January 12, 2007
The Event Horizon for Law Firm Leaders
Yesterday I received a pre-release briefing on the latest addition to the Juris suite of law firm software, Juris Active information. While I avoid writing blog posts that are, or appear to be, a commercial, there are times when the benefits of new capabilities are just too important not to share with morepartnerincome readers.
Juris, Inc. has been revolutionizing how business and competitive information is presented and used in the law firm. The addition of Active Information to the Juris software suite is another example of the performance edge Juris law firms have over their peers. What Juris has been doing through its product development program is moving the event horizon for law firm leaders to the present and slightly over the edge into the future. Juris Active Information targets actionable and navigable information to the individual in the firm to whom it is relevant and then can provide it in an instantly digestible form.
What do I mean by “event horizon”? Event horizon is a boundary in space/time beyond which events cannot be observed. Managing Partners and other law firm leaders have been at a disadvantage for years because their information systems only told them about events occurring well into the past. In other words, information available to them is out-of-date. It is about events that have already occurred. It is too late to take any action to change the outcomes of events that have already occurred.
If we draw a vertical line to represent the present in a law firm, the future would be to the left of that line and the past to the right. See the image below:
Over the years law firm leaders have had little or no information about the present or into the future. Traditional reports are often available only weeks, sometimes months, after the period on which they are reporting. Even if they were immediately available, they are still just historic documents—looking only backward into the past. They give you no opportunity to change the present—your current situation.
What is needed to guide a law firm to a targeted goal is information that is:
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Timely
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Relevant
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Accurate
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Comprehensive, and
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Navigable
Most law firm systems provide accurate and comprehensive information but come up short when it comes to timely. The less timely it is, the less relevant or useable it is. And unfortunately the available information is usually not navigable. It is static or inert-numbers and text printed on paper or displayed on a computer screen. You can’t navigate through the information to more detail or to other related information. The typical information provided is not actionable without the additional work of information gathering and analysis. Rather than information that is instantly digestible and actionable, the individual is left to analyze information to isolate that which is relevant and then to determine if action is required. All of this is another way of saying “information, information everywhere and nothing to quench my thirst for knowledge.” The typical law firm event horizon is shown below:
Juris has been moving the event horizon to the present and slightly over the edge into the future. It is targeting actionable and navigable information to the individual in the firm to whom it is relevant and providing it, wherever possible, in an instantly digestible from. The information is dynamic versus static and inert. It can be manipulated, extracted, rearranged and navigated through to more details.
Juris is revolutionizing how business and competitive information is presented and used in the law firm.
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Juris anywhere/anytime .NET technology tracks firm-wide client services (including activity normally beyond the event horizon in that it has not yet been submitted to the firm’s accounting department) to provide a real time view of fee earner activity.
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Juris dashboard technology provides working attorneys and law firm leaders with situational awareness over their area of responsibility.
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Active Information targets and delivers actionable information to the person for whom it is relevant—information that is both tailored to the individual’s need and that is timely, immediate, and navigable with drill down capability.
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Juris Insight automatically collects and tracks the law firm’s performance metrics against its peer group providing firm leaders competitive information and benchmarks for achieving the firm's targeted goals for the future.
And there is more on the way—including advanced budgeting and forecasting to take the present budgeting capabilities of Juris to an entirely new level for law firm management.
By moving the event horizon, Juris Law firms benefit from income increasing capabilities and resources unavailable elsewhere. While others are digging through reports to find out what happened, Juris dashboards communicate instantly digestible information—current to the moment and in time to change the outcome. While others are analyzing last year’s surveys, Juris law firms can view the law firm’s performance against current information for its peer group—because measurement improves performance.
The Juris team is unapologetic about the motivation behind its new product development activities. It is a commitment to increase the income and wealth of law firm owners, the equity partners. Doing that in a way that benefits all, clients and the firm’s non-partner employees, is accomplished by “Doing the right things and doing them right.” One of the ways Juris, Inc. has been helping Juris clients do that is by moving the “event horizon”.
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
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