Rafte Articles RSS Feed

Follow Rafte & Company on Twitter for the latest industry updates

Kari Richards — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Twitter user name: RafteCompany

Rafte & Company is staying on top of the trends and industry directions to keep you informed. Some of the subjects we are tracking in include: Law Firm Management; Ad Agency Management; Accounting Firm Management; Document and Email Management; Governance, Risk & Compliance; Office Productivity; Business Process Efficiencies; Business Continuity; Microsoft Upgrade Availability; Legal Technology Updates; Time and Billing Trends; Rafte Event Notices and more...

6-Jul-09 12:00 PM

The Top Five Compelling Reasons Your Law Firm or Corporate Legal Department Can Benefit from Using Microsoft Office 2007

Kari Richards — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

With a lot of the buzz about Microsoft Office 2007, and its primary applications: Word 2007, Outlook 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007; you may be wondering if it’s worth the upgrade. To determine if Office 2007 is right for your firm or department, we worked first-hand with several legal administrators and attorneys. Presented here are the top five compelling reasons your firm or department can benefit from Office 2007.

	The New User Interface
Office 2007 is unlike any Microsoft upgrade since Windows 95 was released because the change is revolutionary -- not evolutionary. The most impactful change in Office 2007 is the new interface. The familiar menus, File, Edit, View, etc. no longer exist. The menus have been replaced with "the Ribbon", which is a set of tabs located across the top of the screen organized by function. Each tab is divided into groups of related task-oriented commands. Key features are now at your fingertips. In other words, features that were previously very difficult to locate in older versions of Office applications, are now very easy to find or "discover" within the new Ribbon. For example; symbols, line numbering and paragraph spacing in Word (once buried deep in menus and dialog boxes) are now clearly displayed at the top of your screen on the Ribbon. Contextual tabs are another ingenious feature in Office 2007. The tabs only appear in the Ribbon when needed. For example, when you click in a Table, the Table Tools tab appears; click outside of the table and the contextual tabs disappear.
	Faster, Better, Easier: Creating and Editing Documents in a Flash!
Documents can now be created and edited with a more professional look, faster and easier than ever before. Through the use of new Office 2007 templates, Quick Parts and other Building Blocks, elegant documents can be created in as little as three clicks. Live Preview, Galleries, Themes and Quick Styles make it possible to format and edit a document in a matter of mere seconds.
	The New File Format
Another feature that provides value in Office 2007's is new file format. The new file format is based on XML, will require a four-letter file extension (i.e. .docx instead of .doc), and is not backwards compatible. Microsoft has given us a more robust, feature-rich, secure file format that will greatly benefit law firms, corporate legal departments, and professional service firms.
Some of the features of the new file format include the ability to:
Create documents that are less prone to file corruption. Reduce file size significantly. Recover content from corrupt documents (not available in previous versions of Office). Content Management - The capability to update and replace content in all Office 2007 documents in a repository. For example, the same logo may be used in thousands of documents and can quickly be replaced in all XML documents.
	Graphics
While SmartArt is one of the most obvious and outstanding new additions to Microsoft's graphics capabilities, there are other great tools that may be of more interest to you. In PowerPoint, the ability to insert multiple photos at one time, using the Photo Album tool, is one those great features. The Photo Album tool; capable of formatting, assigning placement (i.e., fit one photo per slide or select up to four photos per slide), and applying captions to multiple photos all at once, can save hours of work. Another efficiency tool found throughout Office 2007 is the Compress Pictures feature. The ability to compress all pictures in a document with only a few clicks results in smaller file sizes, which is especially useful for files and presentations that are graphics-heavy. The Selection and Visibility pane is another great new graphics feature that presents the user with a list of all the objects in a document. The task pane allows the user to quickly select and group multiple graphics; as well as show, hide and arrange objects -- making it much easier to work with layered objects.
	. . . And All the Little Things
It is all the little things that add up to huge improvements in efficiency and ease-of-use for Office 2007. Through the use of the new templates, Quick Parts and other Building Blocks, elegant documents can be created in as little as three clicks. Live Preview, Galleries, Themes and Quick Styles make it possible to format and edit a document in a matter of mere seconds. Some of our favorite new features such as the PDF converter, Global Spelling Options, Contextual Spelling, Mini Toolbar, customizable Status Bar and Zoom slider can be found throughout Office 2007. In Word, the Document Comparison features, new Table Styles, and improved Track Changes make a big impact on usability; while the new Presenter View, Custom Layouts and slide Reset button are a sigh of relief and a helping hand in PowerPoint. Excel's new features such as the Page Layout view, new Conditional Formatting options and additional Formulas allow for data to be manipulated and understood within a single click or two. And last but not least the Calendar Overlay feature, new To-Do Bar and color category options make managing your schedule so much faster and easier in Outlook. These features may not sound like much written here on this page, however once you begin to use Office 2007 it will not take long before you begin to see the benefits.
The bottomline
Is it worth the upgrade? We say yes. The Office 2007 improvements boil down to a few simple factors:
An overall improvement to the interface and some great new tools result in greater efficiencies and a higher quality of work product. Processes that often took hours to accomplish in previous versions of Office and resulted in only mediocre documents, now only take a few mouse clicks and result in professional, eye-catching documents. And while it’s true that change is often difficult, and users may experience somewhat of a learning curve, we at Rafte believe the short investment of time is well worth the effort.
To learn more about Office 2007, Office 2007 Training, and other great technology advances that can help your firm or legal department become more efficient - call Rafte & Company at (713) 993-9637.

26-May-09 11:00 AM

Rafte & Company's Partners' Breakfast Roundtable 2008 Recap

Shannon Hampton — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

What a Year - Rafte & Company's Partners' Breakfast Roundtable 2008 Recap

HOUSTON, December 30, 2008 – There is no argument that 2008 has been quite a year… An historical presidential election, volatile oil and gas prices, and destructive weather – just to name a few events that have impacted our business lives.

As we enter into 2009, what is in store for us? Will the trends in the legal profession and business climate affect the way we do business?

We need to strategically prepare our firms and businesses for 2009 and to support your planning sessions, we wanted to provide an Executive Briefing that recaps the Rafte & Company Partner’s Breakfast Roundtable sessions that were held in 2008.

April – 2008: Retaining Women in the Legal Profession

Today’s advancing law firms are embracing women in the workplace. Typically, this translates to a more flexible work environment. So, how are firms going to meet this challenge?

Roundtable Highlights:

Bottom line: Law firms continue to lose bright, capable female attorneys to the corporate legal world. While they would like to retain and promote female attorneys, smaller firms are often constrained both by their legacy compensation plans, and their inability to provide the required flexibility needed by female attorneys.
Even though the percentage of women partners in law firms today is increasing, the ratio of female law firm partners is still substantially less than their male counterparts. The numbers become even more unbalanced when one considers the number of female partners with children versus male partners with children.
The door to partnership in a law firm is closely tied to originations, billings, and collections – not gender. The fact that there are more male than female partners is more closely related to a woman’s choice of balance between work and family life rather than her ability to make partner.
Law firms understand that attorneys, who are working mothers, represent a huge and very viable knowledge base – often relatively untapped. Accordingly, law firms are making a more conscientious decision to hire female attorneys to create a more balanced culture and client/attorney relationship fit. The ultimate challenge in creating this balance will be the firm’s ability to support alternative work arrangements and compensation plans going forward.

July – 2008: The Billable Hour: Is the Era Coming to an End?

Increased hourly rates, increased annual billable quotas, increased staff turnover. What will break first – attorney’s backs or the billable hour?

Roundtable Highlights:

Bottom line: Law firms are hesitant to depart from the billable hour unless their clients demand that their billing structure change. However, change is enviable – especially with business drivers from this current economic period.
Mitigating the risk of “rocking the boat” with a client was the most common reason provided for keeping the billable hour. Law firms know how to manage their business with the billable hour and most clients expect the billable hour. The number one driver between client and firm growth is “personal relationships”. These personal relationships are also driving the need to do business in the comfort zone. If the mix of billing structure and client expectations is met, than the billable hour will stay for a long period of time.
The introduction of an alternative billing structure may be directly related to the internal stresses that the client is experiencing. For several years, corporate legal departments have been under a great deal of pressure to manage and minimize the cost of legal services for the corporation. The Corporate General Counsel is being required to scrutinize these legal costs, and as a result, law firms are being asked to submit reliable case budgets and alternative billing structures.
By being proactive and offering an accurate budget for a case, some litigation practices are seizing this opportunity to differentiate their firms. Referring to years of data, these firms are analyzing the type of case and providing a budget representation.
In firms with less than 200 attorneys, the perception is that no “real legal work” is being outsourced. The types of tasks outsourced are more likely to be in the arena of litigation support-related document production reviews or possibly patent processing documents.
There are some law firms that are choosing to migrate away from litigation. Litigation is being referred to smaller or boutique firms. The primary reason is that litigation is expensive, lower-margin, and longer return. However, the smaller firms are very happy to pick up this work.
Also, clients want the law firm to take a position of shared risk on a case or matter. In many cases, firms are very reticent to share risk as they have difficulty in forecasting what a case will cost the client. More importantly, many firms are unable to access the required historical data from which they would base these projections.

October – 2008: Client Succession – Planning for Tomorrow

How do you successfully transition your client’s trust to another member of the firm? What steps should you take to make sure that your firm’s long-term relationship with the client is not compromised? Just as you plan for the future management succession of your firm, it is equally important to plan for the succession of your valued clients.

Roundtable Highlights:

Bottom line: There was almost a clean 50/50 split of firms that practice a “Team Approach” to client/firm relationship building and those firms that have no client succession plan, allowing the originating attorney to keep and manage the client relationship.
The Team Approach needs to begin at the inception of the client-firm relationship. It is a style of doing business within the firm, and needs to be aligned with the firm’s compensation plan. Traditional client relationship plans that heavily compensate for individual origination do not facilitate the Team Approach to client management.
There was a general consensus that if a Team Approach to client management was non-existent, the risk of losing a client is very high, if the originating attorney leaves the firm.
A few recommendations were made:
- Identify the primary lawyer for each client.
- Determine the backup lawyer, if the primary lawyer becomes ill or leaves the firm.
- If a backup lawyer has not been assigned, assign one.
- Build a “client team” with multiple levels of staff participation.
- Follow up with clients on a regular basis to build a loyal client relationship.

October – 2008: [SPECIAL SESSION - LEGAL TECHNOLOGY ROUNDTABLE] Lessons Learned: Preparing and Recovering from a Hurricane

Hurricane Ike slams into Galveston and Houston on September 13, 2008. Four weeks later Rafte & Company hosted a roundtable among the legal technology thought leaders of Houston to reflect back and consider how they fared with regard to the storm. What the firm prepared? What plans did they put in place that worked brilliantly? What remains a challenge? What can be done now? Are there any new alternatives?

Roundtable Highlights:

Bottom line: The participants survived Hurricane Ike by escaping little to no damage of records and continued business-as-usual by remotely operating from hotels or coffee shops, outside the Greater Houston Area.
Most of the participants agreed that their primary “check list” was comprehensive and surprisingly similar firm-to-firm, and included considerations for people, paper, IT, telecom, mobile collaboration, and office building infrastructure. However, one critical factor was missing from the list: mission-critical business process and data infrastructure mapping, which resulted in poor remote collaboration with key staff.
Who “owns” the responsibility of planning business continuity or DR for the law firm? The consensus was that this was viewed as an administrative and IT task. This presents a dichotomy between the corporate world and the business practices of law firms. While law firm partners focus on practicing law, legal administrators or IT leaders request visibility to business continuity or DR gaps, but these challenges are often put on the backburner to daily tasks because of limited time and resources. Corporations assign business continuity as a key corporate initiative and require an executive to take accountable responsibility. The participants of the roundtable are eager to see the same adoption of business continuity plans from the corporate world in their law firms.
By the very fact that Hurricane Ike was a natural disaster with plenty of warning, did this situation produce a false sense of security? Thanks to the advancement of metrology, we received up to a five-day hurricane watch. But, what if the disaster or business interruption was not a natural disaster? What if it was an unexpected event, like a fire? Would we be as confident that we would experience the same level of success that we did with Hurricane Ike? Well, the response was a bit more concerning. Auto backup and restore of laptop data, scanned and indexed records from individual office files, and remote document collaboration were just a few of issues that were identified for improved planning.

December – 2008: Getting Paid for Services Rendered

So, you have done the work, entered your time, and have sent an invoice to your client. Now, how do you collect on the bill? Given this country’s financial crisis, law firm management must focus on implementing systems that will ultimately shorten the period from service delivery to service payment. This may translate to discounts for early payment, more aggressive bill collections procedures, charging interest and late fees on outstanding balances, and process billing.

Roundtable Highlights:

Bottom line: Structured discipline is the key to managing on-time accounts receivable.
The firm’s practice type many times dictates the timeliness of receiving payment for services rendered. For instance, litigation may be paid at the end of the year or when the case is settled; while transactional matters are billed and paid on a turnkey basis. The more complex the matter, the trend is more complex billing and payment schedules.
Sometimes, a simple invoice submission method can facilitate on-time payment, such as the submission of an invoice in a PDF format via email directed to the client and the accounting contact. Or, asking the client if they have an electronic invoicing system that will allow the firm to submit invoices in a client-formatted structure for rapid payment.
Another driver of timely payments is submitting internal time on a scheduled basis, and submitting invoices to the client in plenty of time to allow review of the invoice, prior to their check cutting date. This requires a disciplined effort on the firm’s behalf to collect timesheets by deadline. Some firms reinforce the importance of judicious timesheet submission by holding attorney compensation until timesheets are submitted.

Rafte & Company will be more than happy to assist you with your 2009 planning. From a quick question to helping you with your business planning retreats feel free to contact us at 713-993-9637 or drafte@rafte.com.

2-Jan-09 1:00 PM

What Every Lawyer Should Know About Data Governance, Compliance, and Collaboration

Shannon Hampton — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

By Dena Rafte, President and CEO, Rafte & Company

According to figures recently released by IBM, worldwide file, database, and email archive capacity will each skyrocket at a compound annual growth rate of up to 73 percent, altogether totaling nearly two trillion full filing cabinets of information (IBM Press Release, May 21, 2008).

If your organization is like most, the daily accumulation of data is a fact of doing business: matter-related data is strewn across the organization in outdated paper filing systems, duplicate emails, and multiple databases.

Security and Compliance Concerns

In the past, the need to retain data was driven by business need; but today, government regulation is just as likely to play a key role. For many organizations, concerns about compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) are driving new data governance initiatives. Among other regulatory requirements, SOX mandates that records be retained in a non-rewriteable, non-erasable format, requiring organizations to implement a robust data retention solution.

Of course, there are other drivers of data retention initiatives such as the “Model Corporate Record Retention Guidelines” of the Association of Corporate Counsel, which provides guidelines for establishing record retention programs and policies for matter-related documents normally handled by Corporate Counsel.

Corporate mergers and acquisitions, a global client-base, and a mobile workforce have also increased pressure on corporate legal departments to provide full visibility and control over matter-related content. Yet, the matter files in many organizations remain inaccessible remotely for collaborative purposes or are still paper-based.

Poor Data Quality is a Business, Legal, and Financial Risk

Lack of data, poor data quality, or incomplete records can carry legal, business, and financial risks when data required as part of a legal proceeding or regulatory requirement is missing. In one case involving the routine, scheduled deletion of email from a corporate database that occurred after a lawsuit was filed, the State District Court of New York ruled that even in the absence of bad faith, companies can receive court sanctions even if they are only following their normal data retention practices of deleting emails after a set period of time (MasterCard vs. Moulton, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York: June 22, 2004).

Beyond Compliance: Why Adopt a Data Governance Policy?

Besides addressing compliance requirements, there are many other reasons to adopt a rational data governance policy. For corporate legal counsel, it’s critically important to be able to share matter-related information securely between subsidiaries, geographically-dispersed workforces, partners, and affiliates.

Unfortunately, critical matter-related information is often tucked away in data silos across email inboxes/folders, multiple offices, subsidiaries, and regions. Having a central data repository enhances the ability to share matter-related information securely, while improving the organization’s knowledge management capabilities. The result is better consistency and confidence in decision-making.

Matter Centricity and Data Made Available Anytime, Anywhere

Increasingly, the data that is required during the legal discovery process is electronic, not written. Yet, it is important that both paper records and electronic matter are available centrally on-demand—anytime, anywhere. That means data must be accessible from a courtroom, airport, or home office—as well as from the traditional desktop. No longer is the laptop satisfying remote access to matter-related data. The smart phone, PDA, or BlackBerry is now an essential component of the legal professional’s technology infrastructure. So, any data governance solution must take these mobile devices into account, not just the desktop and laptop.

The objective of data governance for many organizations is to mitigate the risks associated with regulatory requirements and to implement business policies that provide an auditable framework—without disrupting the way the company does business. In today’s regulatory environment, a rational data governance policy is essential to ensure consistency, confidence, and compliance.

Lifecycle Management of Matter-Centric Data

To effectively manage matter-related content, data governance policies and processes must encompass the lifecycle of the entire project or matter, including both hard copy and electronic files and records. In addition, data archival and retrieval systems must provide multiple, convenient ways to file and profile email messages into the electronic matter file—with flexibility to meet the way that the business operates, and with full access to data through intranets and extranets.

The best data archival systems use metadata and heuristic analysis of message or document content to classify and categorize data into matter folders so that matter-related data is available in context. Without metadata capture features as part of an archival system capabilities, the organization is at risk for spoliation due to lost or modified metadata and content.

Work Style and Culture Are Important Considerations

The key to the success of any data governance policy is full and effective user adoption. During the initial discovery process, it is important to involve those who will be impacted by new data governance policies so that they are participants in the process, not simply bystanders reacting to new policies and processes as they are rolled out.

Understanding roles, responsibilities, work styles, and organizational culture is a critical part of successful data governance initiatives and effective case management. Just as important is ensuring that data governance policies and processes reflect the way the organization actually does business.

Good Data Governance: Using the Right People, Processes, and Technology

Many organizations believe they have handled the need for matter-on-demand with a document management system. In reality, there is far more integration required between people, processes, and technology to put an effective data governance system in place and do an adequate job of connecting the paper world with the electronic world.

Three Common Pitfalls You Should Avoid:

Don’t rely on file and database backups as a substitute for a reliable data governance solution. Backup copies are not in a format that can be queried. Furthermore, data integrity problems can result if the backup copy contains data that is in your current operational database, but in a different state.
Don’t leave archive data in your operational database. Queries against the operational database can negatively affect the performance of critical business applications.
Don’t rely on electronic imaging systems alone as the answer to data archiving and regulatory compliance. Many such systems promise electronic document management (mainly for filing purposes), but fail to provide an enterprise-wide solution that meets regulatory requirements.

Putting the Process Together

In successful data governance initiatives, the leader of the initiative is an executive level sponsor. The team includes project management, line-of-business managers, and data stewards who take an active role in data strategy development and delivery. Within that framework, critical data elements are identified and ownership, stewardship, and management of different kinds of information are assigned.

At Rafte and Company, we’ve simplified implementation of the data governance process into the following steps:

Once the value of proper data governance is understood and a commitment is made, the executive-level sponsor assigns a project team to examine data governance objectives and goals, review the range of possible solutions, recommend an approach and guide implementation.
In the due diligence phase, the project team meets with each line-of-business manager and data steward to understand how they work and examine the system used to organize physical files.
Working with a legal technology consultant, a concept is developed, demonstrated, and honed as necessary.
Once finalized, the team is trained in the non-disruptive activities that take place in the background—such as indexing, identifying, grabbing, and storing data in matter-related folders, and, if necessary, further refinement of the concept is completed.
With a successful implementation behind them, the data governance policy is complete. New initiatives are not deployed without considering their impact on existing databases and day-to-day business operations.

Conclusion: Better Compliance, Collaboration, and Security

While regulatory compliance may be a primary concern, it is not the only benefit that organizations can realize from implementing a data governance policy, processes, and technology. Data governance can dramatically improve the consistency and confidence of decision-making, data security, regulatory compliance, and the ability to share secure, reliable information throughout the organization.

By consolidating all of the matter-related content into one unified, secure, searchable location, the compliance needs of the organization can be met, while enhancing the ability to fully collaborate around matter-centric data across geographically dispersed locations—anywhere, anytime.

In the final analysis, the hallmark of a successful data governance solution is effective collaboration around matter-related information in all of its forms. Once the right technology, people, and processes are brought together, the true collaborative potential of matter on-demand can be unleashed.

15-Aug-08 10:00 AM

Legal Technology News Features Rafte Guidance on Virtualization

Steve Bondy — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

The article, "Is Your Law Firm Ready for Virtual Servers?" written by Rafte & Company Founder Dena Rafte is featured by Law.com's Legal Technology News. The article suggests that virtualization may be the way to go for small to midsized firms.

Rafte says the benefits of virtualization are clear: instead of servers running at 10 percent or less capacity at certain points in the day, virtual servers can share hardware resources -- raising your average usage rate and lowering hardware and support costs. What else?

Lower hardware investments. Instead of purchasing multiple servers, purchase a single, dual-core high-performance computing server and load the host operating system and virtual server software to create the virtual server environment.
Improved security. Server virtualization lets you isolate each server, so if a server is compromised by a virus, Trojan or other malevolent program, the other servers are isolated, protecting the data that resides on those servers. This gives you the security benefits of separate servers, with reduced hardware cost.
Easier restoration through greater consistency. Restoring a virtual server is easier than restoring a server running on dedicated hardware. The virtual server software hides the physical hardware from the virtual servers, which means the hardware platform is always consistent.
Reduced time to recovery. Server virtualization can significantly reduce the time it takes to access a remote disaster recovery site, especially if the virtual servers are pre-staged. Assuming you perform a virtual server image backup weekly to a remote disaster recovery site, and run a differential backup during the week, all you need to do is run a restore of the latest differential backup to make a "warm" site "hot."

Click here to read the story.

At Rafte & Company, we see this trend becoming more prevalent among small and medium-sized law firms, but this technology is not for every firm. Decision makers need to do their homework before switching to virtualized servers. If virtualization is mishandled, the approach can actually increase IT management complexity and increase the impact of failure. One failed physical server could take a number of hosted virtual servers down with it, crippling your firm’s ability to operate for a period of time.

Another caution is that the various virtualization-focused products and strategies may not seamlessly integrate. Doing so can lead to overlap and waste.

Of course, not every law firm has the technical expertise or internal resources to manage and operate its increasingly complex and expanding legal IT infrastructure – let alone capitalize on emerging technologies such as virtualization. That’s why managing partners are turning to Rafte & Company's Legal Technology Solutions for selective and integrated IT infrastructure, operations, and management sourcing and services. Rafte & Company's Legal Technology Solutions keep technology costs low, enables users to access an expert IT team with outstanding user support, and eliminates the hassles of hiring, training and retaining a qualified technology staff.

Through Rafte & Company’s Legal Technology Solutions, our team of experts can help your firm assess whether virtualization is a viable option for you.

For more information on Rafte & Company's Legal Technology Solutions, please call toll-free (800) 396-9390 or e-mail us to request at info@rafte.com.

# # #

15-May-08 1:00 PM

Latest Legal Technology Survey Suggests Law Firms Still Resist Technology Tools

Dena Rafte — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:00:00 GMT

ALM Research in partnership with Cogent Research has released the 2007 Legal Technology Market Assessment Survey. The report identifies the factors that drive technology purchases and preferences, differentiate products and brands, and define trends in law firm technology budgets. Nearly 1,400 attorneys responded to the survey, which broke down perceptions in the following five areas:

Case/practice management;
Document management;
E-discovery;
Client relationships management/client development; and
Online research.

The new ALM/Cogent poll, which was split evenly between large and small firms (41 percent large law firms, 38 percent small firms, 14 percent midsize firms and six percent in-house counsel), confirms what we’ve seen in other recent legal technology surveys: that significant resistance to technology remains and that a large number of practicing lawyers in America are still practicing and trying to manage the business of their firms without the benefit of technology tools.

Among the survey findings:

52 percent of the attorneys have access to case management software;
32 percent have access to document management tools;
12 percent have access to electronic data discovery products;
9 percent have access to customer relationship management software.

Although the largest U.S. law firms have average annual technology operating budget approximately $17,000 per lawyer for technology investments, the survey found that market penetration by most legal software products is still relatively moderate,

In a news release announcing the survey results, Ellen Siegel, vice president of licensing and business development at ALM had this to say:

"The survey yielded eye-opening results, which have significant implications for technology vendors striving to maintain or improve their positions in the legal market. Results specific to individual products are set out in separate sections and will be of great interest to lawyers and other law technology purchasers seeking guidance and feedback from their peers."

The survey covers performance comparison of case management systems, purchase "drivers" and criteria, and it offers detailed analysis of top vendors, exploring such perceptions as user loyalty, and what would happen to the marketplace if the product was not offered.

An executive summary of study findings is available at www.almresearchonline.com.

18-Oct-07 11:00 AM

Law Firm Business and Technology Needs Converge at ILTA '07

Dena Rafte — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:00:00 GMT

For a few days in August, Orlando was the epicenter of legal technology, playing host to the 2007 International Legal Technology Association’s (ILTA) conference. Rafte & Company was well represented. I was honored to speak on two panels on business strategy while others in the firm participated in the various professional development sessions.

The amount of information at ILTA ’07 was staggering, but we’ll do our best to offer a synopsis and expand on some of these issues in subsequent articles.

Overall, I found it refreshing because the focus of the discussion was on strategic issues related to the success of the law firm. We’ve come a long way far the days when the responsibility of a law firm’s information technology (IT) personnel was primarily break/fix and making sure that the system stays up.

I heard a lot of creative thoughts about what firms are doing to better differentiate themselves, what they could do to make it easier for their clients to do business with them and what they could do to drive efficiencies in order to deliver their work products faster and cheaper. I left with the clear impression that legal IT is not what it used to be.

That said, the general buzz in most of the sessions wasn’t particularly surprising, but it was enlightening in terms of where the technology brain trusts of America’s law firm are focused. Many of those in attendance described similar interests: how best to manage the tremendous volume of data, the obstacles related to user education and training, and leveraging IT investments to accelerate firm growth.

Larger Law Firms Modeling IT on Fortune 500

Rafte & Company works primarily with smaller and mid-size law firms, a number of which are aggressively investing in technologies that can improve the way their work. The idea is to leave antiquated business processes behind and implement systems that enable the firm to operate at a higher level. The chatter from the larger firms at ILTA ’07 made clear that we are on the right track. America’s large law firms are modeling their operations and business processes on the practices, methodologies and structures commonly associated with Fortune 500 companies.

Unlike many smaller and mid-size firms that may not see IT as a business leveraging tool, technology is woven into the fabric of America’s larger firms. One of the panels in which I participated was, “Getting a Seat at the Table,” which discussed what a firm’s IT leadership needs to do to be seen as a strategic player. The mere fact that the firms are having that discussion points to the chasm that exists between practice group leadership and the use of innovative technologies to better serve the client base. But it also points to a desire among the smaller firms to cross the chasm, which leads us to our next point.

Smaller Firms Catching Up

One of the major takeaways from ILTA ’07 was that smaller firms are beginning to close the gap with larger firms in terms of integrating various technology tools into the fabric of their operations to increase productivity, improve efficiencies and enhance profitability. In fact, an ILTA survey conducted earlier in the summer indicated that smaller firms are ramping up the pace of their technology investments just as larger firms are beginning to ease off their technology spending.

We presume other smaller firms share the desire of our clients to increasingly integrate technologies into their business processes in order to realize the advantages the larger firms have enjoyed for much of the past decade.

Automation Presents Opportunities

Automating certain functions that firms would normally bill for on an hourly basis is becoming an emphasis of some of the more sophisticated firms. Firms that are doing this successfully may be charging less, but they are creating an annuity stream of revenue with no or very low associated costs to the firm. One example is a firm that used to provide training programs on various labor law topics for their clients. By repackaging the information and offering the classes online, the firm makes delivery of the information more convenient and cost effective for their clients while significantly reducing costs to the firm.

This creative thinking is helping innovative firms repurpose their core asset – their knowledge – to establish new lines of products and services that clients are excited about. They strengthen their client relationships while boosting profits. What could be better?

Virtualization Reduces Costs

In years past, servers proliferated at an astounding rate. Every new IT project seems to require new hardware. Of course, this also means more hardware support issues, more real estate consumed, and higher data center costs for electricity and cooling. Many firms have instead chosen to adopt virtualization, leveraging one host to run multiple servers. This trend has become more prevalent, and is enabling the deployment of new IT initiatives at a lower cost and, in some cases, in an accelerated timeline. It also has positive implications for disaster recovery and high availability.

This has been an exciting development in technology, and one we expect to continue to develop in the future, as virtualization pushes out from the data center and begins to migrate to the desktop.

Interwoven Addresses Training Dilemma

As usual, the companies that make the various software and hardware solutions used by law firms were out in force. The Rafte team paid particular attention to what Interwoven was saying, recognizing the leading role they play in helping law firms improve their business processes. In the midst of all the hoopla about new products, they had some wisdom to share regarding one of the key obstacles that stands in the way of successful technology roll-outs: getting attorneys trained. Recognizing that it’s not realistic to expect most attorneys to go to the classroom willingly – let along pay attention if you get them there – Interwoven is moving more of their training online so attorneys can ramp up whenever and wherever is convenient.

Interwoven and others also had a lot to say about litigation preparedness. There is an overwhelming amount of work being done to design and deploy tools intended to help law firms and their clients proactively manage the risks associated with being sued.

There is a lot more that we would like to share and we will do that in upcoming articles here on the site. Please make it a point to check for updates, or subscribe to our RSS feed so you are alerted when an update is posted.

Of course, we also welcome comments and feedback below.

1-Oct-07 6:00 PM

ILTA '07 - Getting a Seat at the Table

Dan Keeney — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 23:00:00 GMT

Rafte & Company President Dena Rafte participated as a panelist in the session, "Getting a Seat at the Table," during ILTA ’07, the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association. With the permission of ILTA and the event organizers, we have posted the audio from the discussion below.

“Getting a Seat at the Table” explored how some technologists have become key strategic thinkers in order to meet their firm's measurable business goals. Recognizing that technology is central to law firm operations, Rafte and other panelists will explore how legal technologists can become key strategists for their firms and discuss their successes as well as steer participants away from potential pitfalls.

“These are important conversations and I was honored to be selected to participate in ILTA ’07,” said Rafte, who established Rafte & Company nearly a quarter century ago. Today Rafte & Company is a leading provider of business strategy and technology solutions for law firms. “Making the most of technology investments to boost firm profitablity and streamline processes is instrumental in creating a client-focused firm.”

Dena Rafte is a frequent presenter on the importance of aligning technology investments with business strategy to improve law firm operational efficiencies and profitability.

For your convenience, we have divided the hour-long session into six parts, each of which is approximately 10 minutes long. We welcome your feedback, so feel free to post your comments below. Also, click here to listen to the session, "Understanding the Lawyer-client Relationship," in which Dena also participated.

Getting a Seat at the Table Part 1

Getting a Seat at the Table Part 2

Getting a Seat at the Table Part 3

Getting a Seat at the Table Part 4

Getting a Seat at the Table Part 5

Getting a Seat at the Table Part 6

6-Sep-07 6:00 PM

ILTA '07 - Understanding the Lawyer-Client Relationship

Dan Keeney — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 21:00:00 GMT

Rafte & Company President Dena Rafte participated as a panelist in a terrific session entitled, "Understanding the Lawyer-Client Relationship" during ILTA ’07, the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association.

This was an important conversation and Dena, who established Rafte & Company 24 years ago, said she was honored to be selected to participate. She says that creating a client-focused firm is essential for law firm success as more firms implement strategic technologies into their business processes.

The ILTA session, “Understanding the Lawyer-Client Relationship,” delved into how today’s global business environment is creating immense pressures on the lawyer-client relationship. Panelists discussed how emerging practices such as RFPs, risk-sharing agreements and flat-fee pricing are changing the legal environment and will look at the increasing importance of technology in helping law firms succeed. The session also explored how technologists can shape their strategies to help their firms compete in today’s every expanding and evolving global legal marketplace.

We are happy to be able to share the audio from this session with the permission of ILTA and the event organizers. Click below to download parts 1 through 6, each of which is approximately 10 minutes long. Also, click here to listen to the session, "Getting a Seat at the Table," in which Dena also participated.

Understanding the Lawyer-Client Relationship Part 1

Understanding the Lawyer-Client Relationship Part 2

Understanding the Lawyer-Client Relationship Part 3

Understanding the Lawyer-Client Relationship Part 4

Understanding the Lawyer-Client Relationship Part 5

Understanding the Lawyer-Client Relationship Part 6

6-Sep-07 4:00 PM

The Role of the Legal Administrator in Creating a Client-Focused Firm

Dena Rafte — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:00:00 GMT

The following article, written by Rafte & Company President Dena Rafte, was published in the July/August issues of Legal Management under the title, "Open and Accessible, The Legal Administrator's Role in Creating a Client-Focused Firm." Download a PDF of the article here.

A legal administrator can play a central role in helping ensure the success of technology initiatives that can keep their firm competitive. Without the understanding, support and active involvement of a strong legal administrator in helping drive change, initiatives designed to make it easy for clients to do business with the firm frequently fail to live up to their potential.

This is critically important today because forward-looking firms have realized that they need to constantly change and innovate in order to satisfy rapidly evolving client demands. Leading firms have made it their business to identify and leverage new ways of working. It’s one way they are differentiating themselves and attracting clients.

Client expectations are at the heart of what’s happening. Corporations are implementing sophisticated technologies to squeeze more value and efficiency out of the global supply chain. To the dismay of many in the legal community, these companies are increasingly treating legal services as just another commodity. As such, they are expecting their law firms to deliver more for less while demanding their firms make it easier to do business with them.

In this era of rapid response and interactivity, a law firm’s survival depends on adopting a more open and accessible approach to client relations.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. Why?

First, most firms still want to do what their peer firms are doing. In most cases, this means that work processes revolve around the whims of the individual attorney.
Second, law firms tend to have great difficulty getting people to work differently due to a perceived conflict between improved efficiency and billable hours.
Third, change typically happens in most organizations when the perceived level of pain gets uncomfortable. In the case of many law firms, until the impact is clearly financial, change is very slow in coming

Leading firms are overcoming these obstacles with the help of their legal administrator. They are moving beyond the attorney-focused mindset that places great value on the individual to the detriment of the team, instituting strict standards for how things get done. In so doing, they are embracing a client-focused mentality that insists on mobilizing all the available resources of the firm to deliver the greatest value to the client.

The first step is to understand the importance of establishing standards.

Standardizing Firm Processes

The need to manage matters and share knowledge are prompting law firms to consider how they can do a better job of efficiently managing critical content. At many firms, the focus is on giving the individual attorneys what they need to practice and stay productive. This can create horrendous inefficiencies with information tucked away in private Outlook folders or other inaccessible data repositories.

For instance, at one firm, the Word Processing staff showed me a giant loose leaf notebook with instructions for how each individual attorney preferred his or her documents. Every attorney had a customized profile. One attorney liked to have indents and a certain font. Another attorney preferred margins a bit wider. As a result of these highly individualized work processes, it was very difficult for work to be shared among the administrative staff.

Establishing standards that everyone has to follow has become increasingly important with the exponential growth of data with the firm. These factors, coupled with client and staff expectations of availability and response time, are forcing law firms to look at how information is shared and how they can provide clients with greater access and a consistent online user experience.

For most firms, there were few standards for electronic data management and even fewer viable user options for electronic data storage. Information that had previously been centralized in the physical folder for all to access was now being partially replicated into individually owned data stores.

What to do? Ultimately, the name of the game is making it easier for clients to do business with your firm. Therefore, it is essential to have a shared database in order to give all users a place to store the firm’s electronic data in a manner that is consistent and predictable. The firm has to provide a means to replicate the structure of the physical files and provide seamless access to the matter folders for all related documents, e-mail correspondence and attachments, financial reports and any scanned content or images.

The idea is to create an environment that takes the focus off of the individual attorney and puts it squarely on the client. All firm-related information is in the case file. Clearly this is not a unique idea in the paper world, but a very challenging one in the electronic environment. The result is to make information securely accessible to internal and external users on an anytime/anyplace basis.

The Buck Stops with the Administrator

While the need for top down support for such a change is essential, the job of building understanding and consensus among attorneys and staff members at all levels typically falls on the shoulders of the legal administrator.

The best legal administrators take this responsibility and run with it, recognizing that a fundamental change is necessary in order for the firm begin to maximize productivity and efficiencies to benefit both the clients and the firm. They actively look for opportunities to improve efficiencies, often finding resistance from attorneys and staff who have deeply entrenched work processes. In firms where legal administrators are empowered to meet resistance head on, organizational change is more likely to succeed.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen that legal administrators are often held accountable for the successful implementation of change without being granted the power to actually insist on compliance.

Moreover, creating an environment that encourages innovation and facilitates collaboration is just the start. The legal administrator also must be a strong advocate for paying close attention to the needs and expectations of every firm’s three key stakeholder groups: the clients, the attorneys and the business of the firm itself. Clients expect a superior work product delivered very quickly at a low cost. The firm’s attorneys expect to have the opportunity to do great work and live a desirable lifestyle. The firm itself expects to retain and strengthen current relationships, establish new relationships and remain profitable.

The key to achieving a balance among the interests of these groups is having a shared firm-wide perspective that the interests of the client must come first. The challenge for most law firms is that they attempt to implement this type of client focused change without first establishing the necessary infrastructure – the standards, workflow and procedures – for the organization to work as a team to serve the client.

What Clients Want

Clients don’t want the status quo. A study from BTI Consulting Group revealed an unprecedented drop in client satisfaction with law firms with just 30.7 percent of large and Fortune 1000 companies recommending their primary law firms. They no longer want an advisor who keeps a safe distance and offers off-the-shelf advice. They want someone with skin in the game and expect their law firm to be a business partner who truly understands their current and future challenges.

Clients expect their law firm to deliver maximum value. They are being forced to improve efficiencies and they want their service providers to do the same. They increasingly value flexible billing arrangements and creative solutions that make it possible to control costs.

Clients are increasingly doing business around the clock and want a law firm that offers flexibility and accessibility. They want to quickly and easily be able to access their files and documents at any time from wherever they happen to be in the world.

And clients expect it to be easy to do business with their law firm. They don’t need added complications, they want solutions. So the fact that the burden of organizing documents typically falls on them – in the form of voluminous e-mails and attachments – is an aggravation they would rather avoid.

What Attorneys Want

Attorneys expect the opportunity to create a desirable lifestyle. They want to dictate more of the terms of their employment – to free them from the billable hour ball and chain. Studies have found that this desire is not unique to Generation X. Mid-career women and partners nearing retirement also are attracted to work environments with greater flexibility.

Attorneys want simple and dependable remote access to the firm’s information so they can be productive wherever they are. They want to be able to collaborate with the firm’s staff and with their clients. Increasingly, they expect immediacy.

Additionally, many younger attorneys expect their employer to help them build their resume. This mindset is unfamiliar to their Boomer bosses who continue to structure compensation and advancement with an eye toward an associate’s long-term potential within the firm.

What the Firm Wants

The firm is expecting business development, talented attorneys and continued profitability. Reputation is key.

It is no secret that most firms shower their greatest rewards on those who bring in the most business. But many firms aren’t seeing the writing on the wall. A confluence of market dynamics is changing the business development process to devalue relationships and make procurement of legal services more objective and cost-based. If traditional business development was like a courtship, today’s approach that often requires firms to respond to a request for proposal is like an arranged marriage.

The way firms operate needs to change in order for them to remain competitive.

For example, I worked with a firm a few years ago in which the leadership was concerned that they were not attracting the type of talent they wanted. Unfortunately, their “solution” was simply to raise salaries. The firm didn’t consider changing the business development process to involve more attorneys or consider offering additional support to enable more attorneys to be successful in winning business. Nor did they provide additional training. And from a technology standpoint, they had not considered deploying a mobile device infrastructure, allowing for easier communication while away from the office.

They missed a great opportunity because the leadership of the firm had not been paying attention. To attract and retain talented attorneys, firms need to provide access to knowledge. They need the technology infrastructure that will help them to relate to their peers in the client community. This will be particularly important as their peers come into power 10 years from now.

Migration to a Client Centric Environment

Faced with billing rate pressure and rising costs, the law firms that stand out must continually identify and capitalize on ways to deliver more value to clients more efficiently.

The name of the game is changing the firm’s delivery system. Successful businesses every few years have to recreate themselves. Even if they are great at what they do, they must change to accommodate the client’s changing lifestyle and expectations. Here’s how to create client centric work processes:

Listen to your client – try and anticipate their future needs
Consider both your current automated and non-automated work flow processes
Create standards for the firm/practice/work group not the individual.
Create centralized electronic data repositories for case information
Increase staff leverage by providing training at all staff levels in support of these new processes
Create a collaborative environment by providing secure access to case data inside and outside the firm
Look for opportunities to refine the process in support of the client, the attorney and the firm.

Conclusion

Legal administrators who promote a shared firm-wide perspective, create an environment that facilitates collaboration and keeps the focus on the interests and needs of the firm’s clients tend to have a major positive impact on assuring their firm has the opportunity to advance in today’s increasingly competitive business landscape.

On the flip side, legal administrators who do not proactively look for opportunities or step forward as leaders risk seeing their firms fall out of favor. It can happen so gradually and over such a long period of time that the firm leaders don’t realize what’s happening until it is too late. Clients become disenchanted and associates grow frustrated, dropping off one by one.

With clients demanding that all their partners – including their law firms – do what they do better, faster and cheaper – it is essential to proactively take a 360-degree view of the firm and its work processes in order to capitalize on opportunities that can help differentiate the firm.

Dena Rafte is president of Rafte & Company (www.rafte.com), a strategic technology systems integrator and business solutions provider for law firms. Call 800.396.9390.

7-Aug-07 10:00 AM

Rafte & Company shares expertise in American Lawyer

Dan Keeney — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Click here to view PDF
Dena Rafte, CEO of Rafte & Company is featured as an expert in the article, Time is Money, published in a special supplement to the June 2007 edition of American Lawyer. The article, by Robert McGarvey, explores best practices in tracking time. Incredible as it may seem, some experts estimate that 25 percent of small firms are tracking time the old-fashioned way -- with pencil and paper.

Rafte says this reticence to adopt helpful productivity tools results from the belief among many small firms that if it ain't broke you shouldn't fix it.

"Many law firms are using what amounts to IT Band-Aids," said Rafte in the article. "There usually is little interest in investing in new accounting or time tracking software. They think that's just back-office stuff."

Rafte goes on to say that technology investments need to be strategically aligned with the firm's business objectives and work together to improve efficiencies and productivity. For instance, it is essential to make sure the firm's time tracking sofware will smoothly interface with the other applications, such as case management software, Outlook or Quickbooks.

"At the end of the day, all these tools are about making it easier to do business," Rafte said in the article.

The supplement, The Smart Lawyer's Guide to Finance, offers advice about financial management issues confronting small law firms.

9-Jul-07 11:00 AM

A Conversation with Kari Richards about Rafte Application Consulting Services

Dan Keeney — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Kari Richards is a member of Rafte & Company’s Application Consulting Service initiative. Kari has a master certification for Microsoft Office, and works in collaboration with the other Rafte team members to provide a ready-to-implement training solution. Rafte’s Application Consulting Service assesses client needs, develops a training plan and implements a customized training curriculum to maximize the effectiveness of the client’s technology and application tools. We sat down with her for a brief conversation about computer application training.

Give us the basics about Application Consulting Service. What is it?

Rafte & Company’s certified trainers are focused on helping organizations get the greatest return on their technology investment by building the skills and capabilities of their employees. Application Consulting Service accomplishes this through a variety of training formats, including custom and standardized classes, workshops, and one-on-one training.

Are there specific applications you focus on?

Application Consulting Service courses include, but are not limited to, all versions of Microsoft Office, Interwoven’s document management system, Adobe products, Workshare Professional (Deltaview), and graphic applications. The bottom line is that with Application Consulting Service, we help clients focus on improving the knowledge and capability of the end user.

Many organizations offer their own training. Why do they turn to Rafte’s Application Consulting Service?

Often it’s the case that Rafte & Company’s trainers have knowledge and expertise with certain applications that their internal trainers may not.

What makes Rafte’s Application Consulting Service stand out from other training programs?

We do everything for our clients. We find our clients often want to implement a training program, but they get overwhelmed by the burden of organizing everything – having to select the course curriculum, sending the information for people to sign up and tracking who has signed up for which course. It can be a real burden and, as a result, it gets shuffled aside year after year. Rafte & Company can take over that entire responsibility and let our clients focus on what they do best.

So you handle course registration?

Yes, we handle course registration and course promotion inside the organization. We do it all online using our Web-based events registration tool. We set up a description of the course, send the staff an e-mail describing the class, its prerequisites and a link to register. Our online registration system is easy to use and tracks who has registered, how many have registered and makes it easy to generate a roster. We handle it all and the client can get on with their job.

How did you become a trainer?

Like most people, I learned some of my computer skills on the job. From there I took it a step further, received training myself and became certified. I’ve always enjoyed helping and teaching others. I finally found the perfect venue in software training.

From my work experience, I saw a lot of different aspects of how people actually use the software. So when I am teaching, I emphasize real world scenarios that you won’t find in any textbook. I give class participants typical examples of errors and issues they’ll come across most often and then show them how to fix or avoid the issues. I like to teach shortcuts because sometimes you can fix a problem in 10 minutes that could have cost hours of unproductive time.

Are your courses relatively elementary, or do you get into some sophisticated subject matter as well?

We do both. We have off-the-shelf classes already designed for each of the Microsoft Office applications – with three levels for each – and we continue to design additional modules to address specific needs our various clients have. For example, we designed one course to drill down into Excel formulas. For those who don’t really use Excel much, we designed Excel basics. We’ve also developed “Tips and Tricks” classes for Word, Excel and PowerPoint along with advanced “Tips and Tricks.” For those who haven’t mastered charts and graphs to graphically depict data, we developed a module that delves into how to create and manipulate charts.

So from our experience working with students, we developed these customized courses to augment the standard course offerings.

Do people tend to just scratch the surface of what office productivity applications can do?

Most people only know what they have to in order to get the job done every day. They may have taken a class in the past, but if they only use certain features for their job, they tend to quickly forget all the other capabilities that are available. As a result, when they take on new responsibilities that stretches their skills with an application, they end up coming up with their own solution that is typically “the long way” either because they don’t know or can’t remember how to do it more efficiently. The funny thing is that many computer users don’t even know the fastest, most efficient way to get their core tasks done.

Is that the case across the board, or do people in some office environments tend to have deeper knowledge?

In the legal industry and the engineering field, workers tend to delve deeper into the software’s capabilities. In the legal field, they generally know Word much more in-depth than the average office worker. For them, the primary advantage of the training is learning the new features and new methods of performing the same tasks. They may not have kept up with how the software has continued to evolve, because each new version generally makes it faster and more efficient to use if you know how. A person can use the same method of getting a task done in Word 2003 that they used 10 years ago in Word 3.0, but they could get the same thing done in just a couple clicks of the mouse.

How do you audit a client’s needs to determine what course content is most appropriate and necessary?

It depends on the client. Sometimes we go into the office environment and observe how the employees are using the applications. This gives us a great deal of insight, but an audit can also be fairly straightforward. We ask what they want to learn! I’m working now with a client who wants training for her staff in Outlook. She has about 20 people, but she’s not sure which parts of Outlook they need or want to learn. In these cases, we send course outlines to the client or their users and ask them to respond with the features they are most interested in.

Office 2007 is coming, with Forrester Research estimating that most businesses will migrate to it over the next three to five years. By all accounts it has been radically redesigned, so do you anticipate growing demand for Application Consulting Service as a result of Office 2007’s launch?

There will be a lot of businesses trying to figure out how to use Office 2007 because this is a huge evolution. It has a completely revamped user interface, so it won’t be like the gradual changes we’ve seen with previous Office releases. Training will be imperative for virtually everyone. That same Forrester survey found that on average most expect to give employees between two to three hours of formal training in Office 2007, followed by a two to four week period of decreased productivity while the users acclimate to the product. It’s going to be a very big deal.

But I thought it’s supposed to be easier to use!

Once the person is trained, it will be easier. Microsoft says the changes will reduce by half the number of mouse clicks needed. It currently takes more than a dozen mouse clicks to change the margin of a document in Word. In Office 2007, it will take three clicks. The challenge is that while most upgrades you can still find your way around and it doesn’t look a lot different. This one will look entirely different. No more pull down menus like “File” and “Edit,” for instance. The new interface is designed to make the layout of control for logical and to bring forward helpful features that are hidden in current and previous versions.

What should a company interested in Application Consulting Service do to find out more?

Give us a call at 800-396-9390or send an e-mail to info@rafte.com. We will be happy to learn more about their training needs and offer guidance regarding what type of training will provide the greatest impact on improving the knowledge and capabilities of their employees.

15-Jun-07 10:00 AM

Of Counsel Magazine Includes Tips from Rafte & Company in May Issue

Lori Tripoli — Wed, 16 May 2007 14:00:00 GMT

An article by Lori Tripoli in Of Counsel's May 2007 edition tackles the sticky question of how law firms can tell when it's time for a software upgrade. Rafte & Company President Dena Rafte is quoted in the article, saying law firms that fail to include periodic upgrades in their budgets and plans are vulnerable because such a failure can send a negative message to clients. If your law firm has PCs that are operating on Windows 2000, this might be an article you'll want to pass around the office:

---------------------------------

Are You Losing Clients Because Your Software’s Too Old? . . .

Don’t Get Caught with a 1.0 in a 5.0 World

When a lawyer at an Of Counsel 700 firm recently emailed a document to a reporter in a circa 1990s version so old it could not be opened, the thought that the publishing industry could possibly be more technologically advanced than firms in the land of the $500 billable hour elicited a bit of a giggle. The reporter was definitely feeling a glow of moral superiority (albeit, an underpaid glow) when the lawyer was compelled to send the document as an email text because nothing else would work.

Of course, if this scene had played out with a client, the result might not be so whimsical.

In fact, one lawyer, immigration attorney Angelo Paparelli, says that he was compelled to leave his big-firm practice because the firm’s technology capabilities were so antiquated. “The process of decision-making in the acquisition of technology was a very big factor in my leaving a very large firm,” says Paparelli, now the managing partner of Paparelli & Partners, which has offices in New York City and Irvine, CA. While noting that he has the highest regard for his former firm, he says that he “was representing a very large, well-known company, and that company had expectations, which were entirely reasonable, that I would communicate with them in a way that was compatible with their particular products, and I was not able to do that.

“It became an embarrassment,” Paparelli continues. “I began to make noises. I was in a branch office. The IT people decided that they would adopt the [needed] technology after all, but it would be phased in, and I was about eight months away.”

Paparelli wanted to be plugged in sooner than that, so he left. In case it’s not clear: We’re in a client-driven world, and technology is a big part of the engine.

“Law firms have always had great ways to manage the paper office, but their practices in managing electronic data are hurting, and it’s beginning to bite them,” says Dena Rafte, president of Rafte & Company, a business and technology consulting firm in Houston. “They’re in a very vulnerable position.” Around 95 percent of Rafte’s clients are law firms.

“If you look at technology 20 years ago, 15 years ago, it was driven by the staff,” Rafte observes. “It was totally an administrative task.” Then firms started buying PCs, and they’d upgrade when staff said that the computers were running too slowly. “Starting in the mid-1990s, attorneys became more involved because their hands were on the keyboard more,” Rafte says. “Now, in this generation, it’s very client-driven.”

In the Driver’s Seat

Law firms today know that effective client service delivery is critical to their success. They also realize that up-to-date technology environments and the knowledge of how to affect services delivery are critical for winning the corporate beauty contests, says Terry Crum, a New York City-based principal in the Legal Business Consulting group of the Analytic & Forensic Technology practice at Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP.

“I also believe that we are seeing a shift in thinking by leading GCs,” adds Crum. “They are beginning to realize the impact of technology on their organizations and how that use of technology can affect the productivity and effectiveness of their staffs. With that understanding, GCs are going to begin to influence what law firm’s technology usage will be,” he says.

Echoing other consultants, Crum notes that “law firms have been driving the technology usage decisions up to this point, but that will shift to the GCs. We see that change as a team approach between the law firm and the General Counsel’s office.”

Simply enough, if a lawyer sends a document by email to a client, the client should be able to open it without any hassle. “We have to be the most flexible technology organizations, particularly now,” observes Maureen Durack, director of management information systems at Vedder Price in Chicago. “We do need to anticipate that our clients will send us documents in Word, Word Perfect, in whatever version fits their needs, so our tools and techniques have to be far vaster than they were even five years ago,” Durack says. “We have to be able to handle it and make it look like it was easy.”

Which isn’t to say that law firms are actually making software purchasing and planning easy on themselves. “When you travel to various industry functions and trade shows, you find people going shopping according to a shopping list that they’ve constructed from their talks with others in the industry and from their readings,” observes John Alber, technology partner at Bryan Cave in St. Louis, MO. These buyers, he says, tend to go for whatever’s hot that year.

“There’s a lot of herd behavior and, as a consequence, a lot of wrong choices,” Alber says.

“Some law firms budget, [but] some firms buy in crisis,” Rafte observes.

Technology Equals Strategy

There’s a better way. “Take into account the firm’s strategic plans,” Alber suggests. Determine what the firm plans to do in the next two-year, five-year, ten-year periods. Is the firm going to be expanding? Contracting? Merging? Focusing on particular areas of endeavor? Will there be some particular client emphasis? Is the firm interested in expanding modes of client communication?

In terms of business, are there targeted increases in profits per partner that the firm wants to achieve? Are there changes in leverage? “It starts to become clearer what software is more important,” Alber says, as he recites these various considerations.

At some point, though, someone, whether it’s an IT person, and IT team, or a partner who’s just interested in the subject, will be pitching some new software to someone with decisionmaking ability at the firm in an effort to get the upgrade.

At this point, some firms rely on their IT people to find the best products. “I do the research and also listen to the business needs based on what I hear from the partners,” says Shari Jackowitz, director of information technology at Pryor Cashman in New York. She’ll then make recommendations based on the firm’s needs and the cost. She’ll also identify alternative products, but she provides her own recommendation of what she considers the best choice to be.

Vedder Price’s Durack sounds a similar note. “Generally, the IT group will vet products. We will spend the better part of our time looking at changes to existing products and looking at new products,” she says. For big projects, the firm will issue requests for proposals. “We rely heavily on references and proof of concepts,” Durack adds.

Others don’t hesitate to get help from consultants. “We operate on the proposition that we will regularly, out of current profits, improve the capabilities of the firm,” Paparelli says. He uses A! Consulting, whose mission is to check out everything at legal technology shows and see what might be a good fit for his firm.

“We don’t have a formal process per se, but we do follow basic procedures in acquiring software,” says Mark Wilson, senior manager of applications development and project management at Dickstein Shapiro in Washington, DC. For general, everyday software, he and his staff do some product research, learn what’s out there, narrow their options, and then get some type of vendor demonstrations.

Along the way, stakeholders have some input. For instance, Wilson says that, as his firm was considering a software application to manage its summer associate program, the director of attorney recruiting and the hiring committee were involved in the software evaluation process.

“If it’s a significant acquisition, we like to get an evaluation copy,” Wilson says. “There’s usually a big difference between what people say things can do and what they actually can do,” he notes. It’s not that those software vendors are used car salesmen trying to unload lemons. “They just don’t necessarily know the intricacies of your environment and how you’ve customized other applications,” Wilson says.

At that point, he and his staff go into a basic buy/build decision in order to determine whether they could construct a product better themselves, he explains. At that point, they’ll proceed with a formal approval process through the firm’s CIO.

Pound Foolish

Of course, bells and whistles aren’t worth anything if the lawyers don’t know how they toot. When firms “finally buy the software and implement it, you get different results,” Crum says. “However, if lawyers are unwilling to be trained on the acquired technology tools, they will never realize the full potential of their investments. In the law firm practice areas, firms are lucky if they realize 15 percent utilization. On a positive note, the administrative area is well trained and the investments are highly utilized.”

“Law firms are very reticent to send people to training,” Rafte says. Sure, the administrative folks can spare the time and have the commitment to get up to speed with the workings of new software, but the lawyers are an entirely different story.”

“The billable hour is your primary obstacle,” Wilson says. “You have to be able to show some value.” Try to “get some face time with the leaders of the practice groups that are most affected by the change and show them, if they use the software, how much better off they’ll be.

“There’s nothing worse than shelfware,” Wilson adds. Or a client who can’t open an attachment emailed from her lawyer. ■

—Lori Tripoli

Lori Tripoli is a freelance journalist based in Bedford, NY. She is currently working on a book on law office management. Email: LoriTripoli@hotmail.com.

16-May-07 9:00 AM

Rafte & Company's training services featured in BtoB

Erin Biba — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 22:00:00 GMT

Rafte & Company's customer-friendly approach to using online tools to create a turnkey training solution that promotes training courses, enables online registration and keeps track of course attendees was featured in this week's BtoB article, "Building Web site a vital event marketing tool," written by Erin Biba.

Read the article here.

Building Web site a vital event marketing tool

By Erin Biba

Event attendees have come to expect a Web-based home to locate even the most basic information regarding an event. Companies that go above and beyond the expected Web site design can expect marked benefits—and companies that don't design a site at all may find that their clients' perceptions of their business will suffer.

Even the most basic Web site can go a long way toward increasing marketing effectiveness and boosting attendance. Dena Rafte, president of Rafte & Co., a legal technology consulting agency that trains lawyers on the use of technology, recently developed a Web site to support events she holds regularly for her clients.

According to Rafte, clients are reticent to attend events organized by her company. Overall, she said, their attitude toward event-based training is that none of their staff members will attend. Initially, one employee was responsible for enticing law firms to take part in Rafte's training. However, Rafte said, that was a failing strategy. "We realized that the person that was responsible didn't want the job," she said.

So Rafte developed a Web site to do it successfully. "We can put our events into a calendar, e-mail the [law firms'] staff and say these are the classes and these people can then sign up for classes at their leisure," she said.

Since launching the Web site, Rafte said, "attendance has gone up. … the beauty is that it has taken the burden off. It's Web-based and it's marketing. Now [our clients are] willing to do business with us."

Richard Giuliani, VP-business development at Meeting Consultants, a corporate event planning and management company, said event Web sites can serve as a point of entry for potential business partners, as well as prospective attendees.

"If you have a company that is looking to invest money in an event for their business partners, and you want to attract those business partners, you have to be able to reach them," he said.

Fundamentally, Web sites should include an event registration tool, a calendar or agenda and, at the very least, a list of topics on sessions that will take place to give people an idea of what the event will be about, Giuliani said.

"If you think about it, the first thing [potential attendees are] going to ask you is [if they can] go to the Web site and be able to go browse, look at the content and ask: `Is it appropriate and how do I register?' In today's world, people want to do it online, they want to see the content, they want to see the speakers. That's going to incent them to say: `Yes, I need to be there.' "

Anna Talerico, exec VP at ion interactive, a strategic online marketing firm, said event registration, particularly for b-to-b events, happens most frequently online.

"People are going to research the event, look at the session and complete registration online," she said. "It's moving to be primarily driven by the Web."

Most importantly, Talerico said, b-to-b marketers should consider the Web site as an advertising tool for the event. "If you anticipate that people will be traveling in, you need to have a lot of info about your venue—info about your sessions and the kind of content you'll be covering," she said. "Some event Web sites have content about who the event is for and why somebody would come—helping somebody figure out why they should come—and you [also] need your pricing info."

Beyond the basics, there are features that can be tacked on to an event Web site. The added value of audio, video and even a planner that allows attendees to download their event schedule to a PDA, will increase traffic to the site.

According to Aaron Long, director of business development at Schipul, a Web marketing company, event Web sites should be left online indefinitely. "It's content online that's searchable," he said. "You need to promote your event ahead of time, do the event and videotape [sessions]. If someone searches, they will be able to find it."

Searching, he said, is how potential attendees will find out about your event. And the cost of adding additional content is small, Long said, as sites such as YouTube—which host video—are completely free.

The best way to increase your chances of being seen during a search, Long said, is to update content regularly. Also, the event's Web site should be linked from your company's main page and listed at least a month in advance.

"You would like your events to be listed in Google and Yahoo," Long said. "Busy sites with continually updated content will get [listed] more quickly. The more frequent [content updates] the better—content is worth eyeballs."

2-Apr-07 5:00 PM

Rafte & Company Helps Houston Zoo Tame Software Training Implementation

Dena Rafte — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 18:00:00 GMT

A computer may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of the Zoo, but modern zoos are now as wired and dependent upon information technology (IT) as any office environment.

Chances are your organization has more in common with the Zoo than you ever imagined. But maybe that doesn’t come as a surprise!

Rafte & Company delivers the Houston Zoo a software training solution, IS Educate™, to increase the overall effectiveness of the Houston Zoo’s information technology. Rafte designs and implements course offerings aimed at improving the knowledge and capability of employees. The courses focus primarily on the Microsoft Office system of applications, including Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Project and Word, among others, as well as Adobe Photoshop.

“I’ve actually had guests stop me as I’ve been walking through the Zoo with a piece of computer equipment and express their disbelief that we would have a need for computers,” said Alex Rigsby, senior systems administrator with the Houston Zoo. “I had one person actually say, ‘You feed the animals and clean up after them, what more is there to do?’ But we have to communicate with the rest of the world just like any other organization.

In fact, the Houston Zoo’s IT system includes more than 200 desktops and laptops and nearly a dozen servers for the organization’s 300 employees.

“A lot of our staff members spend the majority of their day in front of the computer working on mission critical applications that are essential for the health and well being of the animals and the fulfillment of our mission,” Rigsby said. “We send and receive tens of thousands of business-related e-mails per month, not counting our e-mail updates to members. We write letters to prospective donors, write grant applications and track Excel spreadsheets with data about exhibits and dosages of various medications given to animals. And people throughout our organization deliver a lot of presentations, so PowerPoint is critical in our communications, marketing and educational mission as well.”

The training program Rafte designed for the Houston Zoo includes one day of training services per month focused on Microsoft Office. Rafte delivers the courses on location in one of the Houston Zoo’s classrooms.

Rafte’s IS Educate courses include but are not limited to the Windows operating system, office productivity applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, as well as iManage desktop client, which is used by many law firms. Rafte offers off-the-shelf classes already designed for each of the Microsoft Office applications designs courses to address specific needs for clients.

“We weren’t doing any type of formal training before Rafte developed our training program,” said Rigsby. “We know we had people who weren’t using the tools as effectively as they could, but I just didn’t have the time to do it. Plus, there’s a big difference between someone like me who is in I.T. versus someone who is a training expert. I can figure out why things aren’t working and fix it, but I’m not a trainer.”

It is common for organizations to run into obstacles when considering a computer application training program, says Kari Richards, who leads Rafte & Company’s IS Educate™ initiative.

“It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the burden of organizing everything – having to select the course curriculum, sending the information for people to sign up and tracking who has signed up for which course,” said Richards, who has a master certification for Microsoft Office. “Rafte & Company can take over that entire responsibility and let our clients focus on what they do best.”

Rafte initially offered the Houston Zoo a range of classes that encompassed Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook, with three levels for each. Later, Microsoft Project and Adobe Photoshop were added to the mix.

“For each of the programs, we had some people who needed very basic instruction, others who knew the basics, but needed a little more skills, and some people knew quite a bit but needed to go to the final level to really get the most out of it,” said Rigsby, who estimates that as many as two out of three Houston Zoo employees have participated in the training. “I asked Rafte to devise a way to alert my employee population about the kinds of classes we offer and then monitor demand for the courses to determine what people need the most.”

Rafte & Company used its easy-to-use online registration system to quickly prioritize course offerings. Rafte posts a description of the course, sends the staff an e-mail that includes a course description, its prerequisites and a link to register. The Web-based system automatically tracks who has registered, how many have registered and makes it easy to generate a roster that can be shared.

“We had everything from people who have no idea what a computer mouse is to people who are really quite skilled and I don’t have the time to figure who is who,” said Rigsby. “It was great that I didn’t need to have anything to do with the scheduling of the classes. Rafte did a great job of figuring out who needs what training.”

While Rafte’s approach to assessing the needs of the Houston Zoo’s employees was fairly straightforward, other organizations require more study. Sometimes, members of the Rafte team go into a client’s office environment to observe how employees use IT tools, which can help identify institutionalized habits or shortcomings in work processes.

“We handle everything and let the client get on with their job,” said Richards.

“For me, it was extremely simple and straightforward,” said Rigsby. “Rafte took the entire burden off my shoulders because I don’t have time to be thinking about training on top of all my other responsibilities.”

Organizations interested in learning more about Rafte’s IS Educate service should call 800-396-9390 or send an e-mail to info@rafte.com. The Rafte team will be happy to learn more about their training needs and offer guidance regarding the types of training courses that can provide the greatest impact on improving the knowledge and capabilities of their employees.

28-Mar-07 1:00 PM

Rafte & Company offers guidance on Vista in "Bankruptcy Court Decisions"

Kate Colangelo — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Read this before upgrading to Vista

Keeping up with the latest technology is a balancing act.
Click here to view the full Bankruptcy Court Decision

Wait too long to update and you run the risk of losing touch with the rest of the world. Update too soon, and you run the risk of putting yourself out of business.

Consider this: If you’re lured by the promises of increased security and user-friendly features touted in ads for Vista, Microsoft Windows’ first major upgrade in five years, you may find yourself in the very awkward position of not being able to e-file.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of Kentucky posted the following on its Web site:

Microsoft has released a new version of its Windows software called Vista. Since it is such a major change to previous Windows versions there may be compatibility issues that need to be resolved. Compatibility with CM/ECF has NOT been thoroughly tested and therefore we cannot support your use of it at this time.

No compatibility issues have been reported between Vista and CM/ECF yet, said Clerk of Court Jerry Truitt, but the court’s technology guru believed that the potential for problems warranted the warning. Given the nature of those problems, the court’s action is prudent, and earned the praise of Dena Rafte and Steve Bondy of Rafte & Co., a Houston-based legal technology-consulting firm (www.rafte.com).

For many reasons, their advice to attorneys thinking about an upgrade is to wait.

Now is not the time

Not only is it a good idea to let other people deal with the bugs inherent in any new upgrade, but potential compatibility issues don’t stop with CM/ECF. They extend to every software program you use, any document management system your firm employs, and every peripheral device you use to stay connected. “So, unless you are working in your own little bubble and the only thing you’re running is the Microsoft Suite, it’s just too soon to upgrade,” advised Bondy. “For everyone else, the complexity comes in when you ask this new operating system to talk to other things. They may not speak the same language, which could potentially have a serious impact on your productivity as an attorney,” Bondy said.

“We look at this with a keen sense of our marketplace’s tolerance for downtime, error messages, or incompatibility, and in our 23 years of experience, it’s quite low,” Rafte said.

Add to that the lack of a compelling business reason to upgrade. If Microsoft promised that Vista would stop spam forever, for example, it would be flying off the shelf.

While even the more realistic expectation of boosting your productivity can be alluring, Bondy warned that early press coverage of Vista doesn’t persuade him that you’ll be missing out on much. “The press coverage has been sort of a ho-hum in terms of user oriented features.”

If not now, when?

Bondy said that he expects that they’ll begin installing Vista before the end of the year. The standard with Microsoft products is to wait at least until the first service pack (a program that corrects bugs) is issued, typically within six to eight months. Waiting at least that long ensures that the major problems have been dealt with, and it also gives software vendors time to test their products with Vista and to certify compatibility.

Whenever you decide to upgrade, be it tomorrow or in two years, do your due diligence first. Check Microsoft’s compatibility lists to ensure that your printers and other hardware will work with the upgrade. To ensure your software programs will work properly, visit the Web sites of each of the programs to see if the product is compatible. If the software is compatible, it’s a good idea to go one step further and check any comment forums to see what difficulties, if any, users have encountered.

But I like XP

If all this heightens your innate detestation of change, particularly change involving technology, a word of warning. Someday, you’ll have to upgrade to Vista. Microsoft will cease releasing compatibility updates and security patches for XP. Worse, eventually your computer will lack the minimum system requirements to run your software.

The good news? If history is any indication, that won’t be for three or four years.

Need a new laptop?

If you need a new laptop or desktop now, ask the store’s staff to preload your new computer with XP and to provide a certificate for the upgrade to Vista. That way, you can upgrade after the dust settles. Dell, for one, currently offers this option.

5-Mar-07 9:00 AM

Survey Finds Technology Security Breaches Remain Big Problem

Dan Keeney — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:00:00 GMT

How pervasive are computer security breaches? If law firms are anything like the rest of corporate America, the problem is a significant drain on time and resources. Three-quarters of respondents to a new survey of security executives in industry and government agencies said that they had at least one security incident in the past 12 months. That’s a lot.

The third annual “E-Crime Watch Survey,” released recently by the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University, U.S. Secret Service, CSO Magazine and underwritten by Microsoft, states the obvious: companies continue to struggle with electronic crimes. However, the survey also revealed that progress is being made.

More than 430 security executives in industry and government agencies responded to the survey covered the period July 2005 through June 2006, and it asked about a range of security problems, including: theft of intellectual property and proprietary information; denial of service attacks; worms and other malicious code; phishing; spam; Web site defacement; spyware; and theft of consumer records.

Respondents indicated that operational losses such as system downtime and lost productivity, are the most common consequence of computer security crime. What does all this cost? The survey found the median cost of a security breach increased to $45,000. The mean cost reached $740,000. Both figures were up nearly 50 percent in the past year.

Despite all the attention over the past year to mistakes by employees that led to security breaches (such as taking laptops with confidential information off-site), the survey found that outsiders caused about twice as many incidents as insiders. Even so, few companies appear to be working with law enforcement or going to court to stop the problems. Only 28 percent of firms said they had contacted law enforcement or gone to court in the wake of a breach. What were the primary reasons for not pursuing the case? Respondents said it was the lack of evidence about who committed the crime and the minor financial impact.

On the flip side, there is some promising news in the survey findings.

Nearly 70 percent of respondents said they feel their organization is better prepared this year to prevent cyber crime than it was last year.
The mean and median numbers of incidents per company fell in the latest survey period from the two previous years. This suggests that companies are having greater success at stopping widespread outbreaks of security breaches. Now that’s progress.
There was broad agreement about what security measures work. The top five responses were stateful firewalls (87%), electronic access control systems (86%), password complexity (80%), network-based antivirus (74%) and encryption (74%).

So what does this mean for law firms? On the one hand, the profile of those surveyed isn’t representative of most law firms. The median company reported having about 3,800 employees and spending more than $400,000 on information technology (IT) security in the past year. However, vigilance is always a good idea.

Of particular interest is the finding that outsiders caused about twice as many incidents as insiders, which indicates that IT security operations still can be strengthened. The following are a few recommended best practices every law firm should consider:

If users are allowed to connect to the firm’s network by means of a virtual private network (VPN), the remote user should be required to install and maintain good antivirus software. Network traffic into the firm’s network by way of a VPN should be restricted to approved applications, which can prevent the network from being breached by an insecure home network.
Guests visiting the firm should not be allowed to connect their laptops to the firm's production network. A separate network should be used for these guests, which isolates their network activity from the firm's network.
Laptops should be equipped with firewalls and users should not use public networks, such as WiFi hotspots or hotel/motel networks, to connect to the firm network unless VPN or other encryption technology is used.
Laptop hard drives should be encrypted, so data cannot be read if the laptop is stolen.
Don’t neglect Blackberry devices, which also should be password protected. The data they contain is potentially as valuable as the data on a laptop.

Computer security breaches continue to be a pervasive problem for all businesses – putting unnecessary strains on manpower and budgets. However, by adopting work processes that keep security top-of-mind and by implanting the growing number of effective security tools, law firms can go a long way toward securing their data from e-criminals.

11-Dec-06 10:00 AM

A Conversation with Dena Rafte about IS Helpdesk

Dena Rafte — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Q: What is IS Helpdesk?

Dena Rafte, president and chief executive officer of Rafte & Company: IS Helpdesk was born from the concept of helping the staff members to be more productive in a cost-effective manner. We have a team here ready to take calls that are specifically oriented to law firm applications.

Q: How is it different from other help desk outsourcing options?

DR: We’re not a generic technology company trying to break into the legal field. We’re a legal technology company that’s been working with law firms for nearly a quarter of a century. IS Helpdesk is a cost-effective option that is designed specifically with law firms in mind.

Q: Can you expand on that?

DR: We know that law firms aren’t using Microsoft Word in the generic sense and they’re using sophisticated financial applications tailored for the law firm environment such as Juris. So we can answer their questions with a clear understanding of how they specifically use the various legal technology applications and an understanding of the law firm environment. There’s real value to that. And since the firm doesn’t have to pay for a full time person sitting in their office and they can share that cost amongst many firms, it makes it financially viable. So far it’s been getting glowing reviews.

Q: When did the service get started?

DR: We created the concept about six months ago and we’ve been in a testing mode, which has been successful. We have it activated with one client and I’ve just spoken with that client because I wanted to see what kind of reference I’d get and she’s ecstatic.

Q: You started offering the service in a beta test earlier in the year and you had one client helping you test it out?

DR: It is important to understand that we’ve always offered a technical support desk as part of our Technology Consulting Service offerings, which we call IS Offsite. This new service, IS Helpdesk is really application-driven, while IS Offsite is more comprehensive, offering help desk assistance for all sorts of technology problems. They are two different offerings, but we’ve had the help desk concept going for more than five years.

Q: What is Technology Consulting Services?

DR: Technology Consulting Services is one of the four core service offerings under Rafte Proxy Services. The others are Legal Process Consulting, Business Operations Consulting and Application Consulting. Technology Consulting Services provide outsourced support for law firm network infrastructure. We typically provide technical support for firm-wide issues, such as when the e-mail server goes down. We structure it as a monthly contract that can encompass everything from the firm that needs just the bare minimum of support at five hours per month up to firm who wants someone onsite full time. In contrast, IS Helpdesk is part of our Application Consulting service offerings and it primarily handles end user issues. The person who would answer the phone on an IS Helpdesk call is an applications person, somebody who knows legal applications inside and out.

Q: I would imagine that most firms have someone who has this responsibility currently. What have you heard from them? Are they worried that you are taking their power away with IS Helpdesk?

DR: One of the things that’s neat about this is that typically the firm administrator – or whoever the go-to person is at the firm – has a big headache in this arena. He or she is the one people are coming to complaining that they can’t get their work done because the technology isn’t working properly. The administrators then have to call a third party or try to fix it themselves. The way this system is designed is the end users call us directly. So administers like it because it frees them from that burden and what we’ve found in testing is that it really doesn’t make any difference whether the person at the helpdesk is sitting in a remote location.

Q: Have you hired people to staff IS Helpdesk?

DR: Yes. We’ve hired three in addition to our existing staff. We always have a senior technical person in the office to answer phone calls. We’ve found that the faster we can expedite the call, the happier the client is. So we never have the office uncovered.

Q: Are the people you have staffing IS Helpdesk certified in these various programs?

DR: Yes they are Microsoft certified, Juris certified, etc. However, while I believe that certification is important, we’ve found that it isn’t nearly as important as experience. The senior technical people that are on IS Helpdesk have been with Rafte & Company for at least five years.

Q: What criteria do you believe are most important for firms to consider when evaluating whether IS Helpdesk would be a good fit for them?

DR: Our experience is an enormous benefit to them. Additionally, our client base is made up of law firms, so we understand the environment. They’ve trained in the law firm environment and have done support work. We also make an ongoing commitment to professional development to ensure our staff’s skills and knowledge remains up to date. The training also informs our people about the best practices for these legal technology applications so we can share them with our clients.

Q: What are the hurdles you’re facing?

DR: Our biggest challenge is to get over the hurdle of firms that are struck by the newness of the concept. We hear a lot of, “We’ve never provided this service for our staff.” In the big firms this level of attention for aiding staff is expected. In the smaller firms it has never been provided, but we expect that to change when they realize the positive impact IS Helpdesk can have on staff productivity.

10-Oct-06 2:00 PM

Why Matter Centricity?

Dena Rafte — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 16:00:00 GMT

Today, we have more electronic information coming at us than ever before. At the same time, the need to manage matters and share knowledge with a geographically dispersed workforce are prompting law firms to seriously consider how they can do a better job of efficiently managing critical content.

The exponential growth of data, coupled with client and staff expectations of availability and response time, are forcing law firms to look at how information is shared and how they can provide clients with greater access and a consistent online user experience.

While no surprise, many firms have found that information has been tucked away in private data stores, often Outlook inboxes or private Outlook folders, thereby creating informational silos rather than shared repositories. This situation, in large part, grew out of an environment that had effective processes in place to manage data in a hard copy format but not in its corresponding electronic format.

For most firms, there were very few “firm rules” for electronic data management, and even fewer viable user options for electronic data storage. Information that had previously been centralized in the physical folder for all to access was now being partially replicated into individually owned data stores.

Some of the challenges were fairly obvious. Clearly, there was a need for a shared database in order to give the user base a place to store the firm’s electronic data. More importantly, the firm had to provide a means to replicate the structure of the physical files and provide seamless access to the matter folders for all related documents, e-mail correspondence and attachments, financial reports and any scanned content or images.

All of this led up to the concept of matter centricity, which, in reality, is not so new after all.

A matter centric environment takes the focus off of the individual “information worker” and puts it squarely on the client. All firm-related information is in the case file. Clearly this is not a unique idea in the paper world, but a very challenging one in the electronic environment. The intention of matter centricity is ultimately to make case level information securely accessible to internal and external users on an anytime – anyplace basis.

The impact of a matter centric environment is many fold. Some of the key areas are financial, risk mitigation and work style.

Financial

When information is easily accessible and well organized, staff members can be more productive.
Work process standards can be established to maximize staff productivity to help the firm better leverage its ever-increasing workload.
The firm is in a better position to capture the value of its knowledge base

Risk Mitigation

The firm needs to maintain control over its work product – the document. Many clients are demanding access to their documents. Accordingly, firms must be prepared to provide secure repositories to their clients. Otherwise, they risk loosing control of their work product as it is deposited into the client’s or co-counsel’s repository.
When case information is centralized into an identifiable data store, the firm is in a much better position to manage the lifecycle of its client’s records and institute a viable retention policy on those records.

Workstyle

With standardized work processes and an environment in which information is accessible anytime from anyplace, the firm will have the option to offer alternative work style options to its staff members. This may result in greater long-term retention of staff.

Ultimately, the concept of matter centricity is to serve the client better by getting information to them faster and more cost effectively. For many firms, implementing a system that enables access to information anytime from anyplace requires a culture change that in order to succeed must be a top down initiative.

We have simplified implementation into the following steps:

Once convinced of the value of matter centricity, the law firm’s managing partner should assign a project team to examine the firm’s situation, review the range of possible solutions, recommend an approach and guide implementation.
In the due diligence phase, the project team should meet with employees from each practice group to understand how they work and examine the system used to organize physical files.
Working with a legal technology consultant, a concept is developed, demonstrated and tweaked as necessary.
Once finalized, the practice group is trained in the new process and, if necessary, further refinement of the concept is completed.
With a successful implementation behind them, the process begins again with the next practice group.

In summary, matter centricity positions the firm to do a whole myriad of things that would be very interesting to attorneys. Their documents become infinitely more portable and they have the ability to download all documents based on a particular case or matter. It integrates the electronic and paper records.

Matter centricity enables the law firm to focus on their clients and deliver services in an efficient, cost effective manner. In order to achieve this paradigm shift, firms must be prepared to face the cultural issues that come with change and growth. The pay off, in the long term, will be increased leverage of some of the firm’s most valuable resources: people, time and knowledge.

20-Sep-06 11:00 AM

Is Your Firm Keeping Up? A Look at the 2006 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report

Dena Rafte — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 15:00:00 GMT

We always look forward to seeing how America’s law firms are using technology and the ABA’s annual legal technology survey provides the most thorough report on trends. The 2006 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report does not disappoint, offering a smorgasbord of helpful information that can provide law firms a reality check about whether they keeping up with the Joneses when it comes to utilizing technology investments to achieve their strategic business objectives.

The responses echoed something we at Rafte & Company have been advocating: the critical importance of business continuity and disaster recovery planning. It’s been nearly a year since hurricanes Katrina and Rita wreaked havoc on law firms in New Orleans and throughout much of the Gulf Coast region. In that time, lawyers all over the country have embraced the need for a proactive plan to help them maintain continuous operations before during and after a disaster.

The 2006 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, an annual project of the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center, is a comprehensive look at how the legal profession uses technology. More than 2,500 ABA lawyer members in private practice in the United States returned questionnaires.

Key findings from the survey include:

More than half of respondents assert that they have a disaster recovery plan in place, an increase of 12 percentage points since last year's survey.
A quarter of respondents do not know whether their firm has a disaster recovery plan, which begs the question: what good is even the best plan if law firm employees aren’t fully educated in their roles and responsibilities well beforehand?
The survey also found that there is fertile ground for Rafte & Company’s new IS Helpdesk service, a legal technology outsourcing initiative aimed at smaller law firms that don’t have technical support staff. More than four out of ten respondents have no technical support staff at any locations for their firm. Seventeen percent have one technical support person, eight percent have two, and 38 percent have three or more technical support staff at their firms. Comparing these figures to previous surveys, it is clear that internal technical support is down significantly.
Respondents were more aware of the essential security measures that help prevent other causes of electronic data loss. There seems to be a general understanding of the importance of using firewalls, spyware prevention software and business conduct policies on issues such as e-mail usage. This is great news for those responsible for the keeping law firm information technology systems up and running.
Nearly two thirds of respondents said they have experienced an attack by a computer virus. They said the effects of the attacks ranged from loss of network access, to nonfunctional computers, to the expense of paying a consultant to get the computer system running again.
Law firms clearly are responding to the demands of an increasingly mobile society and the increasing demands among clients for immediate access to attorneys. Almost one quarter of respondents' firms plan to purchase personal digital assistants (PDAs), smartphones or BlackBerrys® within the next six months. This is an increase over last year's figure of 15 percent.
The survey found that the use of PDAs is following the trend we saw a few years ago with laptops. They are becoming ubiquitous. Of those who have mobile devices, many report using them nearly everywhere they go. The contacts and calendar functions are most frequently cited functions as being critical for doing their jobs.
Finally, Web sites such as this one are among the top sources of information about legal technology. Respondents said the top five sources they rely upon are print resources (73 percent), Web sites (59 percent), their peers (50 percent), staff (38 percent) and continuing legal education (33 percent).

According to the ABA, respondents to the survey represent a wide cross section of law firm sizes. Twenty-two percent of respondents are solo practitioners, while 27 percent work in small firms of two to nine lawyers, 20 percent are in firms with 10 to 49 lawyers, seven percent are in firms with 50 to 99 lawyers, and 23 percent are in large firms with 100 or more lawyers. This year, about five percent more large firms, and fewer firms of two to nine lawyers, are represented than in the 2004-2005 survey.

The ABA Legal Technology Resource Center, which oversees the survey each year, is a specialized unit providing lawyers, bar associations, law schools and other legal organizations with information on technology’s use in the practice of law. The Center’s professional staff research and write on technology issues and provide continuing legal education on practice management using technology.

The executive summary, trend reports, and the full survey are available online through the ABA Web Store or the ABA Service Center at 800-285-2221 [Product Code: 2680065P]. For more information on the 2006 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report or the resource center, visit http://www.lawtechnology.org or call 312/988-5465.

5-Sep-06 10:00 AM