How 1000 bees can take down an elephant

One obviously bright and experienced participant wrote the following on a LI conversation about VLOs:

“I really hate to be the one who throws cold water on the VLO model. There is simply too much risk in managing litigation under the VLO plan. A lot of plaintiffs and certainly most solos will not have the litigation budget to adequately preserve electronic evidence under the current federal rules. FRCP Rule 34.

There are too many expensive chain of custody, metadata, spoilage, and other problems that accompany the discovery process..The other side is going to wipe out the entire budget with motions to compel production of evidence that everyone knows is spoiled by improper handling..That’s why they alway file the motion to compel; because so few people can actually produce an unadulterated electronic document. It won’t surprise anyone that this happens when home based solos try to litigate document intensive claims against well funded opposition with very high technological acumen.

Check out the powerpoint show on the right hand side of the evidox.com webpage..This is possibly the most compelling evidence against home based solo litigation practice; at least in Federal Court…. http://www.evidox.com”

Not only am I grateful for his contribution, but I totally agree with his comment regarding litigation practice.  There is risk and going alone in complex cases will be terrifying!  Strangely, the same participant previously wrote: “It would take quite a collective agreement to make the practice operate smoothly..”   He’s obviously found the solution, but he does not yet believe in the solution.   As those of you that know me, I don’t present a problem without a solution. It’s simply uncivilized! 😉

Nonetheless, these referenced collective agreements already exist (law firms), and increasingly as groups of aligned solos and small firms (SSFs).  I remember one such group about 8 years ago. They were plaintiff’s lawyers in credit reporting. About 30-40 plaintiff’s lawyers worked against some of the largest firms and most intelligent lawyers defending the Credit Reporting Agencies. Whilst not unprecedented, and remaining detached from the context of their motivation, I was impressed. They shared resources, and covered each others’ depositions, appearances, etc. almost seamlessly. Each by him/herself would have suffered a swift end to their practice and health from the highly effective tactics of a big defense law firm.

“1000 bees” taking down an elephant is not a new paradigm. It has simply never been so easy to form without capital and a long process of building trust. It doesn’t mean the elephant is extinct, nor that this evolution will not be without challenges.

Whether I like it or not, whatever my personal emotional biases, I cannot stop this occurring on a global scale. Who wants to play with me and share their resources (in Virtual Enterprise Networks) will be increasingly more important to my professional success than most of my individual achievements.

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

Virtual Legal Offices (VLOs) and why wings on a car don’t make an airplane!

It is great to see so many of us as lawyers now delivering all of our services as VLOs, from a laptop, and many more evolving from hybrid versions. The technological leap of emancipating ourselves from traffic congested commutes, expensive office rents (any rent is expensive if it is not returning to you more than 100% of the investment in it), parking, and the unnecessary use if natural resources like paper, gas, electricity.

VLOs can be so much more than your legal office from home or your laptop. The very nature of technology today, and soon to come, will actually make that business model obsolete. Most of us are still thinking of VLOs in a linear fashion: we moved out from an office with paper files and standalone servers to SaaS applications in the cloud, or to a laptop, or to remote servers that run our data. It’s the same business model but with virtual computer technology. That’s why I refer to this definition of VLOs as putting wings on a car and calling it an airplane.

As VLOS we have an opportunity today for a larger definition. Think of “larger definitions” as saying “more opportunity to make more money and do more of what you like.”  Sounds better, no?

For example: a big law firm is a form of organization that pools together the talent and knowledge of hundreds of lawyers in one marketplace. Like a mall, the buyer gets to visit one place that can handle all or most of the client’s needs. Brilliant, and still fun to visit! Except that it is today a less efficient mode of organizing. First, a big firm is committed to its exclusive talent (this is decreasing) and expensive proprietary infrastructure, including expensive leases. Second, anyone that can adjust and access talent much faster and much better talent will always be more efficient and more effective. Big law firms know this. That’s partly why in 2009 the ABA passed a rule lowering the ethical hurdles to lateral hiring. In fact, big law often sees the future before the rest of our industry, but they simply can’t adjust fast enough because of size and bureaucracy.  Like a 16^th galleon, they can see land ahead, but it takes a lot of sailors to hoist the sails and tack that big ship into the wind.

This is where VLOs can define and design themselves to compete. As a VLO you can move fast, but you don’t have scale, nor do you have trust with the best clients. But if you organize and build relationships of trust with other talent you can build scale and trust with clients previously not accessible to you.

There is another benefit to a VLO many are only now experiencing. You don’t have to be limited to any area of law you don’t want to do. You also don’t have to manage yourself as a business, if you don’t know how. You don’t have to do anything you’re not passionate about. This can only happen if and when VLOs build trust and then build scale with each other.

Hundreds of us are already exploring the VLO’s potential in thousands of conversations in social media. Those conversations are defining trust and building the formless platform for VLOs to increase scale.  Right now it has little direction. It’s like ants looking for a drop of honey. We know it’s here somewhere but no one knows exactly where.  So we exchange thousands of bits of info on social media trying to tract it down. In the end, even that is a limited example because there is not one drop of honey but an entire ocean of it!

The door is open. If we organize we can build a vast, high tech space ship instead of dreaming about flying in our grandfather’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Read Full Post »

How can lawyers work in virtual teams with distributed leadership?

Check out this video interview between Bas De Baar and Bioteams author Ken Thompson.

I took some broad notes from the video so you have some idea about its relevance to our conversations about VLOs and the future of law firms.

The main question and issue Ken found in leading teams was the command and control model (military) versus nature’s collective leadership model.  In nature everybody is a leader.

Ken adds that there is a conceptual line in these teams:

On the left side the team is playing for collective success. On the right side it is playing to avoid individual blame.  Ken states that bioteams (ants and bees) don’t cross that line. Everyone looks out for everyone else.  Another characteristic is that anyone that has useful information shares it with the whole team.  Ken learned from ants and bees, and his experience with teams, that short messages are better than a long message.  Lots of short messages are better than one big long message that can be misunderstood.  Emails was used as an example.  In bioteams, the most important messages to share is if there is a threat and is there an opportunity?

Bas de Baar: How do people work toward same goal in bioteams?

Ken:  Very important to have a shared belief systems in which all point in the same direction and passionate about something.  Also appropriate behaviours are sharing useful information with other team members immediately.

As for leaders, each person is a leader in a different domain.

Bas De Baar: But then how does leadership get distributed to the right people?

Ken: through facilitated self-organization. What Ken calls the concept of “team karma” or you get out of life what you put into it. In networks, Ken says, people want to get stuff out, but not put anything in.

In a bioteam or distributed leadership team everyone has to assume responsibility for a role, whether to lead a project or follow.

This conversation sounds very much like what we observe in Trump’s show: The Apprentice.

I am convinced that SSFs can best succeed and compete if they can learn to wok in these types of project teams.  That’s why I started OBA.

What do you think?

Read Full Post »