community like our's which is very much based upon access to legal information.  This is now being explored in law schools in the contexts of how to communicate scholarship and what this means for their law reviews - law reviews that were many lawyers' first exposure to the sort of rigorous marshalling of argument that litigators do all the time.

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

Searching through the blogosphere, I was amazed to find that the leading entry when you search for the College was from a Dr. Malpani in Mumbai, who blogged to our website - and then commented:

What a great idea ! Why not have a College of Medical Practice Management ?

We may have started a global and multi-professional trend.