Even L.A. Law Had Some Great Ideas on Law Firm Management

I know some of you will think it is somewhat odd that this morning’s team meeting was the first one we have had at our law firm. We actually sat down in a single room together and went through each case item by item, to do list by to do list. It is a bit embarrassing to say that we had never done this before today’s meeting. Going through the case review process, I felt a little bit like we were on L.A. Law for two reasons. One, because we do many internet and technology cases there is a crossover with pornography. Many of our clients’ stolen domains are redirects to porn sites, for instance. We also have a couple "sexy" employment discrimination cases. I remember that on L.A. Law, the fact patterns and discussions that occurred at those weekly meetings seemed unbelievable.

The truth is that we should have been having these sit-down meetings since the very beginning. But initially, it was only Jenny and I and we talked all the time. We have grown so steadily that I do not think it occurred to me, until recently, that we have such a large team of people, that we really need the face-to-face time. While our extranet provides a lot of information to everyone on the team, there is still no beating an across the table meeting to go through the items in the extranet.

As you know, I also believe that 50% or more of the things that should be done on cases handled by law firms remain unidentified, un-tasked and thus undone. My theory is that you could walk in to most busy law firms and conclude that (1) All of the lawyers are billing to their targets, but (2) many items are still not being done. Firms are so focused on hourly billing that they only care about hourly quotas. They forget they are attempting to achieve a result for the client and do not spend enough time on strategy and execution. Having a task-based system documented in an extranet available to all team members, and then sitting down and going through the extranet in a face-to-face meeting with team members is optimal.