Walker Clark
Worldview Archives
Establishing a Risk-Management Program for AI in Law Firms
How can your law firm's risk management programs keep up with the ethical and practical challenges of artificial intelligence?
Here is a "quick start" outline.
Rethinking Performance Metrics
Old paradigms about how to measure performance might be preventing, rather than motivating, your law firm's success.
Law firms thrive on the quality of their legal services and client relationships. In this context, qualitative goals, not just rigid numbers, are more indicative of progress and can have greater diagnostic value in detecting and addressing problems before they become crises.
Beyond Mere Words
Empty slogans, exhortations to work harder, and irrelevant "best practices" are not only ineffective; they often are counterproductive.
They do not promote clarity. Instead, most people are left to wander in the fog, from data point to data point, without understanding where they are going or why.
Tear Down the Silos
Is your law firm an integrated professional business or a collection of fiefdoms?
This is the tenth in a series of sixteen articles that will explore the relevance and, for some law firms the existential importance, of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points.
Deming’s ninth point in his Fourteen Points of Total Quality Management stresses a vital, yet often overlooked, aspect of organizational effectiveness: "Break down barriers between departments." As the practice of law becomes more complex and competitive, with greater challenges to sustainable profitability, this point is more important than ever before, even among smaller firms who might have “silos” that are so small as not to be noticeable.
Driving Fear Out of Law Firms
Law firm leaders must foster environments in which everyone feels secure and valued.
This is the ninth in a series of sixteen articles that will explore the relevance and, for some law firms the existential importance, of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points, especially for small and midsize law firms.
Leading the Way to Quality in Legal Services
The legal services industry is awash in advice about leadership. How can Deming's Seventh Point build better leadership in law firms?
Here are five practical actions that Walker Clark clients are taking that are consistent with Deming’s Seventh Point and the outcomes that they are experiencing from each one.
Continuous Improvement
To remain competitive and profitable in today's legal services market, law firms need to continuously improve how they work.
The fifth of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points, Improve Constantly and Forever the System of Production and Service, calls for a never-ending commitment to enhancing quality and efficiency within an organization. This principle has profound implications for law firms, impacting not only day-to-day internal operations but also bottom-line profitability.
End the practice of awarding business based on price.
In an increasingly competitive landscape, law firms, like any business, might feel compelled to make decisions based on price alone.
However, the fourth of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points for better management warned against this practice, arguing that cost should not be the primary consideration in business decisions. Instead, he championed a more holistic approach that weighs quality and long-term value alongside price.
Cease dependence on inspection.
"Cease dependence on inspection," W. Edwards Deming's third point for effective management, is perhaps one of the least understood principles in the context of service industries like law firms.
Conventionally, it translates into the notion that quality should not be an afterthought checked through after-the-fact inspections but ingrained in every step of the production process.
For law firms, this means shifting the focus from reactive measures to proactive strategies that enhance the quality of legal services by reducing or eliminating altogether the causes of mistakes and rework.
Adopt the new philosophy.
The second challenge in W. Edward Deming's Fourteen Points is Adopt the New Philosophy. It is particularly relevant in today's legal services industry, especially as many traditional law firms try to build and sustain a collaborative and productive workplace culture.
Constancy of Purpose
This is the second of a series of sixteen articles that will explore the relevance and, for some law firms the existential importance, of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points, especially for small and midsize law firms.
The first of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points for effective management calls for organizations to "Create Constancy of Purpose for Improving Products and Services." How can law firms do this in the face of changing client expectations and market dynamics?
Why Law Firms Need Deming’s Fourteen Points Now More Than Ever
Quality service, not price, rankings, or size, is what will differentiate successful law from from those that merely survive the 2020s.
Delivering the best quality legal services is a sincere aspiration of almost every law firm. For most of them, however, the word quality is little more than a slogan on their websites.
This is the first of a series of sixteen articles that will explore the relevance and, for some law firms, the existential importance, of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points.
Fix the work first...
If you apply technology — even artificial intelligence — to a flawed work process, you will only make mistakes and lose money faster.
Before a law firm applies a technological tool or system to its internal operations, especially at the practice group level, it should first analyze, understand, and implement responses to weaknesses in the internal systems and processes by which it prepares and delivers legal services to clients.
Artificial Intelligence: A Powerful Tool to Improve Service Quality
In today's highly competitive markets for legal service, it is service quality, not technical expertise, that will differentiate your law firm from your equally well-qualified competitors.
Artificial intelligence will never be a substitute for quality management, but it can provide powerful diagnostic tools and methods to build sustainable quality into every aspect of your practice.
Quality management could be your law firm’s best investment.
In an increasingly competitive legal market, law firms must constantly adapt and evolve to stay ahead.
While many firms focus on expanding their client base, increasing billable hours, or adopting the latest technology, a crucial factor in determining long-term success lies in the effective quality management of internal work processes.
Why am I doing this?
A lawyer's time is the most valuable asset in any law practice of any size anywhere in the world. Yet, lawyers report an almost continuous sense of frustration that they are not as productive or efficient as they believe that they could be.
Here is a time-tested diagnostic way to look at your work and to find ways to leverage your time to be as productive and profitable as possible. It costs nothing but a little bit of your time and can produce dramatic improvements in your everyday work.
The Law Firm of the Future: A Culture of Resilience
This is the final installment of a series of posts that have described and explored characteristics that will determine which law firms remain successful in the legal services industry of the future, and what law firms can do now to build them into their operations and professional cultures.
The bottom line for all of this can be described in a single word: resilience.
The Law Firm of the Future: A Predisposition for Innovation
Successful law firms in the future will not only keep up with trends and developments; they will lead them.
Innovation is more than just doing things better. Rather, it is a fundamental change. It shifts the paradigms that control how we think and act today.
The Law Firm of the Future: An Intense Focus on Quality
Quality must be more than a slogan on a law firm's website.
Quality management is perhaps the last great frontier for leaders and managers in traditional law firms.
The Law Firm of the Future: “Anytime, Anywhere” Service
One defining characteristic of the successful law firm of the future is already visible in many of the most successful law firms today.
The successful law firm of the future will be able to deliver a high degree of responsiveness and service quality anytime and anywhere the client needs legal services.
