Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 6 19 While much of what we are seeing is indeed innovation and in the eyes of some, myself included, pretty cool, it's not necessarily material for clients. Did the cost of doing business with the provider go down or up? Did some "new" offering get provided? A practice innovation allowing for greater effi- ciency is indeed important and needed — but does it improve the client experience? If it is just a better input, that's great, but I don't get excited as a consumer when Pepsi comes up with a better bottling system, even when it is faster, cheaper, better for the environment and light years ahead of Coke's operations. It still tastes like Pepsi and the price had better not be increased because of the company's need to catch up to its investment toward inputs. I love the emerging players such as Kira, Ross Intelligence, BlueJ, Closing Folders and a host of other legal technology providers — all companies I do everything I can to support — mainly because I'm a geek and understand the pain points they solve from the perspective of the professional services provider. Plus, they look cool! But what of the perspective of someone who buys services from firms such as the role I played at Xerox as in-house counsel? You have great tools that make you more efficient? That's terrific. I look forward to the reduction in my legal spend as a result of your needing to pay less for labour. It's the client-centred outputs that matter. The measures being adopted by firms are very often in the hopes of preserv- ing margin or maintaining business, not increasing or creat- ing new value to the end user. In many Requests for Proposals, there is a section where the prospective provider is asked to demonstrate their com- mitment to innovation. What is not being said is that the reason for the section is not to show what tools you use or processes you have leaned out. It's really asking you to show you can do the same work for less money or in less time. Alternatively, can you provide some new benefit where one did not previously exist? When I used to attend court on a regular basis, I found it baffling to arrive at court and not know if I was there for the day or for 20 minutes. My gauge in respect of a "good judge" wasn't their base of jurisprudential wisdom or even their demeanour. The "best" judges would simply ask at the begin- ning who was in attendance for an uncontested or settled matter and deal with those first. The shorter time to process, the higher up the queue the matter would ascend. This meth- od would result in as much as 70 per cent of the room being cleared within the first two hours. Surprisingly, this was not a universal practice and it was possible to spend hours waiting behind lengthy contested matters. All of this came to mind at a recent event outlining "practi- cal" innovations, which were presented in five minutes or less. The most practical of the presentations used no technology at all unless you count markers, sticky notes and flip charts. The demonstration of a Kanban board and how to cycle through issues, tasks and documents on a specific matter clearly showed the benefits of a visualization and the method of processing the buckets of "to do", "doing" and "done," to iden- tify bottlenecks. What happens in most law firms is a never- ending exchange of emails, documents with version numbers and delayed discussions on matters that are best resolved by quick, in-person dialogue. This simple "innovation," perhaps buttressed with a digi- tal rather than physical version, undoubtedly leads to faster cycle times, fewer back-and-forth exchanges between the stakeholders and greater clarity in terms of who does what to whom. The cost to do the same work will be lower based on the improved time to completion and diminution of waste. Imagine being able to demonstrate a result like Hunoval Law has for its mortgage enforcement clients where the Notice of Hearing cycle has been reduced down to eight days from 70 days with a corresponding $4 million in savings. Innovation for innovation's sake is a dangerous, internecine game. While the best legal technology minds of our genera- tion build the shiny and new, we can't lose focus of the goals of innovation and how business models, process and products have to serve tangible ends. Innovations need to be sharply focused upon making the world better for the client and creat- ing incentives for new cycles of innovation as we grind down old ways of conducting the business of law. Jason Moyse is industry lead of LegalX and manager, legal busi- ness services, at Elevate Services, serving global law firms and corporate legal departments. What do your clients need? The means to move on. Guaranteed ™ . Baxter Structures customizes personal injury settlements into tax-free annuities that can help your clients be secure for life. Need more information? Contact us at 1 800 387 1686 or baxterstructures.com Kyla A. Baxter, CSSC PRESIDENT, BAXTER STRUCTURES ntitled-5 1 2016-10-25 3:42 PM

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