Law Times

PAGE 10 In the slow lane to a digital future FOCUS BY IAN HARVEY For Law Times profession's fixation on paper. While BlackBerries and e- O ld traditions die hard, they say, and none die harder than the legal mail are well entrenched in firms, there's still a tendency to print everything and keep paper records, not to mention that Ca- nadian lawyers still lag in shifting to digital processes like e-billing and case management. But it is changing, albeit slowly, says Susan Wortzman at Wortzman Nickle Professional Corp., whose practice specializes in advising lawyers in the area of e-discovery and related aspects of technology such as identification, preservation, collection, process- ing, review, and production of electronically stored information. "But yes, you still meet with a lot of resistance from lawyers around technology," she says, adding even with the accep- tance of e-discovery processes in the U.S., Canadians tend to rely on paper instead of wholly digital documents and files. Part of that is because tech- nology intrudes into lawyers' lives on both the professional and personal level. "If you're working on some- thing and your BlackBerry or [your] mobile is buzzing with e- mails, and you stop to respond, you can't concentrate on what you're doing," she says, adding many members in the profession are entrenched in their own pro- cesses and are reluctant to take the risk of learning new ones. That same technology is lib- erating many lawyers, however, and it may well drive more firms to wholesale adoption of other electronic processes. "The real chance is that tech- nology allows people to have virtual offices which gives them mobility and the ability to work at home, two even three days a week," she says. "I know one in- house counsel who does that and it means she's not commuting by car two hours each way and not working. She's more productive. People phone her office and she answers. It doesn't matter where she is," says Wortzman. Greater acceptance of digital technologies may well pave the way for faster uptake of other digital processes. And that's just what Don Schad, general manager of corpo- rate legal solutions at Texas-based DataCert Inc. is betting on. The company makes software and offers technology solutions for secure online e-billing processes geared especially towards global corporations which outsource legal work to the majority of America's top 100 firms and need to control their spending cycles. It counts 72 of the Fortune 500 in 126 countries as clients. Canadian lawyers have lagged the U.S. in getting on the digital platform, he says, servers, albeit in an encrypted form in a separate, secure server. Once pulled into the receiv- ing company's servers the file is deleted within 30 days. through a secure, segmented electronic "pipeline" separat- ed from other Internet traffic and therefore protected, the thought that confidential and sensitive data is anywhere near cyberspace or, indeed, away from the firms own servers for any period of time gives many pause for thought. It is however the trend of the While the file is transmitted Susan Wortzman says there is still 'a lot of resistance from lawyers around technology.' but there is a growing interest now, adding the company has invested resources in trying to develop the Canadian market. "Of course, the recent fi- nancial turmoil hasn't helped either," he says. Some of that reluctance can be traced to poor experiences with similar offerings from oth- er companies in the early days of the digital switch, he says, meaning some potential clients are gun shy or locked into a sys- tem which cannot be updated or ported over to the DataCert of- fering without serious planning. One of the stumbling blocks to wider acceptance of the e-billing solution is the fact that once sent from the originating firms' serv- ers, the invoice sits on DataCert's "We view our relationship with those attorneys as a partner- ship and so we also took a very slow approach to implementa- tion with a soft launch," he says. No exceptions were made, however, and by the time the sys- tem was fully rolled out, all firms were compliant, making life a lot easier for Kenny and his staff. "The return on investment is future in many other industries, and eventually there will be ac- ceptance in the legal sector, he says, especially as the process continues to prove secure. Brian Kenny, a non-practis- ing attorney who is director of finance at Marsh and McLen- nan Co., a leading global advice and solutions providers in risk, strategy, and human capital in more than 100 countries, says they switched to DataCert's bill- ing solution in 2006 to better manage relationships with the 135 law firms they deal with. However, the last thing he and his team wanted to do was bring in a disruptive process and force everyone else to toe their line. "We found about 80 per cent of the law firms we dealt with were already using or familiar with DataCert either for themselves or clients," he says. "So in that respect, it wasn't a major leap." pretty high," he says. "You do pay a monthly fee to DataCert, so in that respect it's software as a service (in which the clients get all support, upgrades, and troubleshooting as part of the package) and that takes out a lot of the headaches." Invoices get turned around in less than 10 days, there's bet- ter control of incoming invoices, he says. Plus, it's cut back on resource demands within his de- partment and he's been able to do more with less manpower, which in any climate is a plus, but espe- cially now. The system also has an automatic invoice review feature he finds really useful. "It eliminates a lot of the review- ing, such as whether the arrange- ment means they don't charge us for basic overheads, and it allows us to focus on the meat of the invoice and so I think that has really helped us cut down time," he says. With the e-billing in place, he says the next horizon will be looking at leveraging other tech- nology, probably around manag- ing e-discovery and other aspects of the legal operation to make the processes more efficient. LT It's not who you are, it's who you say you are BY IAN HARVEY For Law Times B ners' agenda at law firms and it has little to do with the number of new files brought in that month. The practice of law, it turns out, is a busi- ness like any other business, and is about differentiating itself from the competition in word and deed. For the most part, that change has been going on at the large firms for the last five or more years, as in- house marketing departments and communication teams ensure the right people are getting the right message about the firm beyond the annual golf tournament. And, it's also taking root at mid- There's a new item on the part- rand strategy? Logo? Colours? Marketing col- lateral? Media relations? size and boutique firms who are turning to advertising and media agencies to hone their image and better target their key message. "Law firms didn't start to pay real attention with formal departments until the mid-1990s or so," says Mary Ann Freedman of Freedman and Associates. "I don't know what propelled more lawyers but I think maybe the recession which hit the law sector as well in the early 1990s," she says. "They found they couldn't sit back and wait for clients to knock on their door, they realized they had to get out there and show people what they were doing and compete." Within five years, things changed and today almost all large firms have a marketing de- partment that does event plan- ning, communications, develops business acquisitions strategies, and supports the senior partners in guiding the business' growth. "Still, it's a bit of a reverse to marketing in other business, be- cause marketing in law really doesn't generate any new business and that's not surprising," she says. "You're not going to have a meeting and get a $50,000 file the next day. The research suggests it takes seven or eight contacts before new business results." But marketing is not just about sending out a mass mail- ing of brochures and a handful of press releases, she warns, nor is it about hosting an evening at the firm's box at the Air Canada Centre or Rogers Centre. "Unless you have a strategic plan of what you're trying to achieve which determines your marketing activity, you're not likely to achieve the kind of results you're looking for to generate business to grow the bottom line," says Freedman. It's not just the large downtown Toronto firms that are starting to pay attention to their public per- sonas. John Wiltshire is a 30-year veteran of the advertising and marketing industry and partner at Philter, an advertising agency which recently worked with Devry, Smith & Frank LLP, a full- service firm of about 40 lawyers in Don Mills established in 1964. Developing a brand image and a value proposition for a law firm was a new experience for the agency that had previously worked with wealth management compa- nies and other professional firms. But, it wasn't a quantum leap. It was, however, a brand new experience for the lawyers at the firm, he says, aside from the general nightmare of trying to co-ordinate schedules to get all stakeholders in the same room at the same time. "We start with some mood boards, with photographs, colours, and designs, and start to get them to agree on what they feel comfort- able with," says Wiltshire. "What we're looking for is to find a place of comfort and confidence, to weed out that extraneous stuff and get a clear idea of who they are and what they represent, not just in terms of visual appeal but in terms of who they are as people." That was important for the firm, he says, because it not only sends a message to the client but to other lawyers they might want to recruit. "Identifying your brand is im- portant because you hire people not just because of ability but also because of compatibility, are they the right kind of person for this kind of place?" says Wiltshire. Still, for a group of lawyers, it was a tentative entry into a whole new world and language. It wasn't something they were taught in law school and, given the nature of the firm's origins, it wasn't something all the partners saw as needing doing. "We've been through a meta- morphosis in the last five or six years," says Larry Keown, partner at DSF. "We've gone from 10 or 13 lawyers and mostly institution- al clients where we didn't have to think about our brand or public persona, to more than 30 lawyers and now we're in the process of adding a family law unit." The firm's original marketing ef- forts were mostly having a first-year university summer student prepare some materials. But as they diversi- fied it was clear they needed more. Philter initially designed a December 1, 2008 • Law Times brochure that Keown says was a challenge in itself, mostly because the partners couldn't agree on how they wanted to project the brand. "We didn't want to appear like those U.S. law firms, you know the TV ads and such saying, 'We get you money,'" he says. "And it had to be consistent with the size of the firm, we weren't going to be spend- ing $400,000 on branding." Now the firm has bus shelter ads and other profile-raising strat- egies and is also in the process of redesigning the web site, which is again triggering discussions among the partners. "It's a long ongoing journey that never ends, I think," says Keown. LT www.lawtimesnews.com

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