In-House Counsel

The Road Not Taken: Show Me Your Bikini Body

Even if the billable hour is too big of a change to make, there are other areas a firm can look at to eliminate waste.

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Put away the camera-phone. I don’t want to see pictures of that. I want to see that your organization is efficient and not wasteful. Or, as is much displayed and discussed in a manufacturing environment: Lean.

You can look up the details about Lean on your own if you want to learn more. In short, Lean is a management system developed by Toyota for identifying and eliminating waste.  I, as in-house counsel, am interested in it is because I have to be lean. It is a mandate from my corporate overlords, it is infused into the culture. Identify the waste and remove it.

To our revenue-generating colleagues, in-house legal departments are seen as parasitic cost centers that take away from the treasure earned by their sweat. We are wasteful, bloated, business-blocking amoebas who do not appear to understand or care that the business exists to make money. This assumption isn’t true, of course, but it is the impression we have to overcome every day as we prove our value. You can see this pressure on in-house legal departments has intensified over the past few years as corporate in-house departments have begun communicating to each other their strategies for reducing overall costs and managing outside counsel costs. If we have to run Lean, so should our outside counsel.

My colleagues at firms may protest this state of affairs. To them it’s: “If you want cheaper law firm costs, go to cheaper firms,” or, “You get what you pay for.” Those protestations miss the point; I don’t want less for less. I want the same or better for less. It is the same thing that is being asked of me and my colleagues and what my company is asking of all of its vendors. Indeed, in the past several years, the economy has inadvertently forced law firms to perform this type of evaluation themselves. It isn’t a far jump for legal service providers to evolve from emergency waste removal as an act of desperation to thoughtful waste elimination as a strategic act of long-term improvement.

More importantly though, “eliminating waste” does not mean simply spending less money. Lean identifies eight types of waste. For the purposes of this column, we will assume the following are the most likely types of waste happening at a law firm:

  • Waste of transport: How long does it take for anything to get to its next action? This includes electronic transport.
  • Waste of waiting: How long does it take for you to get what you need to perform your next action?
  • Waste of over-processing: How much work are you doing that does not add value and the customer does not want or need?
  • Waste of defects: How much rework has to happen because it wasn’t done right the first time?
  • Waste of skills: Do all employees feel like their skills are utilized and their contributions recognized?

Some of these wastes a law firm cannot control, but that is true for all of our vendors. But where you can control it, do something about it. For example, how many reviews of a document are necessary? Why? I understand it is for quality control, but do you really need an associate review, senior associate review, and partner review all of equal duration? That’s a simple example, but it demonstrates that even the simplest of tasks can be reviewed for waste.

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Much of law-firm waste is built upon the foundation of the billable hour. I know that even with alternative billing structures, the billable hour is an industry behemoth that is not going away anytime soon. I understand the billable hour structure is not conducive to a Lean services relationship. If anything, the billable hour structure encourages waste. Even if the billable hour is too big of a change to make, there are other areas a firm can look at to eliminate waste.

Every organization has waste. My organization has regular projects to identify and eliminate waste. Show me that you understand the pressures I, as your client, am under. Be proud of your efficiency. Be loud about sharing the benefits of that efficiency with me, your client. Most importantly, waste reduction will make you better at what you do. That’s what I want in a legal services vendor: someone who can do more for less and can show me how their improvements benefit me.

Celeste Harrison Forst has practiced in small and mid-sized firms and is now in-house at a large manufacturing and technology company where she receives daily hugs from her colleagues. You can reach Celeste directly at[email protected].

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