Why One Stop Shops Will Rule The World

27
Sep
2010

Richard Hall

No one can debate the “megastore effect” on our personal lives.  There is something compelling about the ability to visit a single store and shop for a refrigerator, laptop computer, cell phone, car stereo and then grab a snack in the restaurant.  Even better, great “megastores” today provide highly experienced consultants to help with your selection.  Why do we shop there?  They us save time while providing a great selection, low prices, and high quality service from a single company.

Imagine this same approach with your legal department.

You come into work and start your legal dashboard, review which matters require your immediate attention, which matters are over budget or at least headed in that direction, which matters are in litigation and where they are at in e-Discovery.  You grab the first cup of coffee and then review the law firm invoices requiring your approval, collaborate with outside counsel, review documents you have purposefully avoided and then grab the second cup of coffee.  You check your entity management program to insure the SEC filings have occurred with no delay and that the Board of Directors received their packets for the upcoming board meeting.

Suddenly, you come up with a great new data point you would like to see on your legal dashboard and you call your software vendor.  You have no idea how to get the data nor do you care.  You describe the idea and wait.  Fifteen minutes later you receive a return call stating the dashboard has been updated and that you can update it yourself in the future as part of the next release.

You did not have to call four different vendors to find out where the problem was, attend finger-pointing conference calls, or best of all, spend wasted time troubleshooting a software problem.

Sound impossible? Not anymore.

e-Discovery Driving Legal Department Innovation

Legal departments have long been one of the least funded departments within the organization.  That is, until a “bet the farm” matter hits and then purse strings open.  Until recently, recipients of the open wallet have been law firms and service providers.

Corporations have since targeted those areas of cost and risk and looked to product companies for solutions.  Historically, the highest cost of litigation has been in document review.  Thus, many vendors developed review products that incorporated sophisticated searching and culling capabilities to reduce the document set and therefore demonstrate cost reduction.  The fewer documents you review, the lower the cost.

More recently, innovation is following the processing and analysis of documents.  Corporations have been reluctant to narrow the scope of documents being preserved due to evolving rules and opinions.  Therefore, the cost of storage and processing of documents continued to rise.  Hence, innovation followed and the emergence of “analysis” tools occurred.  These tools have been termed “ECA” or Early Cost Assessment.  ECA tools today perform rapid processing of documents for the purpose of culling and filtering down to a relevant few documents.  Whereas historically this culling took place in the review platform, ECA tools allow the filtering to occur further “upstream” in the process thus reducing the number of documents to process and ultimately the volume and cost of documents to review.

e-Discovery firms are now combining these technologies to form “End to End” solutions.  The ability to minimize the data movement and retain centralized data stores about the documents opens the door for additional cost savings and time reduction in the litigation process.

Expanding Integration Beyond Legal

The typical corporate legal department is undergoing an incredible transformation from a technologically averse mentality to innovative and demanding users of technology.  Their knowledge is becoming much more savvy as they provide legal direction on technology purchases and use.  The lines between IT and Legal are blurring because both parties need each other.  The cost and risk is too great to ignore.

Corporations are demanding that software providers in the legal space integrate their systems with non-legal applications.  Silo data stores are no longer acceptable.  Examples:

• Legal Hold products are now interfacing with employee HR systems (i.e. SAP, PeopleSoft) for access to current email addresses, employee contact information, organizational information, etc.
• Matter management systems are now required to interface with document management systems so access to key corporate documents are available but controlled.
• Electronic invoicing systems that receive invoices from outside law firms route the approved invoices directly to accounts payable systems for processing.

Systems originally designed solely for legal departments are now expected to be a part of the corporate enterprise.

Evolution of Legal “One Stop Shops”

As e-Discovery products are required to integrate with non-legal systems, legal departments are demanding that legal systems talk with each other.  There is a definite symbiotic relationship between Matter Management, Electronic Billing, Entity Management and e-Discovery.  The key is the ability to bring the technologies together in a unified approach that allows sharing of data.  Sharing of data from a technical perspective is not trivial but can be easily resolved.  The challenge is making the disparate systems appear to work together in a seamless way.

Much like the megastore example, technology in itself will not revolutionize the legal/IT industry.  The megastore’s success is not built upon the best cash register or automotive department.  It is rooted upon the distribution and supply chain management that allows it to effectively and efficiently bring the goods and services that clients want into a single location.  The megastore does not have to produce all of the products themselves, nor do the products have to be the best of breed.  They simply have to work together with a common theme of reasonable price and convenience.

Legal product vendors are slowly adopting the Megastore approach.  Many are starting with their core product line (i.e. Matter Management or e-Discovery) and adding solutions as their clients’ needs expand.  As each product line is added, the relevant reporting data is presented on a legal dashboard for review.

Why “One Stop Shops” Will Rule The World?

Attorneys base many of their buying decisions today on established relationships.  The ability for a single vendor to provide consistent customer service, predictable and bundled pricing, and integration across your matter management, electronic invoicing, entity management and e-Discovery systems is very appealing.

Either through partnerships, acquisition or organic growth, legal product vendors are getting the message and evolving beyond their traditional product lines into “one stop shops”.  Those vendors that can evolve the technology into a more enterprise solution while providing a positive customer experience will rule the world!