Better Discovery

One of the primary reasons that lawyers OUGHT to turn to Agile for guidance in project management is that it deals with risk and the risks associated with change as a matter of course, rather than as an avoidable exception

The primary method of learning project management has been to attend PMI (Project Management Institute) courses with the objective of obtaining the PMP certification. Agile doesn’t require any of that,–but the focus is on the fluency of the team NOT the qualifications of a manager far-removed from the actual work of the team and the value it provides.

Through the PMI-Agile Cummunity of Practice, PMI has explicitly recognized the value of educating its membership about Agile, and here’s a video from one of the leaders of the movement to bridge understanding between PMI and Agile principles and practices.

By the way, an interesting early point is that many software projects are on a two-year plan,.–which sounds an awful lot like most litigation.

Here’s the video

The Rule 26 is far too late. Or, rather, it’s far too early.

Thankfully, Blank has written about this very important point!

This is an amusing fiction. The truth, however, is that for nearly all clients, most of the potential savings were squandered long before the case started. If e-discovery savings and efficiency are the goals, ECA comes much too late.

Absolutely, ECA should be dealt with as reality far in advance of litigation.

The good news is, most litigation counsel can help out, even if they know little about electronic records. It just takes getting counsel involved with the client’s IT purchasing decisions. So, spread the message: Early is too late!

Not sure I agree with his conclusion, UNLESS the company and the law firm are involved in an Agile, collaborative relationship, because the last thing clients want is an uninformed lawyer poking his or her nose into company purchasing and data management decisions.

The tech team doesn’t even like MANAGEMENT telling them how to work, let alone a lawyer, billing out at…whatever lawyers are billing out at these days, walking in and messing about with established practices.

Far better, given the way most companies work, for lawyers to get up to speed before attempting to assess IT concerns by playing “chicken” with the company.

Here’s where you can learn about the term “chicken.” Far better to be a chicken, than a seagull.

Since “seagull” isn’t a well-known term, let’s look at the definition:

A Seagull can be identified by these characteristics:

1. Comes into the project mid-sprint with no prior contributions
2. Makes a lot of noise
3. Craps on everyone & everything
4. Leaves just as abruptly as he or she appeared

This can be a team morale killer, especially if it is a C-Level player. Also it will definitely have an adverse effect on your current velocity!

In other words, the seagull is the LEAST welcome team “addition” possible. I don’t think this concept is limited to tech teams. how to get around this, is to move “closer to the ground.” This is not a question of client’s, but of how much the lawyeris willing to do to get things right.

By playing “chicken,” in the Scrum world, a lawyer can learn about her client and participate in “Scrum” style meetings in a lightweight fashion. Lawyers who don’t know anything have no business advising a client, but the good news is that the remedy for that is simple: learn something!

This is a different approach from an uninformed lawyer marching into a client with a few judicial opinions under his belt and dictating IT policy. This means that when it comes time to ramp up for litigation, the client is confident that the firm understands what is already there.

Litigation is no time to start changing IT policy or second-guessing the motivation for whatever policy and practices exist. The time for lawyers to have an impact is early and often. But, in a lightweight, agile fashion that respects the wisdom of the client.

I recently posted this response on the LinkedIn ” University of Michigan Law School Alumni” group, on the question of legal outsourcing:

Question :

What are people’s thoughts on legal outsourcing as a way to cut costs for certain routine legal/paralegal tasks such as deposition summaries, document review, broad legal research? Has anyone used such a service? What about using a company with offshore attorneys, e.g. India, Israel, etc.?

My Answer:

Depends on what you mean by “outsourcing.”

As I think about what Agile has to offer the legal profession, the importance of team collocation has become abundantly clear to me. That doesn’t mean that a team should never be ‘distributed,” but it does suggest that lawyers put their teams together with a more coherent strategy than simply buying low and selling high.

Each case needs to have an assessment, completed transparently with the client, on the question of how to create real value for money given the client’s priorities. The folly of doing this without having the team of doc reviewers in on the planning stage never ceases to amaze me.

Right now, my thought is that document review teams should be brought together for the first few days so that they can gel around the mission and standards required for quality. If they need to go away for a few weeks while the rest of the team executes upon their part of the task, that’s fine. But most firms continue to employ the philosophy that doc reviewers are fungible,– a huge disservice to the client.

Only after an internal rhythm is established should the team be disbanded to work remotely. Self-organization is nearly impossible if individuals are spread throughout the world and standards are impossible without some level of human contact.

Yes, cutting cost is important, but it should never be Job 1. Job 1 should always be giving high value for money, with value defined by the client. The gap between cost and perceived value cannot be fixed by simply moving the whole show down on the y-axis.