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Share Your Toys: Collaboration is a Team Sport

Share Your Toys: Collaboration is a Team Sport. Terry Crum Chief Knowledge Officer and Director, Global Information Services Jones Day LAWNET 2003. Football is a Team Sport. X. X. X. X. X. X. X. X. X. X. X. WR. T. G. C. G. T. TE. WR. QB. FB. HB. X. X. X. X. X.

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Share Your Toys: Collaboration is a Team Sport

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  1. Share Your Toys: Collaboration is a Team Sport • Terry Crum • Chief Knowledge Officer and • Director, Global Information ServicesJones Day • LAWNET 2003

  2. Football is a Team Sport X X X X X X X X X X X WR T G C G T TE WR QB FB HB

  3. X X X X X X X X X X X T G C G T TE WR PASS PLAY WR FB HB QB

  4. Is Lawyering a Team Sport? • Observations • Law is parochial, limiting the need for collaboration across jurisdictions and geographies. • Large law firms are likely collections of smaller practices and solos who have banded together for strategic advantage (e.g., income hedging, full-service strategies, etc.). • Prevailing reward systems (e.g., eat-what-you-kill) encourage lawyers to corral work for themselves--especially when work is scarce.

  5. Is Lawyering a Team Sport? • Conclusion • Lawyering is a more akin to Track & Field than to Football. (Each athlete competes individually but scores are summed to a team. At times, athletes work together to win a given event (e.g., relays).

  6. To What Extent Do Lawyers Need to Collaborate? • Finding a specialist • Finding information, answers • Building on prior work product • Distributing excess work • Training newer lawyers

  7. Finding a Specialist • How it’s done today • Telephone call to colleague. • Request-for-information broadcast e-mail. • Opportunities to improve • Conduct a social network analysis. • Collect specialist expertise in a central system. • Barriers to change • Difficulty collecting current and accurate expertise profiles (i.e., grade inflation). • Some decision makers have “not broken” mentality.

  8. Finding Information, Answers • How it’s done today • Telephone call to colleague. • Request-for-information broadcast e-mail. • Search for prior work product. • Primary, secondary source searches. • Opportunities to improve • Global, syndicated search engine; returning both content and author information. • Specialist libraries (e.g., Labor & Employment Database) • Barriers to change • Technical challenges, especially in geographically dispersed Firms. • Lawyer distrust in quality of content. • Moderate to high development costs.

  9. Building on Prior Work Product • How it’s done today • Hardcopy precedent files. • Document management systems. • Informal e-mail collections. • Opportunities to improve • Clause libraries. • Specialized content, model collections. • Processes to identify quality precedent. • Barriers to change • Technical challenges. • Content development costs. • Keeping content current and reliable.

  10. Distributing Excess Work • How it’s done today • Reliance on a known network of lowest-cost but proven performers. • Opportunities to improve • Gauge work appropriately to the right resources (John’s example of low cost lawyer taking three hours v. him @ $300). • Associate availability systems. • Barriers to change • Desire to collect as much work as possible in slow times.

  11. Training Newer Lawyers • How it’s done today • Elaborating on issues as they are encountered in actual matters. • Opportunities to improve • Development of diligence lists, checklists. • Transactional systems that capture content and information about actual deals. • Barriers to change • Training issues. • Change management.

  12. Questions & Answers ?

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