Innovation goes hand-in-hand with client service

By Olivia Clarke

Many Chicago law firms are taking client service to new levels with interactive websites, networking events, think tanks, and virtual deal rooms.

Gone are the days when law firms were rewarded for simply providing excellent legal service. Clients also want their lawyers to help them network and improve their businesses. They want legal services to be efficient, cost-effective, and technologically advanced.

There are law firms and outside legal companies that get it. They are adopting new internal and external programs, workshops, and technology to meet these demands. Here are a few examples.

Legal outsourcing to India

When George Hefferan and Ganesh Natarajan practiced together at McGuireWoods, they often discussed business ideas on client trips to India.

They discovered the possible benefits of outsourcing basic legal work to lawyers in India. They turned this brainstorm into Mindcrest, a company they started in 2001 with two other people.

Chicago-based Mindcrest now employs 440 Indian lawyers who attended Indian law schools and are licensed in India. And the company’s clients are a mix of in-house legal departments of Fortune 500 companies and law firms, Hefferan said.

“The client base on the corporate in-house side has always been strong for us,” said Hefferan, Mindcrest’s vice president and general counsel. “It’s a very logical pitch to them because they are constantly constrained by budgets and often have more work than they have bandwidth to complete.”

Law firms didn’t initially embrace the idea of outsourcing legal work to India because they wanted their associates kept as busy as possible, he said.

But many firms now recognize that this idea can enhance associate retention because associates no longer need to handle the more routine and least challenging work.

Outsourcing shows clients that their firms value cost-effective solutions, he said.

Tom Baldwin, Reed Smith’s chief knowledge officer, addresses the staff on knowledge management issues.

“We knew from the outset that we couldn’t sacrifice quality,” Hefferan said. “We make our work of the same high quality that a law firm might produce, and we don’t take on work we can’t do.

“We aren’t providing sophisticated legal advice,” he said. “U.S. law firms are the ones best suited for that. It’s really a way of doing some of the work that really is largely administrative by using offshore resources, and keeping the high-level legal work onshore where the legal expertise is.”

Meeting with technology

Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione’s main conference room used to seat only about 30 people.

But for a firm that has grown to about 323 employees in its Chicago office alone — that setup no longer works, said Rod Sagarsee, Brinks’ chief information officer.

The firm cut the ribbon on its new conference center in November, and now has 10 conference rooms and a lunchroom with varying levels of advanced technology.

This technology includes an integrated services digital network (ISDN) and high-speed IP video (people plus content) conferencing, automatic ceiling lift projector systems, automatic projector screen systems, Crestron touch-screen presentation, and room lights and shading systems.

There are high-definition CATV LG flat-panel displays throughout and LCD CATV projector systems, wiring in conference table tops, wireless portable convenience printers and wireless Internet, and more than 80 individual audio microphone connection systems.

Lawyers can now communicate with the firm’s other offices through high-speed video conferencing and Avaya VoIP Meet-me Conferencing, which provides audio conferencing. Clients can participate in firm meetings through the web, Sagarsee said.

The firm’s electronic conferencing scheduling system allows lawyers to book a conference room without leaving their desks.

And if Brinks hosts a staff-wide Chicago office meeting, it can connect a conference room to the lunchroom through video and audio conferencing.

Sagarsee’s team of 12 people helped bring the conference center’s technology to fruition, and they also maintain it on a daily basis.

“The bottom line is, it’s just better service for your client,” he said. “You are able to allow your client to have every option, from a technology standpoint. The client doesn’t even need to physically come here. It is just a tremendous advantage.”

Providing greater client service

Like corporations, law firms must use technology to enhance the customer experience, said Doug Caddell, chief information officer at Foley & Lardner.

For example, airlines created systems so that a person booking a flight can go online and easily select the exact seat, check-in ahead of time, and book ground transportation at the destination, Caddell said.

“Foley & Lardner is looking at how we can use our technology to have a competitive advantage,” Caddell said. “People may say they have an extranet or another piece of technology, but having it and using it effectively are two different things.”

The firm created FOLEY ClientSuite, which provides clients with the ability to instantly access information on any matter through a secured extranet website.

Through this site, clients can learn about different laws that they regularly use when making business decisions, Caddell said. General counsel can visit the site to stay informed on how much of the legal budget the firm has spent, or they can stay updated on where their lawyers are on particular matters, he said.

The resource module can be customized to contain the content clients want, including: policies and procedures; privacy guidelines; tax regulations; employee benefits; human resource information; and model documents.

“No longer do they have to play telephone tag with a lawyer to figure out what’s up,” Caddell said. “They can log on from home, and see what’s going on.”

Another program the firm uses is Private Equity Matchmaker. Through its automated search function and deal-matching capability, it connects clients who are seeking capital with those who are actively pursuing private equity investment opportunities.

As Foley lawyers populate the Matchmaker program, the tool evaluates and searches for matches based upon such attributes as transaction size, development stage, geographic region, and industry. When a match is identified, the system generates an e-mail notifying the firm’s lawyers of a potential compatibility.

Bell, Boyd & Lloyd has become a premier sponsor of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Chicago. Ted Wallhaus, the MIT volunteer who coordinated the event, is speaking to those who attended the monthly forum, which started at Bell Boyd on Feb. 12.

“It used to be that lawyers practiced law with companies who were local to them or at least regional to them,” Caddell said. “The advent of [globalization] really identified a need for law firms to address how we serve a client who is no longer in our backyard. Technology was one way to do that.”

Think tanks

Gemma Allen and Ronald Ladden began organizing think tanks in 1997, when they worked together as co-heads of the family law division at Pretzel & Stouffer.

They opened their own firm, Ladden & Allen, in 2000 and continue to spearhead think tanks that bring lawyers, mental health experts, and other professionals together to discuss topics associated with marriage and divorce, Allen said.

“Our goal is to make marriage more successful and try to put ourselves out of business,” she said.

She said the firm wants to help people develop stronger marriages. And if a marriage must end, it wants to help create a smoother divorce process.

“We have come to the conclusion as a firm that the divorce rate could probably be lowered by about a third if people had better information and better tools,” she said.

Allen said lawyers receive wonderful educations, and family law lawyers receive unique exposure to societal problems. By participating in these think tanks, they can help society deal with these issues, she said.

The firm’s October think tank, for example, discussed intimate terrorism, which refers to actual or inferred physical or mental violence against a spouse, she said.

“We owe it to people to bring our knowledge to their attention so they can benefit from it,” Allen said. “We owe it back to society and I think we all benefit from the exchange of ideas.”

Chief knowledge officer

When Reed Smith hired Tom Baldwin this year as its chief knowledge officer, Baldwin faced the task of showing lawyers how he will tangibly help improve their professional lives.

Though he’s not a lawyer, Baldwin has a background in law firms.

He was chief knowledge officer at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, which has offices in California, New York, Washington, D.C., and China. Before that, he was a technology consultant at Foley & Lardner, and he also has been a consultant to other firms and corporate legal departments.

According to Reed Smith, Baldwin will help assess technology tools that increase efficiency, streamline processes and improve productivity within the firm.

Baldwin said he faces three core challenges.

First, what the firm knows as a firm. For example, a team of lawyers may be going on a pitch for a potential client. They need to know which lawyers they should bring on this pitch and who possesses the type of experience the client is looking for. The firm needs to know who knows what when a client needs help on a task, Baldwin said.

Secondly, the firm needs to know who it knows, he said. The firm’s network of contacts can be very important to clients, especially financial institutions and corporate clients. Instead of lawyers sending countless e-mails to each other when searching for information about things like who knows a particular opposing counsel or a certain judge, that information should be readily available, he said.

Third, the firm must figure out what it needs internally to do its job. Lawyers need such things as new management reports, industry news feeds, and internal processes. Lawyers internally generate reports and statistics and the firm needs a central location for this information, he said.

“[Clients] are looking for firms to come to them with innovative ways to deal with their problems,” Baldwin said. “How do we, as a firm, distinguish ourselves from competitors, and provide better services?

“Clients are asking law firms for innovative approaches to reducing their expenses for their legal department’s budget.”

Family-friendly policies

While law firms have discussed diversity for years, it wasn’t until around 2000 that concerns about things like family-friendly policies really began to evolve and pick up steam in larger law firms, said Janine Landow-Esser, the diversity partner at Quarles & Brady’s Chicago office.

Landow-Esser said her law firm has been
a leader in providing parents with helpful options. And in recognition for those efforts, Yale Law Women named Quarles & Brady in September as the No. 1 law firm in the U.S. for its family-friendly policies.

The firm, for example, has an “ease back in” policy that allows lawyers to use extended maternity and paternity leave to work part-time after the birth of a child.

Its flexible schedule program allows lawyers to designate a percentage commitment to the firm, usually at least a 60 percent commitment, and to work a reduced schedule that meets everyone’s needs. Currently, nine associates, one of counsel attorney, and six partners are taking advantage of this opportunity.

The firm also has a backup child provider through all its offices if a parent’s primary childcare falls through, Landow-Esser said.

All of the firm’s expectant parents receive a new parent packet about 90 days before the anticipated birth or adoption. The packet contains informational material relating to leave, childcare, dependent care (flexible spending account), college savings plans, as well as a checklist of benefits to review.

The firm also added a dedicated room in each office for mothers who are nursing. The rooms are outfitted with comfortable chairs, magazines and low-level lighting.

These programs help retain lawyers so that clients do not experience much turnover, and they help to positively impact the work-life situation for the firm’s lawyers, she said.

“Clients hate having to educate a new lawyer on a crucial project,” she said. “There is much more institutional support for a variety of programs that help women and others balance their life within the law with their life outside the law.”

Sharing information

Robert Barrett, vice chairman of Bell, Boyd & Lloyd and head of the patent practice group, said law firms must offer their clients more than great legal service.

Bell Boyd has become the premier sponsor of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Chicago, a monthly forum fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. It’s a chapter of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Global Enterprise Forum - a network of technology executives, entrepreneurs, scientists, and investors.

Barrett, a member of the forum’s executive committee, said the forum gives clients and potential clients the ability to directly interact with, and have access to business leaders and entrepreneurs at different stages of their careers. They can benefit from the opportunity to network, he said.

“Our firm has a very strong intellectual property group and a very strong corporate technology group,” he said. “This [forum] is the marriage of technology and business, which is, in part, what our firm stands for, and which is also MIT - being very strong in technology as well as one of the best business schools.”

Bell Boyd also created client support groups where the firm’s clients can gather together to discuss various topics, or to gain additional training. These groups help in-house lawyers who may not have someone they can turn
to within their company when they need to bounce an idea off someone, Barrett said.

It allows in-house counsel to network with other in-house counsel, and creates a true partnership not only between the law firm and an individual client, but also a partnership among clients, he said. It creates a community atmosphere, he said.

“From the firm’s standpoint, it gets clients invested in you as a firm,” Barrett said.

Flat fees

When Marc Gugliuzza worked at a firm in the Loop, he sometimes hated the part of the conversation when he needed to tell clients what his legal services would cost.

When he opened his law firm - Delta Law Group in LaGrange, Ill. - he decided to offer flat fees for certain legal services, such as estate planning. Now clients who come across his ad purposely call him because he offers flat fees.

Estate planning is a perfect area for flat fees, he said. He sets disclaimers so that clients do not take advantage of the flat fee and, for example, call 20 times a day or demand too much legal advice.

Most families seeking estate-planning assistance ask for the same type of service, he said. Flat fees work out perfectly for people who do not have estate tax issues, he said.

“I kind of always looked at the business of law differently than other attorneys,” he said. “Having worked in financial services, the goal is to get in front of people. Some people need a lawyer for life.”

Immigration software

Through a software partnership with INSZoom, Laner Muchin’s clients can gain access 24 hours a day to the status of their immigration cases.

The extranet allows the firm to track international employee migration, and to provide information for each employee and dependent family member - including detailed biographic information, such as visa status and expiration date information.

The software can also be used for customized status report generation, and case tracking for those client representatives granted secured access to the information, according to the firm.

The interactive database allows the firm to send and receive information and documentation to and from its clients to process immigration cases.

“The benefit is that both the employer, as well as the individual who is the subject of the immigration request, can check on the status of their file 24/7,” said Joseph M. Gagliardo, managing partner and chair of the litigation department.

“That becomes important when you have people from other countries,” he said. “They don’t need to worry about the time difference. It is very important that they have access to the information when they feel necessary.”

Virtual deal rooms

Jonathan Carson and Eric Kurtzman spent their legal careers representing companies that needed financial restructuring.

These companies often hired claims agents when they went through Chapter 11.

But Carson and Kurtzman experienced times when they weren’t fully satisfied with the work these agents did, Carson said. They believed technology could be used to make the process easier, he said.

They entered the claims and noticing industry in 2001 and created Kurtzman Carson Consultants (KCC), a claims and noticing agent that provides administrative-support services and technology solutions to companies undergoing corporate restructuring.

As part of its services, the company offers virtual deal rooms and virtual data rooms to its clients. A virtual deal room is an online, secure environment that enables efficient document exchange and review, said Carson, president and co-founder.

KCC’s virtual deal room users can brand their own custom deal rooms to increase deal management control, and build brand awareness for their respective firms, according to the company.

He said using a virtual deal room can reduce clients’ costs by taking due diligence online.

Some firms may be concerned about whether these deal rooms are secure, but he said KCC ensures that the security is top-notch. The company appreciates the sensitivity of the information and doesn’t want anything to be vulnerable, he said.

Law firms are now big businesses, and more than ever they understand the importance of innovation, Carson said.

“The legal industry is not any different than any other modern industry,” he said. “[Law firms] have to remain innovative to remain competitive.”