Turbo-charging lawyer performance

A masterclass detailing the benefits of integrated knowledge management and professional development.

By Chris Boyd and Mara Nickerson

Few leaders of large North American law firms, apart from a few true believers, are very enthusiastic about large-scale knowledge management (KM) programmes. One common source of such lukewarm feeling can be the perception that KM is overly disconnected from both direct client service and from other staff functions that help sell and deliver business. An excellent way to increase the actual and perceived utility of KM is to integrate it with the firm’s professional-development programme to solve real business problems by turbo-charging the performance of lawyers at all levels of seniority.

1. Getting expensive junior associates up to speed
Law school typically teaches lawyers few of the practical skills they need early in their law-firm careers. New associates must, therefore, climb a steep learning curve during their first two years of practice and, while doing so, they cost firms lots of money in compensation. The faster each practice group can move its junior lawyers up the learning curve and begin collecting fully for each hour billed, the better the firm’s economics.

2. Integrating lateral mid-level associates into the firm
Mid-level associates know how to do their jobs but tend to leave in relatively large numbers¹, which forces firms to recruit laterally from other firms. Integrating these associates into practice groups, client teams and ongoing deals and cases is critical to retaining such associates and maximising their productivity. But the challenges of doing so can cause friction and inefficiencies, both internally
and externally.

3. Institutionalising client relationships
Many, if not most, clients may be more loyal to specific partners than to the overall firm and too rarely bond with anyone other than those partners. Law firms seek to broaden their relationships with top clients and ensure that multiple service touchpoints strengthen the client’s overall ‘stickiness’ with the firm.

These issues are present to some degree at most large North-American firms. One way to address such challenges is to provide integrated talent-development resources, which give lawyers at all levels the knowledge and skills they need to get up to speed quickly, perform well and grow client relationships. Two key components of such resources are professional development and KM. Professional development through formal training and on-the-job learning can deepen both legal knowledge in relevant subject areas and professional skills such as public speaking, supervision, matter management and business development. KM can provide tools required by the lawyer at the point of service delivery, such as model and sample-work product, past-matter profiles and expertise profiles.

Professional development and KM are, basically, two sides of the same coin and both are aimed at helping lawyers become as effective and efficient as possible, as well as increasing the overall quality of the firm’s legal services and reducing malpractice risk. They also complement each other well; the immediate utility of KM resources can mitigate traditional professional development’s lack of immediate relevance, while professional development’s power to strengthen skills and permanently change behaviour can mitigate KM’s impermanence. Together, they can provide just-in-time resources that turbo-charge lawyer performance.

Many leading organisations have recognised the power of integrated professional development and KM and have moved toward making this offering the mainstay of their talent-management programmes. A recent survey by Accenture Learning, of chief-learning officers at 20 US companies,² all of which were among the top-100 performers in the country over the past three years, found that they “… attempt to deliver knowledge and learning in real time so that the worker can improve his or her performance on the job.” This trend was consistent with earlier findings that “… within many organisations, knowledge and learning are now viewed as integrated components of a common workforce-enablement strategy – that is, they are now seen as simply different ways to help employees perform more efficiently and effectively.” For example, management-consulting firm Bain & Company explicitly integrates the professional capabilities of Bain Virtual University with the KM resources of the Global Experience Center to maximise consultant and project-team productivity.³

Use of personas
‘Personas’ illustrate the power of integrated professional development and KM. Web developers use personas to build sites that meet the needs of the target users – each one describes a type of potential user along with their goals and challenges. Here, we use personas to illustrate the challenges set forth at the beginning of this article and to demonstrate how the professional development and KM teams in a law firm can work together to maximise the overall efficiency and effectiveness of lawyers facing different challenges. Consider the following three personas.

1. Getting a junior corporate associate up to speed on a new deal type
The first persona is Heidi, a second-year associate in the corporate practice group. Heidi’s busy first year focused primarily on corporate-finance transactions. The corporate group, with help from the firm’s professional-development team, has developed a set of benchmarks, which sets out the types of work that the group wants junior associates to do in their first three years of practice. These benchmarks include not only corporate-finance transactions but also public-company mergers and acquisitions (M&As), and Heidi knows that she does not yet have this experience. She checks the KM-matters database on the firm’s intranet and sees that a corporate partner is working with a client that is facing a hostile takeover bid and needs a junior to help on the matter, so she asks the partner if she can help on the deal and he readily agrees.

Heidi’s goal is to quickly get up to speed on the transaction and her role, demonstrate her ability to add value, do what needs to be done and avoid working this weekend as she has a family event to attend. She starts by turning to the firm’s KM system, which gives lawyers integrated access to precedents, training materials, matter information and expertise across the firm, and searches for materials on hostile takeover bids. She finds:

A deal guide outlining the steps in a takeover bid, with links to the firm’s model annotated precedents for each step and an overview of the legislation and securities rules relating to takeover bids;
A video of a recent professional-development programme on takeover bids;
The corporate group’s blog, with discussion notes from an earlier group meeting at which one of the partners discussed a new takeover-bid rule (with a link to the new rule);
A link to the handouts from the recent Practicing Law Institute conference on 2006 developments
in hostile takeovers;
A podcast compilation of brief interviews with partners discussing some of the key issues and strategies for hostile takeover bids;
A list of similar deals the firm has worked on, each linked to an online profile that outlines the deal terms, lists the lawyers involved, and links
to the closing book.

Heidi sees that one of the lawyers who worked on a recent takeover bid is a senior associate she met last month at the firm’s annual associates meeting. She calls him and he quickly outlines for her what she should focus on. Finally, she calls her group’s KM associate to make sure she hasn’t missed anything, and gets a couple of other suggestions. After just a few hours, Heidi has achieved her goal and is a fully-productive team member on the deal.

2. Integrating a new mid-level litigation associate
The next persona is Evelyn, a fifth-year associate who just lateraled into the litigation department of a
multi-office firm. Evelyn wants to learn more about the department’s work, comply with any policies expected of her and demonstrate the expertise and value she can bring to her department. Fortunately for Evelyn, the firm’s professional development, KM and lawyer-recruiting teams have implemented a powerful integration process that incorporates the goals of the associate, limitations on what someone new needs and can absorb during their first day, week or month, and the tools available to help.

The week before Evelyn arrives she receives an electronic welcome package from the firm, with a link to an online form to provide basic personal information needed for the firm’s human-resources (HR) systems. On the day Evelyn arrives, she is met by the director of associate
programmes, who welcomes her, outlines the orientation programme, takes her to have her security-pass picture taken, and has her sign all of the HR benefits forms that have been printed with her personal information already filled in. She then meets the chair of the litigation department and, afterwards, has lunch with her new supervising partner and her peer mentor (a sixth-year associate).

After lunch, Evelyn meets with a technology trainer and gets a tour of the firm’s systems, to be followed over the next six months with further sessions, each customised to show her additional features based on her specific needs. She then logs onto the intranet and finds a welcome page with:

A video welcome from the firm’s chair and the managing partner of her office;
A virtual tour of the firm, including a short overview of the practice focus of each office;
A tutorial by the firm’s general counsel describing the firm’s risk management procedures;
Links to the policies that apply to associates;
A tour of the litigation department’s intranet homepage, including the primary internal and external resources;
A link to the department’s benchmarks and expected competencies for senior associates;
A link to the firm’s expertise database and a request to identify her past work experience;
A link to the firm’s work-allocation system;
An invitation to the monthly litigation-department lunch.

Evelyn’s orientation and integration will continue over the next six months but for now, her immediate goals have been met.

3. Institutionalising a key firm client
Our final personas are Gordon and Pat. Gordon is the client-relationship partner for a key client, Abiba Corporation. Abiba’s general counsel just called to tell Gordon she may need help with an internal investigation about a possible regulatory problem and wants to have lunch that day to discuss it. Gordon has not worked on an internal investigation before, so his goal is to demonstrate
that his firm has the experience to handle this new matter. After the call, Gordon searches the firm’s KM system and learns:

Who the firm experts are on internal investigations;
That one of his partners wrote an article on conducting internal investigations that might be of interest to the Abiba general counsel;
About a lunch-and-learn seminar that another partner did for a different client on ‘When the Regulator Comes Knocking’, which might also be of interest to the client;
Other recent internal investigations the firm has worked on.

Gordon runs off a copy of the article and a description of the lunch-and-learn programme to take with him for the general counsel. He then calls Pat, one of the partners identified as having significant experience with internal investigations and invites her to lunch.

Pat has not worked with this client before. To ensure she is prepared for the discussion at lunch and the context of Abiba’s possible regulatory problem, her goal is to learn about Abiba, its industry and the firm’s relationship with the company. Before lunch, Pat accesses the client link on the intranet homepage to get the firm’s homepage for Abiba. From there she learns:

About Abiba through recent press releases and their public filings on EDGAR,⁴ from a link on the client page;
About Abiba’s industry from an industry news-feed on the page;
About other current and recently closed matters the firm has active for Abiba, along with the lead partners for each and their total billings;
About the service terms Abiba has in place with the firm.

Gordon and Pat are both now ready for lunch with the general counsel and will be in a good position to meet each of their (and thereby the client’s) goals.

Chris Boyd is senior director, professional services at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. He can be contacted at cboyd@wsgr.com. Mara Nickerson is director, professional development at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. She can be contacted at mnickerson@osler.com.

References

1. At least one expert estimates that firms of 250 lawyers or more lose 20 per cent of their associates a year. Elizabeth Goldberg, ‘Exit Strategy,’ American Lawyer, August 2006, p.112.

2. Ellen Balaguer, John Higgins, Tom Davenport, and Craig Mindrum, ‘Driving high performance through mission-critical job families’, Accenture Learning, 2006.

3. See http://www.bain.com/bainweb/LocalOffices/custom.asp?office_id=151&language=1 &menu_id=491

4. EDGAR is the online filing system of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. See http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml