Are law firms not yet ready for performance management?

Are law firms still in their infancy when it comes to measuring their performance in general? Is it not only KM that lacks action based on insight gained from measures?

I received several emails in response to my previous posting on lack of KM metrics in law firms and the common ground of all emails is that law firms do not only lack the measures for KM but a sense for performance management of any kind, really.

At least in continental Europe a possible explanation for this could be that law firms of the size they have today did not exist in the last century. A large law firm in Germany for example used to be an association of 20 lawyers and of course at this scale it is easy to manage it via a "gut feeling" and common sense but at the scales of today, this is no more feasible.

And it is not only internal performance measures, really: With LLP conversions around the corner for many large law firms it will be interesting to see what data will come out of that. The same is true for the growing importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) but it remains to be seen whether this will only be some beautified numbers on gender and ethnics or whether this will also extend to more sensible stuff such as e.g. the client list. Anyone serious about CSR should also compare client lists with lists environmental organisations or politically minded NGOs provide on companies that ruin our planet or have ethically dubious business.

Anyone up for comparing your client list to the lists published by Friends of the Earth or amnesty international?

Two interesting publicly available exercises I have come across are the CMS people report and Freshfields CSR website.

Leaving law firm land

Today I have left law firm land to pursue a career in an entirely different industry from April onwards and I would like to share some thoughts on law firm land with you, basically an exit interview with myself :-)

1. To my knowledge there seems to be no industry where people can learn more in terms of KM and where KM is of such an obvious benefit. After all, law is a business with highly repetitive “knowledge work” dependant on specialist lawyers identifying patterns and applying prefabricated solutions. Another really good thing about law firms is learning how to deal with that special type of people partners are, both in good and bad terms. They are a challenging lot, but it was a good learning experience.

2. After almost five years in legal KM I still don’t subscribe to the distinction between knowledge management and information management (yes, I mean the pyramid drawings on data, information and knowledge). I think KM is managing information of high value, nothing else. But of course we can’t call it information management as otherwise the playground would be lost to IT consultants and any relationship to business eradicated by IT technicians. (Read TD Wilson on the IM/KM distinction). I believe what we practice as KM is necessary and beneficial but nevertheless I am in favour of calling a duck a duck if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and looks like a duck. Maybe many of the unfulfilled promises by software vendors and the misunderstandings in the beginning of KM could have been avoided if we had actually called it information management with a clear border to IT. The key is culture, not technology, to repeat another truism.

3. Across many firms KM people and other professionals have one big issue: They are employed to do a specialist professional job but the final decisions are almost always made by partners with often little knowledge in things like KM, IT or accounting. Lawyers need to warm up to the idea that people are professionals for a reason and that sometimes also decisions need to be delegated, not only work itself. The whole notion of “support staff” needs to be revisited as opposed to earlier days support staff is not solely secretarial work anymore.

4. KM needs metrics. I should disclose at this stage that all my professional life I have argued this case, and both my MSc and my PhD thesis revolve around this topic. I still find it hard to believe how little most firms know about the effect of KM. Maybe this is a question of how big law firms have become, but if I was running a company large enough to require some type of information management, I would also like to understand cause and effect of the money spent. This is entirely underdeveloped across law firm land. Yes, KM is a natural overhead cost of doing legal business, but how the money is spent and what the outcome is certainly needs more monitoring.

5. Please don’t give me anymore of the “freeing up lawyers’ time” benefit about KM. Lawyers in big firms will always have to work 100+ hours a week and it looks like there are always volunteers to do the job, however bad their chances for partnership really are. What I do believe is that KM can pave the way for lawyers doing higher quality work, less menial jobs but their "freed up" will for sure not turn into quality time for their lives...

In my new role I will still be "doing KM" to some extent, but I have the potentially naïve hope that the culture is more welcoming towards KM outside of law firm land.

And for those among you who had my mobile number, that is now off and my personal email will be the only means to contact me until I get a new phone at my new job in April. Kind of like a back in time experiment for myself, being without mobile, on which I shall report back how it went.

That’s it for today, I shall now go and celebrate having quit my first real job. I am very grateful for the opportunities I have had and the things I have learned, but just as I think it was the best decision to enter law firm land five years ago I now think it is the best time for me to leave it again.