PRESTIGE LAWYERS LEAN IN THE LAW FIRM

Applying Agile Outside SW Development

By Stephen Reed

@ScrumMasterNZ stephen@prestigelawyers.co.nz

2 Goals

• What we did in the Law Firm?

• What you could do for other industries?

OUR TEAM

Why Agile / Lean?

“I try to embody the principles I believe in, and engage people in dialog, figuring out what the real problems are that need to be solved…

When a root problem is well understood, the solution will emerge from the people engaged in the problem. Not from the managers or experts or … “

-  Tobias Mayer, March 31, 2012

•  I’ve been in Agile/Lean for a bit now, and harping on about it to my wife for years, which I think has paid off!

•  It was natural to bring “what works” to the law firm, why not?

CLIENT FOCUS

•  Our focus is solely the clients needs – not our need to win at any cost – we still need to run the Law Firm after each matter closes - win or lose.

•  High Quality service

•  Highly skilled practitioners

•  Over worked with heavy workload that is reactive

•  We decided to focus the business model on niche migrant market, Mandarin speaking, those wanting to come to NZ themselves or bring their families, their businesses, and their issues.

•  What could we do to reduce the stress of managing the workload?

Visualizing the Work

Lots of Work…

CHANGE the MINDSET

Space to Think

Collaborative Spaces

Review the WIP

Daily Standup

STRONG Leadership

•  Allows individuals to contribute and challenge the leadership and how the case may be won

•  Discussion is encouraged, and even expected of professionals in a Legal career

•  Your own approach created from proven case law and methods is encouraged and expected from you being a lawyer

•  ALWAYS for our clients interests – but within the law

accountability

Accountability

•  Started seeing more accountability once everyone knew what was being worked on

•  We split the work up – created a team workload for large cases,

•  This created more accountability / redundancy in the system

Use of Tools

Started using an electronic tool for managing the WIP – Kanbanize.com as it was free & easy to use – integrated into our daily toolset.

Gather / Review Metrics

A LAW FIRM In The Cloud

Lean in the Law Firm

•  Strong Leadership

•  Fostering the team through empowering them

•  Visualizing the work

•  Limiting the WIP

•  Iterative progression of the work

•  Staying disciplined and focused (self organized)

•  Utilizing tools to enhance the work

•  Retrospectives of success & failures

Remember to have Fun

AGILE – LEAN Practitioners

•  Who are we – really?

•  Does our belief in Agile / Lean / Lean Startup applicable?

In the room use these questions to discuss in pairs:

•  Take 1 of the businesses you came up with before and discuss which agile/lean techniques could they use to help them?

•  Do they need our help – or would they be open to change?

Other Industries…

ACCOUNTANTS / ARCHITECTS…

I’m working with mine now…

PRESTIGE LAWYERS LEAN IN THE LAW FIRM

By Stephen Reed @ScrumMasterNZ

stephen@prestigelawyers.co.nz