What Are the Signs Your Law Firm Needs Process Improvement?
George Dunn, president of CRE8 Independent Consultants, writes in a white paper posted on his company’s website, “One clear message from general legal counsel is, ‘law firms must lower fees and follow increasingly restrictive guidelines.’ In addition, law firms are now being asked what type of process improvement framework the firm is deploying.”
In the paper, he starts by posing the question: “What are the signs that your firm needs process improvement?”
He discusses the external signs, such as clients consolidating the roster of firms they engage, client guidelines becoming increasingly restrictive as to who and what can be billed, and clients asking for holdbacks, discounts, write-offs, alternative fee arrangements, or fixed fees.
Internal signs can include the firm writing off fees or costs billed to clients, processes not fully mapped out and measured, and processes not being not fully automated with up-to-date templates.
Answering “yes” to those question indicates the need for the firm to look into process improvement, Dunn writes.
He then poses questions and offers questions and offers approaches to follow. Those questions include: What type of process improvement methodologies exist for law firms? Where can process improvement be deployed in a law firm, such as transactional, litigation and operations? and What is the next step?
Dunn is an independent consultant, speaker, instructor, and author on process improvement (Total Quality Improvement, Continuous Process Improvement, Business Process Management, Re-engineering, LEAN and Six Sigma); Paperless technology planning (electronic forms, electronic content management, digital signatures, workflow, and electronic records management), and Computer System planning.
