Mutações do Mercado e impacto no mundo Jurídico

The NEW TRENDS in the LEGAL BUSINESS

I was privileged to attend ILTACON 2016 (International Law Technology Association Conference) that, in this present edition, counted upon 3.500 participants (among speakers, listeners and exhibitors) and the main theme was: “Embrace the Change.”

The sole purpose of this introduction is to show to all those people engaged in the legal business in Brazil the extent and the concern of the international market with regard to the huge changes to which legal business is being recently submitted.

As it is expected, our Brazilian market strictly follows the world trends and more and more, the time-lag among the trends and the international events are narrowing.

This (international) market is being shaken by several forces to which it was not used to facing such as: financial pressure from the clients, a more and more competitive market, a bigger segmentation of the market itself, a significant and consistent decrease in billing/collecting, and, at last, a huge change in the behavior of the society with the “consumerization” of all services and products caused by the iphone effect in the word (where everything needs to be easy and intuitive).

In order to face those challenges, it is very urgent to totally reset the current model of the business, which, due to accommodation, is very inefficient and careless with regard to efficiency. The growing speed up of the technological development and the emergence of the so-called disruptive technologies are, on the one side, exerting more pressure in this “melting pot” but, on the other hand, they are offering (for those who have a prepared vision) a very interesting option in order to get adapted, to become more efficient and to get prepared for the near future changes, thus obtaining a competitive advantage in the market.

In addition to adopting those technological changes, the business will have to be managed in a different way and by people who have an open mind, who like the new, who have a great resilience and who have no fear of experimenting, making mistakes and  learning. Only then the companies (and the law firms) will be prepared for the changes that the future holds for them and for us.

Several trends stands out in the technological field and all of them are strongly based on the Artificial Intelligence concept (“AI”) which is present in solutions such as Knowledge Automation, Legal Research, Contract Analysis, e-Discovery and Enterprise Search and also in forecast and prognostic systems. Among the 212 present companies (producers of software, equipment and services), 35 of them presented solutions involving artificial intelligence in some component, highlighting:

1- The ever increasing real and practical use (it is no longer a futurology exercise) of the computational learning concept, popularly known as “machine learning”, where mathematical algorithms are developed for specific tasks and that have the ability to self-adjust analyzing their own results and becoming more and more precise as time goes by.

2- The intensive use of the knowledge management (KM) in a more comprehensive way and involving the internal knowledge (explicit and tacit), the structural data (with the use of the BI tools), the competitor’s and the market data and information (Big Data) and more recently the statistics of Courts, Judges, judgments and theses.

3- More and more sophisticated tools (involving Artificial Intelligence) in the fight against the cyber crimes, the so-called “Cyber Attacks”, that already represent losses of billions of dollars in the North- American market.

4- Increasing adoption of the “data driven model” concept where the business is more and more managed with the help of systems that are focused on reports, statistics and structural data analysis of the companies. In this realm, the so-called information governance gain more and more space in the corporate governance, evolving from a utilization tool by the CID, CKO or COO to the most important tool of the CEO, being the base for the operational and strategic decisions.

5- Forecast or prognostic algorithms developed at Michigan State University are already able to estimate with 70% probability the decisions of the North-American Supreme Court and with 71% probability for correctness relative to the individual votes of the judges!

The Watson cognitive intelligence software designed by IBM beat, in 2011, the two previous champions of the TV program “Jeopardy!” and demonstrated at that time the power of the Artificial Intelligence. Since its introduction, its performance has evolved to over 2400%, it was the most important cognitive intelligence technology brought to the legal world and has been fostering dozens of initiatives (less costly) developed for specific solutions in the legal world, such as the ones previously referred to.

The trend for the use of the artificial intelligence in the legal world may be asserted by the graph shown below, where one shows the statistics of the answers to one of the questions posed in the survey made in March/April 2015 by Altman Well, Inc. directed to 797 “Managing Partners” of North-American  firms (with over 50 lawyers) and answered by 320 0f them.

Copyright 2015 Altman Weil, Inc.  All rights reserved

José Paulo Graciotti, is consultant and founding Partner of GRACIOTTI ASSESSORIA EMPRESARIAL, engeneer by Escola Politécnica Universidade de São Paulo, with Financial MBA at FGV and specialized in Knowledge Mnagement by FGV. ILTA Member since 1998 (International Legal Technology Association) and ALA (Association of Legal Administrators), with more than 27 years managing Law Firms in Brazil – www.graciotti.com.br

Apresentação Canal GRACIOTTI – YouTube

COMMITMENT OR INVOLVIMENT?

Sometimes we use those two words as synonyms to indicate one of the most used subjective “KPI´s” to evaluate the dedication of a professional towards a company or an activity, but their meanings are different under the semantic point of view and brutally different under the professional evaluation point of view.

For me, the “COLLINS” dictionary shows us the best differences of these two words:

We clearly see that commitment is a much “stronger” attribute, as it subliminally involves a moral and ethical aspect in the participation process of a person in one activity.

It is really evident that all the companies want, like and need to have professionals who are committed to their teams in order to be more productive, efficient and competitive, mainly in time of crisis like the one we are going though right now. Just being hired or making part of a team already makes them involved and this is not enough.

Professionally and in a very playful way, I consider that the best image we can give concerning the difference between these two words is the assessment of the participation of the two elements that make up the traditional “bacon n´eggs” breakfast. We have the chicken, that is involved into this process by providing the eggs and the pig, is committed with this process by giving its own life in order to provide the ham!

In addition to the aspect of synonymous use of the aforementioned attributes, there are other factors that, along the time, disqualified the importance in its use:

– The term commitment, due to its overexposure, that is, of its intense referral in almost all professional evaluation models, became worn out and lost the strength which is intrinsic to it.

– The lack of a clear definition (professional one) of which behaviors correctly characterize the commitment of a person within one organization.

– Also, as it is a subjective evaluation attribute, it is closely linked to the generation to which the evaluator belongs.

Examples: one evaluator that belongs to the “baby boomer” generation may consider (because he was evaluated like that) as a commitment to the dedication of the professional to the companies along the years, that is, how much time of his life he dedicated to the company, his punctuality, his attendance, etc. One evaluator that belongs to the  “X” generation looks much more to the “guts” with which the professional faces his challenge and which is his efficacy of his dedication. Now, an evaluator of the “Y” generation may disregard the attendance and punctuality aspects (as he has grown in a connected and virtualized world) in his evaluation.

I do not mean with those arguments that the attribute should no longer be used in the subjective evaluations of the professionals but, instead, it must be used correctly!

First and foremost, in my opinion, the commitment attribute should not be used as an individual evaluator but, instead, as one intensifier of all other subjective attributes of evaluation, as any activity can be performed with higher or lower commitment.

Secondly, one must clearly define which characteristics or behaviors will be regarded as indicators of commitment so that the evaluators can get aligned and the evaluated persons will be become aware of it.

José Paulo Graciotti, is consultant and founding Partner of GRACIOTTI ASSESSORIA EMPRESARIAL, engeneer by Escola Politécnica Universidade de São Paulo, with Financial MBA at FGV and specialized in Knowledge Mnagement by FGV. ILTA Member since 1998 (International Legal Technology Association) and ALA (Association of Legal Administrators), with more than 27 years managing Law Firms in Brazil – www.graciotti.com.br

LAW FIRM Governance and the HUMAN HANDS metaphor

The human hands, along with the brain, are the main units that are responsible for the differentiation of the human beings and of our dominance on Earth. With its 27 bones and 35 muscles, it can hold, push, hit, pull, carry, make gestures and signs, besides having a huge sensorial expertise. It is a wonder of the evolutionary engineering!

And what does it have to do with the Law Firms Governance ?

In my humble vision, I will make an analogy between these two elements, as the rational and efficient management of an office (and virtually any company) should basically have a thinking and decision-making element (the brain) associated to a very capable, flexible, efficient, sensitive and adaptable performer element (the hands).

The human brain finds its analogous element in the decision-making rational structure that every office should have: the founding leader/entrepreneur, for example, in those small-size ones up to the most complex organizational structures containing CEO’s, boards, executive committees, managers, etc, in the large-size ones.

For this organizational structure to work properly, it is necessary to have a tool (two, in the human case) which is able to perform the tasks correctly and efficiently. For this to happen, each one of these elements should have specific functions or features combined to properly perform all its functions (like picking an object up).

For the management of an office to be efficient, the same way as our hand picks an object up, it is necessary to have the existence and the proper distribution of the job posts for each one of its elements (the fingers), and this way I devise the following characteristics as shown below:

Note: the distribution of duties was merely casual. There is no specific function for each finger!

1- Technical quality, accuracy and production capacity: in this “finger”, we can place the technical and legal level of the Law Firm (as a last resource of its members) which will be the responsible for the capacity to assist the clients as well as more complex matters, to add value to their solutions with the consequent efficiency in collecting its fees and also in its image in the market.

2- Client attraction capacity and institutional marketing: In this “finger” we place  the capacity to attract clients and all the initiatives of institutional marketing that are responsible for feeding the company’s growth.

3- Support to clients and quality in the rendering of services: in this “finger” (one of the most important in the current scenario), we can associate the ability to support, fulfill and, if it is possible, to amaze the customers with pro-active and innovative approaches in the rendering of the services. It s important to point out that good services go from the telephone assistance (call center), e-mail, whatsapp, etc, surely going through the legal services themselves, up to the expertise in the emission of invoices and their monitouring.

4- Work and Team management skills: in this “finger”, we place the way with which the office components organize their works, manage their teams (under the technical and motivational viewpoint), those matters under their responsibility as well as their contacts.

5- Business Vision: in this “finger”, we should place the capacity to understand the causes and the consequences of all the attitudes and decisions made internally and that will affect the governance of the office, that is, finances, management, growth, investments, strategy, image, etc.

In this metaphorical figure, we can also fit the ideal characteristics of the composition of the society (of its partners) or otherwise, the individual characteristics of each partner. Being aware that every person has its own professional profile, we can guess that every individual may have only some (usually one or more) of those innate or more developed characteristics and the combination of those people in a company means art.

It is important to highlight that, like the human hand, in order to obtain a good operation of the office, the existence of all fingers is necessary, with their own, combined and balanced characteristics, and not only the set of several equal fingers. Could you imagine what it would be like if we have 5 index fingers or 5 ring fingers? It would not work very well!

José Paulo Graciotti, is consultant and founding Partner of GRACIOTTI ASSESSORIA EMPRESARIAL, engeneer by Escola Politécnica Universidade de São Paulo, with Financial MBA at FGV and specialized in Knowledge Mnagement by FGV. ILTA Member since 1998 (International Legal Technology Association) and ALA (Association of Legal Administrators), with more than 27 years managing Law Firms in Brazil – www.graciotti.com.br

Inteligência Artificial e o Mercado Jurídico

Ultimamente o tema está bastante presente em todas as discussões sobre o futuro do mercado jurídico, envolvendo grandes e pequenos escritórios e a própria forma como a profissão de advocacia serão afetados por essa nova (não tão nova assim) tecnologia.

Esse tema tem sido estudado há pelo menos 25 anos, mas tornou-se conhecido do grande público quando em 2011 o sistema de computação cognitiva da IBM, o “Watson” venceu os dois campeões do famoso programa de entretenimento da televisão americana chamado “Jeopardy!”que é apresentado pela CBS desde 1964.

Ao longo desses 25 anos, várias frentes paralelas de desenvolvedores foram se especializando em reconhecimento de imagens e faces, entendimento e processamento da linguagem natural humana, robótica, aprendizado computacional (“machine learning”), lógica não estruturada (linguagem) e redes neurais de computação que todas juntas formam a Inteligência artificial.

De lá para cá, o tema tem sido introduzido em todas as discussões e palestras de futurólogos e colocado de maneira muito enfática como um caminho inexorável para a substituição dos seres humanos pelas maquinas, quase chegando à visão sinistra do filme e Matrix.

Trazendo a discussão para o plano da realidade e simplificando bastante o tema, o que é chamado genericamente de Inteligência artificial são, na verdade, algoritmos matemáticos (bastante sofisticados diga-se de passagem) desenvolvidos para tarefas muito específicas, associados à capacidade exponencial crescente de computação e que têm a capacidade de se auto ajustar em função dos resultados obtidos.

É verdade que tudo isso já está impactando e irá impactar mais ainda todas as profissões como as conhecemos atualmente, mas tal impacto se torna mais evidente na advocacia pois esta esteve relativamente protegida no tempo por conta exatamente da dificuldade de se processar computacionalmente a linguagem e informações desestruturadas, até agora!

Na área jurídica já existem várias frentes de desenvolvimento utilizando a inteligência artificial (ou partes dela) tais como: Automação de conhecimento; Pesquisa legal; Previsão ou prognóstico; análise de contratos; e-Discovery e/ou motores de busca inteligentes. Todas esses sistemas e essa tecnologia não foram criados para substituir o ser humano e sim para ajudá-lo a ser mais eficiente e devem ser adotados por todos aqueles (escritórios e seu gestores) atentos à evolução do mercado e da profissão.

Existem pelo menos 35 empresas no mercado americano com produtos prontos para os trabalhos citados acima e também, pelo menos uma dezena de grandes escritórios internacionais abraçando essa tecnologia e tornando-se mais eficientes.

Num mercado em efetiva ebulição por conta de aumento da concorrência (interna e externa), pressão por preços, segmentação, perda consistente de faturamento (pelo menos no mercado americano), a adoção de tecnologias como a “AI” não é uma opção, é sobrevivência!

José Paulo Graciotti, é consultor e sócio da GRACIOTTI Assessoria Empresarial, engenheiro formado pela Escola Politécnica com especialização Financeira e especialização em Gestão do Conhecimento pela FGV. Membro da ILTA– International Legal Technology Association e da ALA – Association of Legal Administrators. Há mais de 27 anos implanta e gerencia escritórios de advocacia – www.graciotti.com.br

Tendência é profissional que veja além de sua área

Velocidade da informação, novos ramos de atividade e tecnologia movimentam profissão

CRIS OLIVETTE     28 Agosto 2016

Entrevista: José Paulo Graciotti, sócio da Graciotti Assessoria Empresarial

                          Membro da

International Legal Technology

Association diz em quais áreas

os profissionais

devem se capacitar:

“É recomendado conhecimento

de marketing institucional”

Graciotti: ‘A tecnologia é uma aliada para evoluir’

Quais desafios atingem esses profissionais?
O crescimento exponencial das informações no meio digital, tais como: decisões judiciais, peças processuais, contratos, opiniões e e-mails dificultam a busca, identificação correta e análise das informações relevantes para as necessidades de um advogado. Por outro lado, a capacidade de análise das informações, a síntese das ideias e argumentos e a elaboração dos documentos jurídicos ainda dependem de pessoas e de suas limitações humanas.
A tecnologia não é uma aliada?
Sim. O profissional encontrou na tecnologia uma aliada para enfrentar essa pressão e evoluir. Hoje, a advocacia é uma das profissões que mais necessita e depende da tecnologia para a prestação de serviços eficientes. Ela é encarada pelo advogado como um meio e não como um fim, e deve ser utilizada como ferramenta poderosíssima para melhor a eficiência do trabalho.

De que forma?
Deve saber extrair o máximo da tecnologia para encontrar agilmente as informações necessárias à produção de documento jurídico, contando com ajuda de robôs de busca ou softwares de inteligência cognitiva. Também deve saber gerenciar corretamente seu conhecimento estratégico organizando-o e indexando-o para utilização futura. Além de analisar estatisticamente jurisprudências e decisões anteriores de tribunais e magistrados.

Esse aprendizado faz parte da graduação?
Não. Apesar da tecnologia ser apenas uma ferramenta, todas essas atividades têm de ser concebidas e geridas por advogados por meio de softwares e sistemas inteligentes. Essa utilização exige uma formação muito mais eclética e tecnológica do que a puramente técnica que os estudantes de direito estão recebendo nas universidades.

Então, eles devem buscar formação complementar?
Cada vez mais. Ao longo da carreira, além da própria atualização especifica no direito, os advogados serão compelidos a se tornarem profissionais com conhecimentos mais abrangentes, principalmente no que se refere à tecnologia e ao mundo digital. Isso é necessário para que não corram o risco de se tornarem profissionais jurássicos.

Quais são as outras áreas que eles devem conhecer?
O advogado mais completo é mais competitivo e preparado para os desafios. É recomendável que tenham conhecimentos mais aprofundados em matérias associadas às relações humanas e conhecimentos de marketing institucional e pessoal para incrementar sua participação no mercado, tais como: gerenciamento de pessoas, gestão de empresas e marketing.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IS CRUCIAL TO CURRENT AND FUTURE BUSINESS STRATEGIES

Although very well known and largely adopted by big companies, Knowledge Management is not widespread in most of the national market. The challenging economical scenario that we currently have, more and more places the Brazilian companies away from the practical implementation of an appropriate organizational model, which is a failure that brings about a very big loss in terms of competitiveness.

“Every company must find its critical points in the production and in several other areas in order to optimize them in every way possible, making it more competitive, not only in the current market, but also in the future one. Thereunto, it is essential to get to know its own innards. Knowledge Management is the way to supply all those needs. Get to know the own operation, in a full way, allows a closer to the ideal decision making”. points out José Paulo Graciotti, Knowledge Management consultant and partner at Graciotti Assessoria Empresarial.

In the following interview, he approaches the beginning and the evolution of  this concept, talks about the methodology in order to put it into practice and emphasizes the reasons that make Knowledge Management a so necessary measure to the companies that intend to conquer a good position in the market of today and in the years to come.

O Papel – How did the concept of knowledge management appear and when did the companies indeed realize the need to create models that were able to manage information in a strategic way?

José Paulo Graciotti, Knowledge Management consultant and partner at Graciotti Assessoria Empresarial – Knowledge Management started in a very shy way, as a means to list knowledge in a more organized way, including the indexing of documents and contracts, but eventually evolved and changed a lot in the last two decades. Using a practical example, considering that a law firm spends ten hours in order to compose a document for the first time and that the service budget is based on the worked hours, the client would pay an amount of money related to those ten hours of execution. If, some time later, another client needs a document that is similar to that one, the firm would start from that first version, whose production lasted ten hours, would make the appropriate adjustments to the needs of the second client and would create the document in less time. In the early stage of the practical application of Knowledge Management, the service provider would charge the same price for the second client, in order to get more profitability. When the crisis of 2008 arrived, though, the use of this concept changed its focus. With a more competitive and demanding market, amid several companies adopting the same techniques, instead of charging the same amount of money to get more profitability, the focus was changed to the discovery of more attractive values to the clients, something closer to the hours that were effectively spent in the performance of the service. So, Knowledge Management started to be used as a way to better understand its costs, become more competitive and ensure the loyalty of the clients. This was one of the great evolutions of the concept of Knowledge Management that was eventually taking shape, mainly when the North American firms started to use it in order to optimize their proposals of services, besides being a tool to their own organization.

O Papel – What are the more current methods of Knowledge Management?

Graciotti – There are two great lines inside the current model of Knowledge Management. The first one is related to the use of accurate knowledge in order to leverage the productivity, the profitability and the efficiency of the company. This line has a totally operational bias and every organization adopts its own means in order to put it into practice. The second line, from a more strategic bias, starts from the purpose of getting to know its own information, including the operational, the financial and the registry ones, so that, based on them, it may be able to design the strategies of the company. The correct cataloguing of all subjects and the proper perpetuation of this information are crucial in order to define the strategic plans. For example, by making an analysis of the standard profile of a client, and checking in which departments they are found, which services they are used to demanding, which is the billing percentage in every department and every service provided, it is then possible to get a picture of the business and outline the growth strategies, the sales strategies, the hiring strategies and so on. More recently, this line of knowledge management started to approach several areas, hitherto basically focused to the financial department. Few years ago, Business Intelligence (BI) was treated as a totally independent theme from Knowledge Management, but nowadays these two subjects are becoming closer. The use of BI can be made in order to understand the billing and other financial numbers of the company. All this represents the methods to get to know the characteristics of the company based on the data it has available and to use them in a way as to make the company more competitive in the market.

O Papel – How to build the basic infrastructure of knowledge storage so that, in the future, this contend can be managed?

Graciotti – There are as many professions who are specially dedicated to knowledge storage as companies specialized in developing organizational methods, listing and other tools. Anyway, there are basically five kinds of companies that should be engaged in order to extract the necessary knowledge and to organize it so that other people may use it. The first one is the Human Resources or Talent Management, according to the definition set by the company. Under the people management focus, the objective aims at motivating the employees and creating ways to enable them to make connections to each other and to exchange knowledge. The effective participation of the people management area is therefore responsible for promoting the knowledge exchange. The participation of the productive sector is equally important. The production team of a pulp & paper plant holds strategic knowledge. Those are the professionals involved in the operational routine that should indicate to the company the strategic information that need to be made perennial and catalogued. The third one is technology, which must be equipped for the purpose of information storage. In spite of the fact that the specific knowledge for cataloguing documents is something very peculiar to each company, the TM team participation is very important. Those people are not only responsible for the generation of systems that are focused on obtaining and absorbing the knowledge in a safe place, but also responsible for the transformation of all that in a usable manner with an intelligent search system, of easy access to those ones who will look for those information in the future. The fourth participation involves the senior management of the company. One ought to work really hard with respect to the motivation and, for such, it should count on the total assistance of the managers, directors and CEOs. The senior management ideological sponsorship is essential to overcome the natural barriers of the implementation process. And to conclude, the fifth participation encompasses the professionals who are hired to make the cataloguing of all the company’s information, which includes several registries. Those professionals are essential in order to keep the quality of the information and its homogenization, generating reliable strategic data. It is the work and the engagement of those five areas that will enable the company to accomplish the target of extracting reliable information and to use them positively, both under the operational strategic viewpoint and practicing knowledge management in favor of its competitiveness.

O Papel – May those requirements change depending on the segment of the company’s performance? Is Knowledge Management more challenging in industrial segments, such as the pulp & paper one, which, in addition to the office routine, has also operational ones, which are very characteristic to the plants?

Graciotti – The difference among the companies of the industrial segments and those ones only made up by offices is in the fact that, in the first case, there is a wider range of cataloguing, indexing and organization of the explicit knowledge. The most difficult aspect of knowledge management inside an industry, however, consists in listing the tacit knowledge. Let us imagine that a professional in a pulp & paper plant develops a whitening process that is much more efficient and less expensive, it is necessary that this process is fully documented and transformed into an standard pattern, in order to avoid that the knowledge gets lost in case of the person or other members of the team leave the company. The initiative may have started with one or several professionals from the productive team, but the acquired knowledge becomes a property of the company. Therefore I would say that one of the fundamental aspects of the industry knowledge management is to create methods to list the tacit knowledge coming from the experience of the professionals, in order to avoid that a shutdown compromises the advances that were already acquired inside the company.

O Papel – How do the Brazilian companies situate themselves in this present reality, including the demands imposed by internet?

Graciotti – Knowledge management is still unknown in the Brazilian market. Except for some market leaders and multinationals, that are a little more advanced in the practice of this concept, I believe that the Brazilian companies are still “crawling” in this subject. The great majority of the professionals do not know the term. This shows that no one has given the due importance to knowledge management, including to survive in this period of crisis as the one we have been experiencing nowadays. The crisis tends to last for some years yet, since certain measures which are being taken now will be inevitably incorporated to the reality in the next years. It is necessary, on an ongoing basis, to get adapted to a more competitive market among the companies and much more demanding among the clients themselves. One of the great merits of knowledge management consists in the capacity of defining the survival of the companies in the future. The companies that make a correct use of knowledge will have, during a great amount of time, a competitive advantage and a better position in the market.

O Papel – What are the tendencies related to the practice of knowledge management? What do you foresee for the next years?

Graciotti – The new trends must go through the field of technology. The technological improvements have been occurring in an absolute fast way. Nowadays, one refers to cognitive intelligence, for example, something that was purely fiction five years ago. Technology will be an essential part of this maturing process of knowledge management in a very near future. But we have to step up that the companies must be watchful to the technological evolution and also to the intellectual capital. These are two essential points to the competitiveness of the years to come.

José Paulo Graciotti, is consultant and founding Partner of GRACIOTTI ASSESSORIA EMPRESARIAL, engeneer by Escola Politécnica Universidade de São Paulo, with Financial MBA at FGV and specialized in Knowledge Mnagement by FGV. ILTA Member since 1998 (International Legal Technology Association) and ALA (Association of Legal Administrators), with more than 27 years managing Law Firms in Brazil – www.graciotti.com.br

Partners compensation and the Institution Management

Law Firms are generally formed by some lawyers that have certain features in common such as technical quality in specific areas of Law, entrepreneurial  spirit  and good relationship,  and that decide to get together (early in their careers or by “split” ), on account of the mutual use of each one of their skills.

This technical complementation creates a more comprehensive entrepreneurship and the personal affinity (character, ethics, companionship and trust) creates the most important aspect of all, that is its continuity.

The same “glue” that approximates and binds these lawyers is the responsible for all the entrepreneurial philosophy that the experts call “vision, mission and values” and that will (or should) guide all the decisions and attitudes to be taken as long as the office exists.

As I have always stated, the management of a Law Firm occurs on a metaphorical chessboard, where there is an intricate interdependence among all  the engaged elements. The remuneration for the partners is one of the most important pieces of this chessboard and its definition or change (position or movement on the chessboard) practically defines the strategy of all the other elements.

In an office there are two entities that should walk side by side, mutually feeding themselves in a virtuous symbiosis, which are: the institution and the partners. The decisions of those latter ones directly and intensively interfere in the institution but, as for every action there is a reaction of the same intensity and in an opposite direction, the institution reacts at its discretion, in a positive or negative manner to those attitudes. The virtue or merit lies in the correct choice of the decisions in a way as to transform this process into a virtuous cycle of relationship between those two entities.

Once the entrepreneurial philosophy is defined, the cycle in the “institution” entity goes through the strategic planning, which, in turn, defines objectives and targets. The mid and the long-term objectives define the career plan of the attorneys and partners and the short-term ones define the evaluation criteria of the professionals. Those two elements should feedback the strategic planning for eventful course correction.

As for the “partners” entity, the cycle goes through their behavior in compliance with the philosophy and the consequent definition of the talent attraction and retention criteria.  Those criteria make up the career plan of the professionals and define the evaluation criteria of the attorneys and partners (that is it! the partners must also have evaluation criteria). Finally, the definition of the remuneration method for the partners must be fully integrated with the entrepreneurial philosophy and all this together will then make up a single cycle of virtuous feedback, which will be vital for the long lasting of the institution and the financial happiness and professional achievement of the partners!

The support by an outsourced and experienced consultancy firm which is also exempt from internal political interactions may help a lot to find the solution of this challenge, as well as to define the management model and future strategy.

José Paulo Graciotti, is consultant and founding Partner of GRACIOTTI ASSESSORIA EMPRESARIAL, engeneer by Escola Politécnica Universidade de São Paulo, with Financial MBA at FGV and specialized in Knowledge Mnagement by FGV. ILTA Member since 1998 (International Legal Technology Association) and ALA (Association of Legal Administrators), with more than 27 years managing Law Firms in Brazil – www.graciotti.com.br

“DASHBOARD” for Law Firms

There are “fads” in everything that happens and it could not be otherwise in the entrepreneurial world! For some time, the word “dashboard” took the place of the so-called management reports and, for this reason, I will adopt it, too (but it is the same thing).

To the legal market, there is a very important tool and that generates several indicators that give an idea of the “temperature” of the office activity which is the famous (and infamous for those who must fill it out) TIMESHEET.

With it, the partners or coordinators have a tool that enables the efficient management of the team, as well as resource allocation, performance evaluation, and on the client’s side, the partner can (and must) manage all the matters that are being addressed internally, but although it is the fundamental tool for the operational management, several offices are still reluctant to adopt it and make it obligatory.

The Timesheet is important for the good management of any office, but it is not the only tool to be used. There are other indicators that must be easily available to the managers in order to help them in the governance (another buzzword) of their businesses. And here governance means the legal operation, the organization, the team management, the financial/ economic management, marketing and strategy.

The DASHBOARD is the set of tables and graphs that are presented intuitively and condensed in one or two pages so that the managers will have a global view of their business and that must be used in the strategic meetings of the company.

One important piece of observation has to do with the origin of data and how easily those data are obtained. The adoption of an up-to-date and integrated platform that enables the quick capture of information that will make up the dashboard is essential for the efficiency and reliability of this governance tool.

Below we have some examples of indicators that can become part of a DASHBOARD:

Financial/economic indicators

Evolution of revenues in the period (semester or year-end)
Graph of the revenues per client, with emphasis on the 20 biggest ones.
Biggest debtors (with aging)
Average receipt time
Cost structure and its evolution
Graphs of the income and expenses over the period
Total profitability and total per cost centers
Revenues per business area or per field of activity.

Non-financial indicators

Team structure per type of professional
Allocation of professionals per area
Evolution of the team along the period
Average of hours (marked, cut, discounted, charged and received)
Per type of professional
Per area of performance
Per cost center or branch
Clients gained per period and their persons in charge
Clients lost (mentioning the reason) and their persons in charge

The Institutional Indicators (that can become part of an auxiliary dashboard)

Published papers (academic ones)
Articles published in the media (who generated it and which media)
Visits in own site (Google Analytics)
Followers on the Linkedin (corporate and professionals)
Events generated
Speeches given

The support by an outsourced consultancy firm that is experienced and exempt from internal interactions may indeed help the solving of this challenge, as well as the definition of the specific model to each office/company.