Author: Onit

Project Management? Shouldn’t We Be Talking About Process Management?

Posted on October 14, 2010 by - Business Process Management

I asked a similar question when I really came to understand that legal case/matter management offers few tools to help a lawyer do anything better. “Why isn’t matter management just project management?” I asked.

Well, here I am again, questioning what seems to be the status quo. Why isn’t project management really process management? As I survey the leading tools for project management, I find that they are great at aggregating project knowledge and dissemination of roles, responsibilities and timelines. But they don’t fundamentally help you do anything better. What they all lack is a focus on “process management.” In addition to the online project management tools that I am referring to, I also include Microsoft Project. Microsoft SharePoint is more about process management than Project is.

When we think about lawyers, primarily ones who work inside corporations, we see departments that run on process. Most of these processes are manual, paper intensive and cumbersome but they are effective on the margins. But why couldn’t they be better with technology?

Corporate legal departments have processes for everything — hiring law firms, terminating employees, collecting information about potential claims, collecting data about legal department costs, etc.

What if:

    • A corporate legal department could automate and manage those processes as part of their primary project management functionality?
    • The processes could be dynamically created, with custom forms and workflow added, in minutes?
    • They could deliver those custom processes (forms and workflow) to anyone in their company without them having access to their project management system?
    • They could deliver those custom processes in any manner they wish such as SharePoint, a company intranet/extranet or other applications?

It begs the question – Do legal departments need project management or process management? I think we need both, but my definition of project management now very much includes process management.

The harder part is trying to find a system that does both functions well (or at all). I couldn’t find it! But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Process management is foundational to Onit’s premium product scheduled to be released next month. Register today for a free trial and you’ll be one of the lucky few to get advance notice about our new product for both project and process management.

Is Legal Project Management Here to Stay? We Think So.

Posted on October 11, 2010 by - Business Process Management

The discipline of project management is not new – it is just becoming the latest buzzword in the legal industry – and for good reason. As many of you know, traditional project management emerged out of the construction and engineering industries and has never been really suitable for the legal industry. The IT industry, however, has in the past 20 years taken to a modified project management process that is lighter and more suited to lawyers. Although legal has been somewhat slow to embrace this discipline, the landscape is changing and there has been a fundamental shift in how law is being practiced today and in the future. (Just look at all the articles about alternative fee arrangements).

Why Now?

Even before the recession, corporate legal departments were being asked to reduce their total legal spend, bring greater control and predictability to their legal budgets and demand greater efficiency from outside counsel. The recession escalated this mandate and there continues to be immense pressure to control and manage legal costs. Whether corporate legal departments like it or not, legal project management is here to stay.

3 Key Benefits of Legal Project Management

Change is difficult for any corporation or law firm but with it comes the possibility of great innovation. Implementing basic project management fundamentals in all of your legal projects will help you work more efficiently, increase your productivity and improve how you interact with your legal and business teams. Here are 3 key benefits of legal project management and why it’s necessary in the legal arena:

1. Managing Expectations

Project management is all about managing expectations – whether it be with internal or external stakeholders. This seems like a simple concept but how many times have you received an invoice from an outside law firm or vendor and it was more than you expected? Implementing project management discipline in all your legal projects, whether they are matters, litigation, deals, or transactions, will ensure that your projects are on track and that milestones and deadlines are met accordingly. It will also help alleviate those awkward conservations with the senior management team about why your legal departments spend dramatically increased with little to no advance warning.

2. Updating Project Stakeholders

Communication with project stakeholders is important to the success of any project, legal and otherwise. Keeping a team well-informed ensures there are no surprises at the end of the project or in this case, billing cycle. Regular and consistent communication is a simple enough concept but it takes discipline to do it right. Besides, isn’t it easier to be proactive rather than reactive?

3. You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure

Although this cliché gets touted like a mantra in some organizations, it’s true when it comes to legal project management. But the reverse is true also: you can’t measure what you don’t manage. You must agree to the scope of work, objectives, key performance indicators and success criteria in advance and review them regularly as your legal project hits milestones. It’s critical to take action early if you are failing to achieve any of your goals or performance targets and alert the team. Tracking, assessing and measuring legal project status can be summed up in a one of Albert Einstein’s concepts, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

E-invoicing? You Don’t Need No Stinking E-invoicing!

Posted on September 29, 2010 by - Enterprise Legal Management

Or at least, you don’t need it FIRST.

Legal departments: unless you have a mature, well-fed matter management system or currently deploy project management discipline to your legal matters, then you don’t need e-invoicing. There would be no context for it. Don’t get me wrong; you will need it eventually, it is just not where you start in the process of bettering your legal department. Rather, it is the capstone.

At least in companies smaller than $10 billion in revenue, we have found that there are greater needs.

needs chart

Using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a metaphor, e-invoicing equates to esteem or self-actualization when most legal departments need to address their physiological needs first, like tracking matters consistently, budgeting, participating in ongoing assessments and developing solid case plans.

The good news is that even if you implement e-invoicing before doing this other stuff, you will see savings; as much as 10% of your current legal spend! But you don’t make anything else about your legal department better. And you don’t get better outcomes out of your legal projects. And you don’t understand the risk facing your organization any better.

This is where the “legal trinity” of assessing the situation (matter or case or project), creating a plan and then budgeting come into play. If you put in these building blocks first, and implement light project management discipline in your legal departments, layering e-invoicing on top will yield you greater long-term benefits. Things will be cheaper, but also better and faster.

3 Reasons Not to Miss the Virtual Corporate Counsel Forum

Posted on September 29, 2010 by - Company News and Events

If you’re a general counsel, in-house corporate counsel or know someone that falls into that category — listen up. Virtual Corporate Counsel Forum is tomorrow and you don’t want to miss this event. Okay, you’ll probably wondering what is a “virtual” event and why do I need to attend?

Virtual Corporate Counsel Forum is an online event that includes presentations, virtual booths, online networking, chatting, blogs and more. It’s everything a traditional tradeshow offers but you don’t have to leave your office. Registration is complimentary and is only open to general counsel and in-house corporate counsel. You can even see a demonstration of the virtual conference environment before tomorrow’s live event.

Still not convinced? Here are three more reasons we think it’s worth attending:

  1. Get connected with colleagues. Socializing in the networking lounge or in the exhibit hall is different than any tradeshow you’ve attended. Simply start a chat or join the group discussion and hear what colleagues are saying about the presentations, recent trends or innovative products they’ve seen in the exhibit hall.
  2. Learn about innovative technology. Stop by the exhibit hall to see the latest products, chat with vendors and register for booth give-a-ways. Just because it’s a virtual event, doesn’t mean you can’t win prizes! Be sure to visit the Onit booth for a chance to win a $200 Apple gift card — holiday shopping just got easier!
  3. Earn CLE credits without leaving your office. Log-on between 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. EST and attend the sessions relevant to your business. Here are a few we think will be extremely valuable.

10:15- 11:15 a.m.

Selecting the Right Fee Arrangement (CLE Eligible)

Presenter – Charles R. Macedo, Partner, Amster, Rothstein & Ebenstein;
Author, The Corporate Insider’s Guide to US Patent Practice, published by Oxford University Press

In view of the high cost of litigation in the face of shrinking corporate budgets, the need to select the right fee arrangement for an organization’s disputes is becoming more and more important. Our speaker, an experienced patent litigator, will review the options available to in-house counsel and outside counsel in setting up the right kind of fee arrangement, including identifying:

– Factors involved in determining what kinds fee arrangement makes sense in the context of the particular dispute;

– Different kinds of fee arrangements which are potentially available and discussing the best circumstances for considering each kind of arrangement;

– Cost saving techniques to reduce unnecessary expenditures; and

– Best practices for matching litigation activities to client goals and resources

12:30- 1:30 p.m.
The Real Rate Report: Understanding the True Drivers of Legal Costs (CLE Eligible)

Presenters: Craig Raeburn, Vice President of Product Management
CT TyMetrix and Keith Brown, Esquire, Lead Business Consultant, CT TyMetrix

CT TyMetrix, in collaboration with The Corporate Executive Board’s Legal and Compliance practice/General Counsel Roundtable, brings you the industry’s first (and only) quantitative analysis of over $4 billion in legal spend from more than 4,000 law firms and 50,000+ individual billers. The 2010 Real Rate Report will provide corporate legal departments, claims organizations and law firms with the first reliable benchmark data on law firm pricing, staffing practices, and realized rates across geographies, practice areas, matter types and timekeeper types.

The session will discuss how putting data to work can provide perspectives on trends and practices. The session will highlight reliable benchmarks that can be used to evaluate and negotiate rates across geographies, practice areas, professional levels, and other segments, as well as other insights.

1:45- 2:45 p.m.
Management, Measurement and More- Best Practices for Maximizing Your Legal Spend

Presenters: Mary Clark, Vice President of Law, LexisNexis; Patrick Ryan, Director of Administration, City of Chicago Department of Law; Robin Sangston, Vice President, Legal Affairs and Chief Compliance Officer, Cox Communications, Inc.

As many law departments continue to face budget cuts, in-house counsel are challenged to find new ways to maximize their legal spend and control costs. Join LexisNexis CounselLink representatives and in-house counsel from leading law departments as they share their perspectives on:

– The impact of the dynamic economic climate on their law departments and the reporting tools used to optimize and justify spending decisions- comparing the decline in 2009 to the predicted upward trend in 2010

– Alternative fee arrangements and how the right data and reporting can help identify outside counsel that are underperforming

– In-sourcing versus outsourcing legal work, and the considerations and methods to make smarter decisions

– Managing relationships with outside counsel and how using metrics and reporting can help ease difficult dialogues and garner greater productivity

For a detailed schedule of all the sessions, click here.

For more information and registration details, visit the Corporate Counsel Forum website. We hope to see you online tomorrow.

4 Reasons to Attend Virtual LegalTech on September 23

Posted on September 21, 2010 by - Company News and Events

Virtual LegalTech is an experience like no other legal event. Not only can you learn about innovative technologies, earn CLE credit and socialize with colleagues but you can also do some early holiday shopping – all from the comfort of your office! Did you catch the part about holiday shopping? Terrific! I will get to that point in a minute.

1. Innovative technology at your fingertips. This will be Onit’s third time exhibiting and I continue to be impressed with the informative sessions and breadth of legal technology vendors present. Two sessions I think will be exceptionally valuable are:

9:15 – 10:15 AM ET – Legal Project Management

By borrowing project management ideas popular with the software and manufacturing industries, attorneys can learn practical, simple techniques to employ right away to help their firms run more efficiently, have less potential errors and risk of malpractice all while leading to more billable time. Be prepared to have conventional wisdom and preconceived ideas challenged in this cutting-edge and thought provoking journey through advanced business processes.

1:45 – 2:45 PM ET – Improving Firm Efficiency through Innovative Technologies Trials (Steven Levy, legal project management guru and frequent contributor to Law Technology News is one of the speakers)

This session will:

– Review macro conditions and current industry overview to assess where the market stands today
– Produce greater efficiencies despite economic challenges
– Leveraging technology platforms
– Discuss recent technological advancements
– Discuss the benefits of integrating platforms and access to content and tools

For a full schedule of all the sessions, click here.

2. Earn CLE credit virtually. Attendance at Virtual LegalTech is free and almost all of the one-hour sessions offer continuing legal education credit for California, New York, and Illinois attorneys (Florida credit is pending). Where else can you earn CLE credit without leaving your office?

3. Get ‘social’ with colleagues, vendors and presenters. This is the fun part! Socializing in the networking lounge or in the exhibit hall is uniquely different than any tradeshow you’ve attended. If you’re interested in talking to someone in the exhibit hall, simply start a chat or join the group discussion. I particularly like visiting the networking lounge to see what people are saying after the presentations. Spice it up a little and add your own avatar or upload a picture – have some fun!

4. Holiday shopping in September? I promised I would come back to this point. Just by stopping by the Onit booth and clicking on the prize tab, you will be automatically entered to win a $200 Apple gift card – just think of the holiday gifts you can buy. Better yet – be selfish and buy the new iPod nano with multi-touch. I won’t tell anyone!

Visit the Virtual LegalTech website for more information and registration details.

We hope to see you ‘virtually’ this Thursday.

Assessments Aren’t Just for Litigation

Posted on September 20, 2010 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Early case assessment (“ECA”) is a valuable tool to analyze the risk and exposure associated with any given piece of litigation. But it is equally important in defining precedent and strategy for managing the litigation going forward. Simply put, ECA is composed of the following components:

1. Investigate facts

2. Analyze contextual issues

3. Decide on objectives for a project

4. Address stakeholder expectations

5. Define exposure (risk & financial)

6. Develop a project plan

7. Create a budget

So as I see it, ECA is critical to litigation. And it plays into Onit’s theme about legal project management being a three-legged stool: assessment of the situation, development of a project plan, and then budgeting for the project. Then, wash, rinse, and repeat.

But, is it really only useful in litigation? I think that this type of planning and critical thinking is valuable to all big legal projects. (You define “big” for yourself, but for me I would think projects that take more than a few days, or use outside counsel, fall into this definition.) So to help break free from the litigation context that ECA is most often associated with, I will call these “initial assessments.”

I would go one step further in applying process to the creation of initial assessments: don’t allow an invoice from outside counsel be submitted before an initial assessment is created. And while we are thinking about this in a process context, perhaps you don’t allow the creation of a project plan or budget before the initial assessment is done also. After all, how can you properly plan or budget a legal project without assessing the situation first???

One final point on the initial assessment must be made. Onit is not in the standards setting business and we don’t believe that initial assessments are a “one size fits all” form. These need to be tailored to a company and, more importantly, to a project type. An initial assessment for an acquisition looks very different than one for loan documentation or ERISA litigation.

In addition to breaking the litigation link to this concept, I also want to start to promulgate the idea that assessments are part of a continuum of project management. So in addition to the initial assessment, there should be periodic ongoing assessments and a final closing (or postmortem) assessment.

Ongoing assessments are key to managing the costs and risk of a project. It should be a review of all aspects of the initial assessment and allow you to consume any new facts or changed circumstances. Based on the ongoing assessment, you should update or refine your project plan, if necessary, review the budget and update that as necessary.

I like tying things like ongoing assessments and budget reviews to existing events or processes so as not to create more work. So, while these ongoing assessments can be done monthly, quarterly, or when the facts change, I think that a good (or better?) time to think about these is when a bill is submitted by outside counsel. That is a good opportunity to have your outside lawyer tell you if there are material changes to the initial assessment. If there aren’t changes, the process is simple and added no new work. If there are changes, then invoice presentment is a great time to ask changes or updates to be noted in the project.

Similarly, bill approval is a great time to ask the inside lawyer to do the same situation assessment and determine whether an update to the initial assessment is necessary. This way, every month a CEO or GC has an up to date assessment of the status of big legal projects.

Finally, but certainly not the least important, is to do a closing or postmortem assessment. Best practice project management dictates that you evaluate the performance of all project aspects to the initial assessment and evaluate the performance of stakeholders (including outside counsel, if used).

I think this applies to legal project management just as certainly as it does to other types of projects. It will allow you to determine what did and didn’t work in terms of risk or financial exposure and give you critical data to create better project type templates and to use information gained to create better project plans and better budgets.

Jump into Fall with Onit

Posted on September 2, 2010 by - Company News and Events

With the impending Labor Day weekend upon us so ends another summer. In Texas, this is somewhat of a blessing as temperatures finally start to drop below triple digits. September brings a return to school, football season and hopefully cooler weather. At Onit, the fall will bring a number exciting new updates, announcements and feature upgrades to further enhance your user experience.

Virtually Onit – Visit us Online Sept. 23 & Sept. 30

Join us this month at Virtual Legal Tech on Sept. 23 and Virtual Corporate Counsel on September 30 for an opportunity to learn more about Onit, our team and the upcoming launch of our premium subscriptions. You’ll even have a chance to do some early holiday shopping – register to win a $200 Apple gift card at our booth.

Click Onit – New UI Coming in October

This fall we will be launching our new user interface that is unlike any in the industry. The new UI was designed with each user in mind. Now, you’ll be in control. You will have the power to decide how you view and manage your projects, legal and otherwise. Stay tuned for more details.

Launch Onit – Premium Subscriptions Coming in November

We’re pleased to announce our premium modules are coming this November. Sign-up now for a free trial and join the thousands of legal and business professionals already using Onit to manage their projects. Registration only takes a few minutes.

As always, please continue to send us your comments, questions and concerns.

Tags or Folders?

Posted on August 25, 2010 by - Business Process Management

At Onit, we had to make a decision between using a tag or folder metaphor for “filing” information. We chose tags, and I will tell you why after a short introduction of both possibilities.

You know what folders are if you use a computer. Folders are directories that can contain other folders or files. They are very flexible in that you can create an unlimited number of folders and nested folders to organize your information. The key limitation of most foldering systems is that an item (document, image, file, etc.) can only exist in one folder or sub-folder at a time. Creating your system is complicated up front if you want a logical way to find your information. Not thinking it through up front will typically lead you to a disorganized, “let me just create a new folder for that” approach that is little better than having all of your information in one folder.

Tags are different from the ground up. Unlike folders, where items belong to a folder, a tag belongs to the item. This is an important distinction and one that gives tagging a great advantage over folders. Tagging lets you assign an unlimited number of tags to any item.

If you use any type of photo catalog software, you are probably familiar with tags. For instance, one photo could have a picture of mom (tag “mom”), dad (tag “dad”), Suzy (tag “suzy” and “kids”), Billy (tag “billy” and “kids”) and be from a recent vacation (tag “vacation” and “2010”) in Rome (tag “Europe” and “Italy” and “Rome”). You can see the beauty of this method. With just a couple of clicks, you can now pull out all of the photos with Suzy in them that were taken in Italy in 2010. It is not important what folder these pictures reside in.

I believe that files can benefit similarly from tags. It is rare that a file, let’s say a PowerPoint presentation on the 2010 Marketing Budget, couldn’t also benefit from multiple tags. Say you want to file that presentation. You will probably do something like file it into Marketing or Budget but if you used tags, you could tag it with “presentation” and “2010” and “marketing” and “budget.” That would give you a much richer way to find relevant information.

The downside of tags, though, is that you typically don’t see your information in the same hierarchical way that folders allow. But does that really matter in this search-centric world? I don’t folder much of anything anymore; I simply search. But tags make search much more valuable. And, if you really need it, there are ways to make tags look like folders.

Here at Onit, we chose tags as the metaphor for adding meta data to documents and projects. We think it works. Let us know what you think.

Onit’s Website Gets a Makeover

Posted on August 24, 2010 by - Company News and Events

In the last few months, we’ve been busy adding new features and making product enhancements in Onit. We also spent a good deal of time revamping our website and we wanted to share the exciting news.

The new site includes dramatic improvements to our appearance, navigation and accessibility and includes product-centric information about our project management tool so you can understand how to better use Onit to manage your legal and business projects.

The new website provides in-depth information about Onit’s features, showcases the Onit Apps and highlights key Security measures to ensure your data is protected in the application. Additionally, the new site provides background information about Onit and its team members, a sneak peak at Plans and Pricing for the premium modules (scheduled to be released this fall) and answers to some of our most frequently asked questions.

Watch the product tour Product Tour and browse the screencasts to find out how a tool like Onit can help you manage your projects with more predictability while enhancing collaboration and communication with your team members.

As always, we value your opinion on the design, content and usability of the new website so send us an email at [email protected] or drop us a note on our community site to tell us what you think of our makeover.

Legal Project Budgeting

Posted on August 19, 2010 by - Business Process Management

I had some preconceived notions about budgeting for legal projects going into the design phase for the Onit legal budgeting set of features.

First, I believed that our primary market, corporate legal departments with $1 to $6 billion in revenue, would want their law firms to create and submit a budget. After all, that is what the Fortune 500 market wants. Second, I believed that our primary market would want detailed budgets, at least at the phase level. After all, Fortune 500 corporate legal departments want to budget at even a greater level of detail. Both of these preconceived notions were wrong. And not just a little, but 100% wrong.

For a market that does very little budgeting today, a little bit of functionality goes a long way. As a result, we will deliver life of project and annual budgeting capabilities and skip the detail for now. Budgets, while they can be informed by law firm input, will really be created by the corporation. It is clear the general counsel in these companies rely much more on the expertise and opinion of their own employees about project costs than they do their vendors.

We have learned a couple of other things that would be more helpful than more detail. In addition to providing budget to actual comparisons, we will also be trying to extract some meta data about the invoice and the project at the time of invoice submission by the law firm and invoice approval by the inside project owner. Specifically, knowing what your spend is compared to your budget is not that meaningful unless you also know where your project is compared to its estimated completion. For instance, knowing that you are at 50% in a project is enhanced by the knowledge that you are 67% through with the legal work on the project. Your budget to actual comparison is now informed in a very meaningful way.

So in addition to collecting an invoice, we will also want to know whether there is a new estimate for project completion costs or date. These are relatively simple things to collect in our model with value that far exceeds the cost to collect.