Many of my clients have been worrying lately about how to continue to provide excellent customer service, even differentiate their services, in an economy that’s greatly restricted their abilities to embark on process improvement initiatives. I’ve long expressed that “knowledge management” starts in the trenches, and focuses on making small improvements to the daily work of lawyers and staff. In my nod to my IPM Imperative philosophy, following is the first suggestion in my (as yet brief) series on Doing More With Less.
Initiative #1: Document Assembly
One of the easiest ways to realize true technological advantage from the systems you already own and manage is to leverage them for the propagation of information in the work product you create every day. We generally call this competency “document assembly.” But the notion is simple: users generally re-create the information stored in your IP management, case management, accounting, CRM and other systems many times over every day. Virtually every current system in each of these categories provides some document assembly functionality. So it stands to reason that one of the easiest ways to gain quick technological leverage is to expand the use of document assembly to incorporate all routine forms, transmittals, and client correspondence. It can cut work times on these documents by an average of 85%. Now, what if we charged a fixed billable rate for each form? . . .
Full Name
Eyal Iffergan
Location
Sugar Land, TX
