3 Geeks and a Law Blog

I caught the article Why There Are No Bosses at Valve from BusinessWeek today. In my geeky household, developer Valve and their award-winning games (Portal, Half-Life) are very popular, but I never knew that their work environment is as innovative as their games. Of course now I can't stop thinking about working in a collaborative environment like this within a law firm.

The company's employee handbook expressly addresses hierarchy and organizational structure. Valve eschews departments, divisions and delineation in favor of self-selected project teams, self-defined "jobs" and delivering value to customers. The message is: "We hire good people to do good work. If you are here, then you know what to do, so jump in and create value for our customers. Don't worry about the rest."

Valve Employee Handbook (PDF)
"Valve is not averse to all organizational structure — it crops up in many forms all the time, temporarily. But problems show up when hierarchy or codified divisions of labor either haven’t been created by the group’s members or when those structures persist for long periods of time. We believe those structures inevitably begin to serve their own needs rather than those of Valve’s customers. The hierarchy will begin to reinforce its own structure by hiring people who fit its shape, adding people to fill subordinate support roles. Its members are also incented to engage in rent-seeking behaviors that take advantage of the power structure rather than focusing on simply delivering value to customers."

The handbook also addresses what Valve is not very good at - namely, tracking performance and training n00bs. But a training and monitoring program is not the environment the company wants to develop - they want to make amazing games with top-flight talent - so they're mostly fine with the trade-off. How different is that approach from the ages-old guild apprentice system still in use at most law firms? This model moves away from government-type job descriptions (Records Clerk II) and into a solutions-focused and empowered employee population.

With 300 employees, Valve has found a balance that works without a bureaucratic infrastructure. I wouldn't argue that every industry or company could pull this off but we can take some of the best parts. Many law firms could follow this example with independent projects teams among staff departments, or an exchange program where team members switch off departments to spend time learning how other groups are working to serve clients - and how they can help. Anything to create more communication and collaboration - and less red tape.

If you'd like to talk more about collaboration, please consider joining our panel Tuesday 5/1 at 11a CDT for Practice Innovations Webinar: How to Collaborate to Drive Revenue and let us know what you think about lemons.

Image [cc] Tulane Public Relations

While visiting the Law Libraries Society of Washington DC chapter (LLSDC) last week, my host, Roger Skalbeck had a group of us sit down for a question and answer session at the group's town hall meeting. Roger gave us five minutes to cover a question, and then we moved on to the next question regardless of if we had finished addressing the issue or not. It was a lot of fun, and it was challenging to stop talking when his iPhone timer went off… but we did. One of the questions he asked us, however, has stuck in the back of my mind, and I wanted to address it for a couple more minutes here on the blog, and hopefully get some responses from the readership as well.

Should Law Schools Teach Students (legal research) Processes or Products?

Is it enough to teach legal research skills to law students in ways that make them proficient in jumping from legal resource to legal resource, or are firms really wanting newly minted lawyers to be very good at specific tools like WestlawNext, or Lexis Advance? Of course, most of us in the room picked item "B" from the list and said that it is better to teach them the skills that can be used regardless of the product they end up using at the firm. That sounds good on paper, but in reality it is becoming harder and harder to identify what makes up those skills in today's legal research environment. The skills that worked well in Lexis and Westlaw's web based products, may not transfer very well to the latest generation of WestlawNext or Lexis Advance. Many students would argue that being proficient in 'Google-Like' searching is a much more valuable skill than the Boolean and keyword searching we've been teaching for the past twenty-plus years.

If the process of searching is changing, should law schools start focusing on teaching more specific skills based on the big two products of Westlaw and Lexis? One member of the audience chimed in and reminded us that even those two products are now really four products once you brought in the new generations platforms. Not only that, but now there's Bloomberg Law that is making a play for the law student's attention. Just with these three players, there are five different platforms, and that's before you start adding in the secondary resources that may or may not work within those platforms.

My comment on this topic actually took a different angle and suggested what I know to be nearly impossible for law schools to teach their students – don't let students fall into the vendor's trap of only learning one platform. The law student that finds him or herself at the end of their third year of law school that hasn't activated their Lexis ID because they like to use Westlaw better (or vice-versa) has played into the hands of the vendor at the expense of their own experience. Those students that go to their Summer Associate jobs this year and use their Bloomberg passwords to do firm work (which apparently Bloomberg is allowing them to do), is making a tactical error in their understanding how the law firm works, recovers costs, and tracks expenses of the work performed. Students should take the opportunity to learn a broad variety of resources while in school because never again will they have access to so many platforms with no pressure to think about the cost of the product.

Is there a best practices when it comes to teaching law students how to use legal research tools? Is it simply a matter of picking process or product, or is there something else that we should be teaching them? What would you teach?

I recently got the issue of Bloomberg Businessweek routed to me and was quite intrigued by many of the segments included in their Second Annual How To Issue, an issue that the publisher describes as "...a cocktail party...[that's]...all about the mix of guests."  Although not all of the segments were relevant to the different roles I play within my firm, there were many that were, including:

• How To...
• Set Your Employees Free
• Negotiate
• Motivate People
• Make The Perfect 60-Second Pitch
• Get Honest Feedback

Probably based on things that are at the forefront of my mind right now, there were two segments that really resonated with me.  The first one was How To...Design a Logo.  The author, Sagi Haviv, works for a firm that designed many iconic logos, including those for NBC (peacock), Chase (octagon), and National Geographic (rectangle).  The main question he says has to be asked when looking to design a logo is "What problem is our client trying to solve?"  Many companies think the need a new logo, when really what they need is to refresh or change their marketing, messaging or packaging related to their existing logo.  Logos should change when they are too complex or are no longer relevant.  Your logo needs to be appropriate, relevant, simple and memorable and the challenge here is how do you make a logo memorable and still keep it simple.  Another related issue to logos that the author didn't go into involves tag lines.  Once you have a logo, you need to ask whether it needs a tag line.  If so, I think the guidelines that Haviv sets out for logos also apply - tag lines also need to be appropriate, relevant, simple and memorable.  If you are thinking about rebranding (or branding) your library, keep these things in mind as you think about and develop a logo and tag line.

The second segment that struck me was How To...Do A How To and this segment, written by Martha Stewart, is what inspired this blog post title.  Martha's advice boils down to simplifying your instructions, keep it to as few steps as possible and add embellishments later.  If instructions get too complex, people will get disengaged and discouraged and possibly even give up.  And, finally, Martha hates PowerPoint decks and suggests doing something more innovative.  Many of us have access to software and resources to create more interactive tutorials or video content, but they do take more time and effort to create.  However, if the payoff is people actually paying attention to them and learning how to do something that will help them be more effective at their jobs, isn't it worth it to abandon the PowerPoint or, for that matter, Word document with screen shots?  Whether it is making a souffle or cite checking a brief, simple clear instructions presented in a new, creative way may very well turn people into better cooks and researchers, respectively.

I recently stumbled upon an alternative pricing scheme that I instinctively felt was wrong.  The details are irrelevant, but I was struck by how vastly different the attorney's point of view was from my own.  So I tried to expand my viewpoint and to see the problem from all sides.  I came up with three questions that I needed to answer and I sent them to the smartest, most knowledgeable people I know.  Their answers below:


If not “collective knowledge and expertise”, what is the commodity supplied by firms and purchased by clients?  How would you answer the questions?