The Legal Front Office

The Front Office

For more information or to schedule a no obligation conference call, contact us by phone or email. Internet Presence & Marketing Most firms now have websites yet these sites are mostly underutilized from a marketing perspective. Why? Because they are static and/or require expensive technical staff to perform needed updates. A static website probably hurts more than it helps. Firms need a marketing and publishing platform (see Build your Brand on Broadband). The ability to extend your reach to potential customers is accomplished with updates and relevant content on your website for those who are seeking services that your firm offers. Firms have an opportunity to differentiate themselves from the competition by publishing engaging informational content, but must don't. Also, there is increasing evidence that more firms are using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising but their existing PPC marketing strategies may not be as effective as they need to be to sustain competitive advantage. We help firms leverage and improve their marketing efforts by providing them with a publishing platform and by showing them how to run and optimize their PPC campaigns. As a publishing platform we recommend Typepad because of its dual use capabilities. Matter Management How matters are managed is obviously foundational to any law practice. The leading PC packages do a good job of tightly integrating matter and related information, but they often come with an expensive price tag for software and hardware investments. On the cloud we recommend Google Apps as a powerful and inexpensive alternative for achieving the same objective plus it provides additional functionality unmatched by PC based solutions. Information related to a matter is easily navigated and "searchable" using Google's world class search technology. This is the same Google search technology used by millions of users on a daily basis but in this instance completely within a secure domain controlled by your firm. To achieve quick and reliable access and updates to matter data, we help clients by using a template based, best practices approach. We understand that there are security, confidentiality and other concerns related to storing client data on third party servers. We also know that "local security" within firms is often sub-standard and that almost no firm can match the millions (if not hundreds of millions) of dollars that Google has invested, and will continue to invest, in its security infrastructure. Consumers of online banking services had similar concerns in the past, but banks were able to provide secure, reliable access to overcome these issues. One of the key advantages for having your firm on "the cloud" is that a cloud based solution is "Katrina Proof" and provides the anywhere, anytime access well suited to a twenty first century digital workforce. In addition, web-based synchronization services provide secure backups for your data. Email, Calendaring, Tasks Although the legal industry was slow to adopt email, it is now the "killer app" within the industry. Google Apps provides Gmail as a "branded" email solution using your firm's domain name. All emails related to a specific matter can be tagged with the matter identifier for instant "findability." In addition, Gmail's out-of-the-box search functionality can be used to find messages using keyword searches. There are also provisions for personal and group calendars as well as the capability to create matter specific calendars. We help clients establish calendaring systems that mitigate the risks associated with missing critical dates. Google Apps has recently added a task manager and there are also free third party task managers that tightly integrate into Google's calendaring system. Want to be notified of email and calendar events on your cell phone, or update your calendar from your phone?  No problem. Google provides two way communications between personal devices and the cloud. Document Management Law firms create documents, lots of them, 24/7, 365 days a year. Many of these documents are located in firm repositories otherwise known as "knowledge landfills." Why? Because over time useful documents become too difficult to find. It is the needle in a haystack problem. Traditional methods of using meta data for classification taxonomies have largely failed because they were too burdensome. In short, what's missing is world class search technology to find the information you need, when you need it. Although enterprise search solutions have improved by orders of magnitude, these solutions remain expensive. What if you could use the same world class technology used by millions of users every day as the search engine for your firm's document repository? What if this world class search technology was free or nearly so? We recommend Google Apps not only for matter management and email, but also as a document repository. In fact these uses are often combined. Google Apps leverages Google's search technology for searching documents completely within your firm's domain. In addition, document revision histories are readily maintained online. Problem solved at a price point unequaled by other solutions. Knowledge Management There is some evidence beginning to accumulate that partners are significant contributors to knowledge management (KM) initiatives and it is not difficult to understand why. Before summarizing these reasons a brief description of tacit versus explicit knowledge is in order. Tacit knowledge is the knowledge that practitioners have in their brains—the “wetware” that has accumulated through education and experience, differentiating the novice from the expert. It is the most highly prized form of knowledge because it is responsible for creating value for clients and driving client satisfaction. It comes in a variety of sub-forms including 1) legal substantive knowledge (“stuff” known about a particular domain); 2) knowledge about sources (“stuff” known about where to update what is known, and to determine what is new); and 3) knowledge about people (“stuff” known about what others know). Explicit knowledge is the type of knowledge that is captured in documents, databases, Wiki’s and other repositories. It is the knowledge searched for both online and in print. It is contained both within the firm and external to it. In terms of KM, it is the “stuff” that is managed and the principal transfer mechanism. In addition, more and more conversations in various forms are being captured in “new media”—twitter, blogs, audio, and video; all of which are becoming increasingly important components of explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is the "stuff" within containers of various sorts. The more tacit knowledge accumulated therein the better. Partners have a high degree of interest (or should) in KM because it is one of the better ways to influence the two factors within the Profit Per Equity Partner (PPEP calculation) that remain up for grabs: 1) margins; and 2) leverage. We help clients launch KM initiatives using Google Apps by demonstrating why "just do it" is more effective than failed top down big bang approaches (see Search, KM & the Practice of Law).