Where did I file that email?
On a whiteboard behind my desk I have listed the seven categories of waste as described by Mr Toyoda in developing the LEAN process improvement methodology. LEAN is great, because even though it was created for a manufacturing process, with a little thought it can be applied to pretty much any repeatable process you can think of, legal practice included.
I will probably end up blogging about all seven over the next few weeks, but today’s topic is “motion”, as that is the one that most frustrates me as a project manager. Probably even more so for lawyers managing projects as motion increases non-billable time, and reduces time to do billable work. Non-billable time needs to be reduced as much as possible.
“Motion” in a manufacturing context means time spent moving to obtain the tools, materials etc to do the next stage of the process, rather than them being at hand. A conveyor belt on a production line is probably the most well-known solution that manufacturing uses – materials are pushed to the worker, the worker does not have to fetch the materials.
The same applies in a legal practice.
A quick aside: a common theme throughout my posts will be “terminology” – I think it is key to use words and phrases that lawyers understand. I don’t mean everyday words that might be the subject of a plain English campaign. I mean using words that are familiar concepts. It is the principles that count – so long as you are doing the right things, it really doesn’t matter what you call them so long as people know what you’re talking about.
An example of “motion”, and terminology, is project names. Can anyone tell what Projects Athena, Gilet, etc etc are about? No. All this does is make me have to perform a search, make a phone call, or send an email, to find out what the project is about. A big waste of time and a result of someone searching Google or Wikipedia to find a Greek God who at some point had to outsource his deity duties. Or not. Even if a project is confidential with a client, and this needs a codename, in a law firm we can call it something like: Renegotiation of x contract with y supplier. Boring, but useful.
Another example of “motion” is trying to find emails relating to a particular matter. Various e-filing systems are used by firms to minimise the waste caused by finding emails. However, each lawyer has to take some responsibility for organising their own emails, and maybe even reducing them. Cue Harvard Business Review blog for that…