When was the last time you looked at how your firm uses its technology? The beginning of the year is a good time to take a deep breath and evaluate how your firm utilizes its hardware and software. You could think of this as your office’s annual technology physical. Often, at this time of year, I get telephone calls from lawyers who want advice about utilizing their firm’s computers better or determining what improvements or changes they can make. Some want to see if they’ve been doing the right things while others know they have problems to resolve.

You don’t have to have a specific ailment to go to the doctor for an annual physical. When you’re ill, however, you have to tell your physician the specific symptoms so a proper diagnosis can be made. Similarly, whether you hire a consultant to assist you or do the evaluation internally, you must take a close look at what you do and how you are doing it. Often, the dynamic of hiring an outside consultant serves to produce changes that wouldn’t happen if the same suggestions were made by internal staff. Hearing the same advice from a hired professional somehow is more credible to lawyers than hearing those ideas from their own staff. An outside expert, whether on technology or other aspects of law office management, also knows what many other law firms with similar demographics are doing to manage their business. Sometimes, consultants can offer simple, easily implemented solutions to troublesome problems merely because they bring a fresh viewpoint and aren’t hampered by the mindset of "we’ve always done it this way."

Before focusing on the people and their tasks, you should inventory your firm’s hardware and software. Knowing what you have and how employees use the technology is the first step in determining whether they have the right tools for the jobs they’re doing. Make a list of the computers and their configurations. Include the processor speed, amount of RAM memory, total and available amounts of hard drive space, operating system and version if applicable (e.g., Windows 98 Second Edition), whether the computer has a CD-ROM drive or a CD-RW drive that can make CD-ROM disks, and whether it has its own printer or shares with a group. List all the software installed on the computers including versions and updates. Note which applications are actively used and which merely take up space or came with the computer. Note any other information that may be pertinent to your evaluation.

To get a sense of where you are technologically, you have to know what’s working, how it’s working and, most important, what’s not working. You can’t just tell your doctor, "I don’t feel good." You need a list of symptoms so the doctor can look for patterns and determine if these match known diseases. With computers, knowing what hardware and software you have is the first step. Determining how they are being used and what tasks need to be accomplished is the second and more challenging.

Everyone in your organization should document the type of work they do and which tools they use. For example, some secretaries may do a lot of correspondence and use their word processor, while others do mostly contracts and leases and use merge forms. Don’t just ask, "What do you do?" To get meaningful feedback, solicit details. For example, in correspondence, do you locate previous letters to the same person and use the open-as-copy function to make new letters or do you have one large file of all correspondence to each client and keep adding new letters? Do you use headers and footers? Ask probing questions to get more useful information. Delve into the steps and functions people use to prepare documents. If you ask the right questions, you may get some valuable answers that can lead to better procedures and a more efficient office. For example, you may find people use typewriters to prepare mailing labels even though a better, computer-based solution is available. Similarly, lawyers, unaware of tools that assist in preparing tables of authorities, may be hand-writing cites rather than using software already on their desktop computer.

In performing an analysis of how work is accomplished, you may find some issues you didn’t anticipate that can be easily solved. For example, partners may be unaware there are inexpensive software programs, like Lexis’ Full Authority (also available from the Blumberg Excelsior catalog) that can be used to prepare a close-to-final-format table of authorities. Other issues, such as problems locating physical or computer files or multiple clients set up in your firm’s billing program instead of new matters for existing matters also might be exposed in examining your firm’s use of technology.

One of the most common issues I see at law firms is the use of several methods for identifying and storing client records. For instance, firms may have a set of client and matter numbers for cases in the billing program and use familiar names for client and case folders in word processing folders. If the firm has a calendar or case management program, yet another system might be in place. A key goal of examining your office’s use of technology is to watch for such multiple systems and simplify them into one uniform way to identify all the firm’s clients and cases.

Another goal is ensuring that everyone does things the same way. Before law firms installed local area networks, each secretary ran her own fiefdom, storing documents as she saw fit. When some firms installed networks, they maintained the status quo and gave each secretary a discreet work area to store her documents. This worked fine until the lawyers began using computers and there was some staff turnover.

An obvious solution is to purchase and install document management software such as World Software’s Worldox or Imanage from Imanage Corp. For small firms, the entry costs of this type of software and the hardware required to run it well can be prohibitive. Additionally, if partially implemented or set up improperly, it can remain an ineffective solution to the problem it was purchased to solve. This raises another aspect in considering what ails your firm. Don’t just throw software at a problem. While some software can help resolve a troublesome issue such as implementing a case management program to provide a firm-wide calendar, it requires an investment in training and a commitment to set up and maintain to keep the stored information valuable and current.

Many times, procedures and instructions are handed down from one generation of support staff to the next. This often results in what I refer to as the "myth" version of training. You can recognize this in an office where, when asked, "Can we do something new or different?," the standard answer is, "I don’t think so; we’ve always done it this way."

Everyone should participate in the firm’s technology audit. Each person has specific tasks and may use different tools to accomplish them. By including everyone, you may find overlapping functions or needs that can be solved with the same solutions.

You may want to hire a consultant to assist your firm evaluate its use of technology and recommend changes and improvements. When hiring a consultant, make sure the person has experience with law office automation. Many law firms have been pushed to convert from WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS to a Windows version of Microsoft Word on the recommendation of a hardware vendor who has a handful of law firm clients. Law firms are not similar to other businesses and buying the wrong tools can be extremely detrimental to your firm’s productivity and staff morale. Using the same tools as a brokerage firm, engineering company or accounting firm makes no sense. If we consider word processing needs alone, no other businesses use paragraph numbering as much or in the manner of lawyers. What other business prepares documents with a table of cases? How about footnotes? Pleading captions? Well, you get the point. Even within law, there are significant differences between practice areas. Until recently, personal injury lawyers have steered clear of timekeeping and billing programs, while transactional attorneys rarely ventured into case management products.

If you’re happy with your hardware or network vendor but they don’t work with many law firms, consider supplementing their services with a software consultant who specializes in legal products. If you’re shopping for a new vendor anyway, try to find one experienced with law firms. Just today, I had a phone call from a network vendor who has only one or two law firms as clients. The vendor wanted to know whether the firm should upgrade from WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows to WordPerfect 2000 or switch to Microsoft Word. Even the assumption that there is a simple yes or no answer to this question made it clear the person was totally unfamiliar with evaluating law firm software needs. Lucky for the firm, the vendor knows his limitations and sought a legal technology consultant to fill in the gaps.

In determining which way to go, make sure you know your firm’s goals. Do you want your firm to be the high-tech firm that attracts start-up Internet companies or do you want to be the firm that everyone in town comes to with their general legal problems? Think about who your current clients are. How did they come to hire you? Think about what client development worked and what didn’t. If you have mostly corporate clients, do you have enough of an on-line presence to keep them up-to-date on your services? Does your website reflect the kind of firm you want to be and attract the types of clients you want to have?

If you don’t have the client mix you want, you should start to think about and take steps to attract those types of entities. Several standard business development maxims might be useful to keep in mind. First, your existing clients are your best source of new business. Often, they don’t know about other services your firm provides. Find ways to let them know that in addition to doing real estate closings, you can review their will or help prepare a trust.

Once you have analyzed your firm’s hardware and software needs, you still have the most difficult task ahead: how to act on the advice you have been given and implement the solutions. Purchasing the software or hardware is the easy part. Getting the products customized for your firm, getting your staff trained and following through with actively using the new tools is the real challenge.