Legal Commentary

Update on Lean: Ron Baker takes issue

By Patrick J. Lamb

Ron Baker is one of the leading thinkers on the issue of value billing.  I take what he says very seriously.  In response to my previous post on Lean Client Service, Ron posted a comment.  Because comments tend to get buried or lost, I wanted to share his comment and offer a further thought.  Ron commented:

Hi Pat,

This is an enormously contentious issue. I don't think Lean (or Six-Sigma) is relevant in a knowledge firm, where the talisman should be effectiveness, not efficiency. There's an enormous difference between these two.

I have seen many professional firms attempt to implement Lean. Yet it was invented for manufacturers, not knowledge firms. Google and Apple don't use it, for a good reason. It's too focused on efficiency and not effectiveness. Lean would never argue for 20% Google Time.

If you want to read the debate on this issue, see:

http://www.verasage.com/index.php/community/
comments/book_review_is_mayo_clinic_efficient_
or_effective/

http://www.verasage.com/index.php/community/
comments/was_drucker_wrong_about_knowledge
_workers_a_book_review/

Regards,
Ron Baker, Founder
VeraSage Institute
www.verasage.com
Twitter @ronaldbaker

While I admire Ron greatly, I disagree with him on this point.  Some part, indeed for many, a significant part, of what knowledge workers do is process.  Accountants, for example, who do an audit, follow a series of protocols and procedures to ensure the process is consistent and complete.  So too for a review of a tax issue.  The same also holds true in a lawyer's world.  Transaction documents, while not templates or boilerplate, do address common issues.  Most lawsuits involve collecting documents and reviewing them.  All matters can benefit from sound project management skills.  And so forth.

As my friend Jeff Carr, the GC of FMC Technologies, has described, in the practice of law, there are four buckets: process, content, advocacy and counseling.  It seems clear to me that there is a qualitative difference between process and content, on the one hand, and advocacy and counseling on the other.  Process and content seem perfectly situated for application of lean principles.  Consistent with the desire to reduce cost whenever possible in order to maximize profit margin, I think it valuable to look for opportunities to apply these principles.

The "knowledge workers are different" argument is a good one on many levels.  We want our surgeons to be good, not necessarily fast.  We want lawyers who get good results, not bad results efficiently.  But a lawyer who gets good results efficiently is more valuable than a lawyer who gets the same results inefficiently.  So the argument breaks down, or at least is inapplicable, at some level.

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on September 22, 2009 (boomark / email).