Date: April 12, 2013 Topic: The Shrinking ... - Georgetown Law

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General Counsel with Power? 2011 For example, the standardization and templating of legal documents is the legal equivalent of inter-changeable and standard components in manufacturing. And why not a just-‐in-‐time approach to legal service delivery? In legal services, as in other sectors, the production-‐line approach requires the following three steps. 1. Disaggregation and standardization: to break down legal work into constituent tasks which are then standardized or modularized 2. Process management: to ensure the smooth flow of process steps and to eliminate waste 3. Project management: to separate planning from execution, to define who does what, and to ensure that milestones and deadlines are met on time Objections to the Production-line Approach The general counsel interviewed for this study tended to fall into three groups. First, a small group of enthusiasts demonstrated an enormous appetite to embrace this approach. Second, some sceptics stated that there was nothing new in this approach (that for quite some time, lawyers have been parcelling out work to junior associates and paralegals). Third, the wait-‐and-‐see group were happy for others to take a lead, particularly as this approach did not apply to their own area of work. The adverse consequences of standardized mass production are well known. One does not need to evoke the image of Charlie Chaplin spinning around repetitively tightening nuts and bolts in Modern Times to feel how disheartening routine tasks could be. However, unlike in manufacturing which encountered vocal Luddite opposition in its history, the opposing segments of the legal profession are gentle sceptics and passive resisters. In the legal world, some objections to the production-‐line approach are common to manufacturing, whilst others are peculiar to legal work. Below is a list of objections gleaned from the interviews. (a) Our volume is too low, so we cannot exploit economies of scale (mentioned most frequently) (b) Quality would go down with disaggregation (c) Legal work has to be holistic to meet clients’ need (d) Collaboration, iteration, and interaction are inherent in doing legal work (e) Over-‐disaggregating carries the risk of de-‐motivating lawyers who do not see the whole picture (f) Standardization gives lawyers a ‘license not to think’ (g) Lawyers are not trained to think in this way (h) Routine tasks, if outsourced or offshored, will undermine training opportunities for junior lawyers (i) Upfront costs in technology investment and/or visiting unfamiliar locations (e.g. India) are too high (j) Lawyer culture does not fit with disaggregated task delivery (k) Law of privilege gets in the way of disaggregation (l) Disaggregation, resulting in the use of unqualified non-‐lawyers, is bad because they do not have the same ethical standard as lawyers 15 Said Business School | University of Oxford
General Counsel with Power? 2011 So, what types of legal work are most easily subjected to disaggregation? Who decides how much disaggregation is too much or too little? Is there one best way to break up a piece of legal work into constituent tasks? In order to answer these questions, this study asked general counsel to choose a specific practice area to discuss their achievements and aspirations. Litigation Tasks Litigation is often the largest component of external legal expenditure, a component that also fluctuates widely from year to year. For this reason, the general counsel are keen to consider ways of reducing and controlling litigation costs. However, those interviewed varied in their philosophy on how best to tackle this. During the interview, a general counsel was shown a list of litigation tasks (see Figure 2) (see Susskind 2008) which became a basis of discussion. An initial discussion was whether or not the list made sense, and what might be an optimal degree of disaggregation. It is evident that some general counsel had never considered the way they deal with each litigation matter in this laundry list sort of way. However, once they recognized that the list made generic sense, some started making comments on the possibility of finer disaggregation. Legal research is a good case in point. Generally, many general counsel made a distinction between information gathering (e.g. a fifty state survey in the US) which can be disaggregated easily and may be carried out by junior lawyers or paralegals, and researching legal precedents which require a high level of judgement in context by experienced lawyers. Another example is document review, which may be disaggregated into first-‐level reviews and further reviews that require professional judgement on what is relevant or privileged. Figure 2: Litigation tasks Legal research Document review Negoqaqon Advocacy Strategy Tacqcs Liqgaqon support E-‐disclosure or e-‐discovery Project management A further point of discussion was who was best placed to do each task. The starting point for this discussion revealed which one of the three approaches a general counsel adopted. First, in what may be called a craft approach, the in-‐house counsel homed in on the importance of Strategy and Tactics, which should be led by the in-‐house lawyer with close counsel from the lead law firm. Beyond this, however, 16 Said Business School | University of Oxford
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Date: April 12, 2013 Topic: The Shr
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The Shrinking Pyramid: Implications
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Date: April 12, 2013 Topic: The Shrinking ... - Georgetown Law

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