Legal Commentary

The Process Era--A Follow Up On Jeff Carr's 4 Buckets

By Patrick J. Lamb

Several weeks ago, I posted about Jeff Carr's 4 buckets of law practice--process,content, advocacy and counseling.  In the same vein, Jordan Furlong advises lawyers to Get ready for the process era.  It is an outstanding piece of work and presents a similar view much more capably.  Jordan's conclusion:

I was listening to Richard [Susskind] deliver the keynote address at the ABA TECHSHOW last month when it occurred to me how fundamental a change this will be within our profession. We've never needed to worry about process or efficiency before — we dictated the terms of the marketplace, so we could take as long as we liked to do our work and in whatever fashion pleased us. That's coming to an end, and most law firms will face a huge challenge converting their business models to adapt. I twittered as much during Richard's presentation: 'Future legal business: process consultant for law firms. Lawyers will need help mapping out and re-engineering their practices.'

In the near future, it won't be good enough for lawyers to ignore the journey and focus on the destination — we won't be able to focus solely on the ends and let the means take care of themselves. The nature and quality of how we do our work will become at least as important as the work itself. That's going to be very tough for us to wrap our heads around, but I don't see any way we can avoid it.

My only addition to Jordan's piece is the this future is here.

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on May 21, 2009 (boomark / email).