October 19, 2006
Law Firms Shouldn't Settle for "No" When Asking "Why Can't We?"
I ran into two situations last week that illustrate why you should not settle for “no” when asking “Why can’t I?” questions about your law firm’s enterprise system. If the software is not working the way you think it should or not giving you what you want, do not accept an unsatisfactory answer from the firm’s staff. Insist that the staff member go to the software vendor and that they explain to the vendor what you want and why—what you are trying to accomplish. If the answer is still unsatisfactory, you should personally go directly to the software vendor. If you have to, go to the top—the COO or CEO. What will surprise you is that the right answer is almost always “Yes!”
When it comes to software, most of us only use a small portion of the product’s capability, and that goes for individual attorney use of the enterprise business software for the law firm. Training is front-loaded—it occurs when law firms first install systems. Unfortunately, skills are not always updated with refresher training. It gets worse. Updates to software add new capabilities and features that, without training or self-paced study, go unused. Law firms experience turnover among accounting and administrative staff, and before long, the people in the law firm with primary responsibility for the system only know what has been handed down from their predecessors.
Today’s systems have options and defaults that will change how the software works to fit individual preferences and patterns of work. What works for one person’s work pattern can be cumbersome and frustrating for another. Unchanged, those hand-me-down settings become frustrating to the attorney.
Almost all enterprise software provides the capabilities for custom reports and views. The leading software vendors offer services to design these custom capabilities for you and most include optional tools to equip the firm to do their own.
Chances are that your firm is not using all of the vendor’s products. If there is something you need, you can pretty well assume others do as well, and the vendors may have optional products or services that fill that need.
At two different firms last week with two different issues, we ran into attorneys that were upset because their system would not do what they wanted and they had been putting up with this adverse condition for months. We showed them how their existing system already does exactly what they wanted exactly the way they wanted it done. It was a simple matter of changing built-in options and defaults. The problem was the law firm’s staff only knew what had been handed down and the attorneys had accepted “No” as the answer.
There are two morals to this story. The first is, do not accept “No” as the answer. The second is that there is material value in continuing training to update and refresh staff knowledge and skill regarding the firm’s enterprise systems. The Juris team reminded me the other day that the newest Juris law firms have a more valuable system than long-term Juris customers. It is the same software, but the newer firms have been recently trained on the system’s full and powerful capabilities. The long-term clients only have hand-me-down knowledge.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Companies like Juris will go to the law firm site to conduct refresher training. They offer off-site classroom training. Training CDs are available and online supplemental training is available over the Internet. Juris, Inc. recently put in place a certification program and will take responsibility for continuing certification of key staff members in your firm. Other vendors may offer a similar program. Ask your staff for the ongoing training options offered by your vendor and put in place a regimen of ongoing training to keep their knowledge and skills updated. It will pay off. What they learn will increase per-partner income.
ASK, don’t settle, and demand the best… Several years ago the folks at Juris coined the phrase “The Power of Yes” to convey to all Juris team members and Juris law firms that saying “Yes” is the company's objective.
Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.
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Filed under Technology by Tom Collins