Culture Wars?Culture Wars?

LawNet 2001August 30, 2001Thomas Gaines

Agenda

• Senior Management Support

• Staff Alignment

• Cost Accountability

Senior Management Support

• Senior Champion/Advocate– Must have or be a champion/advocate highly placed

in senior management

– Must be able to get the ears of lawyers

– Must have time to focus on the technology issues without other major distractions

Senior Management Support

• Understand firm goals and objectives– What are the firm’s goals?

• Short term• Long term

– Where/how does the IT function fit into achieving those goals?

• Short term• Long term

Senior Management Support

• Understand Firm’s Challenges– What are the firm’s major challenges/obstacles?

• Client relationships• Declining business sectors• Client consolidation of legal services purchases• Attracting and retaining personnel

– What are clients’ expectations?• How will the firm satisfy/exceed those expectations?• Are you at the table for RFP responses?• How will IT assist in the effort?

Senior Management Support

• Education on IT roles and challenges– Assist management in understanding the role of IT– Increase management’s awareness of technology

issues• expense cycle is continuing! Get used to it!• educational programs

– Create working knowledge of new technologies

• regular periodic meetings• selected readings - minimal effort

Senior Management Support

• Build a credible basis for confidence– Insist that there be credible lawyer involvement

• don’t let them off the hook– No technology that does not have a clear business

justification• Just because it’s cool doesn’t make it fit the

business objectives of the firm

• Create a working knowledge in management of potential uses of technology

Senior Management Support

• Marketing, Marketing, Marketing– Describe successes in ways that fit firm goals

– Create opportunities for partners/associates who have achieved technology successes to be showcased in ways that show progress toward specific goals

Senior Management Support

• Pitfalls– Be honest/realistic in assessment of technology

and its uses – Identify inherent difficulties in uses– Do not over sell or under deliver– Do not give the impression that it is a “shrink wrap”

solution (no silver bullets)– Identify difficulties in hiring and retaining good

people– Don’t get overwhelmed by the details

IT Department Role Has Changed

Aligning IS Support • Installation and maintenance of core technology

systems– Mainframe systems– Minicomputer systems– Local Area Networks– Wide Area Networks– Personal Computers– Telecom systems– BackOffice systems

• Accounting/Financial• Human Resources

Aligning IS Support

• Installation, maintenance and support of core applications– Word processor– Document storage and retrieval– e-mail

Aligning IS Support

• IT staffs focused on general technologies applied in legal environment

• Expertise in the “application” of technology to unique business objectives fell to others– non-technical personnel

• lawyers• legal assistants

Aligning IS Support

• IT personnel looked to for advice

• Assumptions– IT staff understands the business processes

• litigation practice• large document production• litigation tools• regulatory practice• transaction practice

– IT staff understands the business objectives

Aligning IS Support

• Organize to meet the challenge

• Appropriate placement of overall technology responsibilities

Aligning IS Support with Firm Objectives

• Distinguish between infrastructure systems and process/objective systems– Infrastructure systems

• Network services• Telecom• Audio/visual/video conferencing• End user support

– help desk– hardware support

• Application support– Stable growth potential

Aligning IS Support with Firm Objectives

– Process/objective systems• End User Training• Practice services

– Litigation support– Transaction support– Web technologies

– Demand driven growth potential

TechnologyPartner & C IO

M ISD irector

Network EngineeringEnd User &

Applications SupportP ractice SupportTechnology Tra in ing

W AN LAN Telecom Video

Conferencing Servers In ternet Access

Help Desk Hardware Support Desktop

Applications Support

Core Applications Laptop & PDAs How To Tra in ing

Adm inistrativeSupport

W eb Developm ent Litigation Support Im aging Coding

TechnologyPartner & C IO

ITD irector

P ractice ServicesD irector

NetworkEngineering

TransactionServices

W eb &Applications

Support

L itigationServices

O perationsSupport

TechnologyTrain ing

End User &Applications

Support

Cost Accountability

• Law firm perspective– Provide the best legal services we can– Lawyers are responsible for providing legal services– If a lawyers demands the accommodation because of

a client need, we provide the accommodation

Cost Accountability

• Disconnect between expense generation and cost accountability

• Hold down costs ... unless I ask for it

• Example– 15 laptops

Culture Wars?Culture Wars?

LawNet 2001August 30, 2001Thomas Gaines