Who are the engaging Office bloggers?

I have been involved with the UK Document Excellence Group (UKDEG) since its very beginning, 10 years ago!  I can’t believe we’ve been going for 10 years.  This not-for-profit organisation was set up by a group of by like-minded individuals working for law firms wrestling with document production issues.  UKDEG is run entirely by volunteers.  And at times, that team of volunteers has been very small. This year though, the team is lively and vibrant and active.  It’s fabulous.

So what does UKDEG do … first and foremost we share and enable others to share knowledge and experience around document production issues. Mostly this is done through user group meetings on different topics for example the role of the IT trainer, Metadata, Troubled Documents, Managing PDFs etc.  In the past 2 or 3 years, when our volunteer organising committee was particularly small, we collaborated with Tikit in the organisation and content of their Word Excellence Days.

However this year it is our 10th anniversary.  And we want to celebrate.  Currently the website is undergoing a rewrite. We are very grateful to the fabulous support that we have had from LexisNexis with our website, and I am getting really excited about how the new website will look in a few weeks time.  The logo has been modernised too – and I love it.  So clean, fresh, and modern. I hope you love it too.

Which brings me to my question for you … as we finalise the details on the new website, we would LOVE to update the list of useful resources.  Some of our members (check us out on LinkedIn) have put forward some great suggestions on websites to visit.  What about you? Who are the best Office or legal IT bloggers?  Leave a comment or Tweet us @UKDEG.

Thanks for your  input.

Fast forward to the law firm of the future

Last week along with nearly 300 legal technologists, I attended ILTA’s INSIGHT event in London. I have long been a fan and supporter of ILTA. When I worked in a law firm, I found the support forums extremely useful with helpful, friendly and positive exchange of ideas among peers.  A few years ago, I attended my first ILTA conference in Orlando, Florida. It was HUGE.  Absolutely nothing in the UK has anything to compare.  Something like 3000 attendees and such a diverse range of educational tracks from management skills to litigation support to end-user training to application development.

I attended the first foray of ILTA into the UK back in 2005. Since then, the event has grown in stature and confidence. I think there’s a general acceptance that last year’s event missed a beat. Wrong date, wrong location, wrong venue. However this year, back at The Grange, St Paul’s, the event was back in its stride.

For me, the keywords that throughout the whole event, were future, innovation, and creativity.

Global futurist Rohit Talwar of Fast Future presented the keynote speech sharing his key findings and actions arising from ILTA’s privately-commissioned Legal Technology Future Horizons project. He discussed the critical challenges that will face law firms, and specifically CIOs, in order for their business to survive and thrive. He made the case that the point of future insight thinking is to be prepared so that it is not a shock when it happens. Whatever “it”may be. Successful businesses are those that look ahead to the future and predict the challenges ahead, and what opportunities these present. He pointed out that often our most talented staff are ‘stuck’ doing ordinary work.  One of the keys to success is to master that ordinary or maintenance work so that our best talent has the opportunity to be creative and innovative. Truly a fascinating presentation to which more detail was added in the two follow up sessions after the keynote.

Another interesting presentation was from Adrian Nish, Head of Detica’s Cyber Threat Intelligence team at BAE Systems.  I encourage you to read the white paper The Shylock Malware.  The case presented is that cybersecurity is now a mainstream risk for businesses. Cyberspace remains hard to secure because the internet is borderless, anonymity is easy, attacks can be automated, and the infrastructure overall is weak. The threat for the legal sector is more likely to come from cyberspies than cyberactivists but make no mistake: law firms are targeted because we manage time-sensitive data and access to a law firm provides potential access to corporate intellectual property.

I then joined an interactive change management discussion led by Cliff Fluet and Penny Newman of Lewis Silkin LLP. What did we learn? That when dealing with change and changing behaviour, the technology is the least of our concerns. Process is part of the battle however the biggest challenge is dealing with the people. Lawyers, and therefore law firms, are by nature, skeptical and risk-focused. Whereas often for technologists, firefighting is more exciting than fire prevention. For change to be successful, there needs to be a clear purpose with clear goals as well as partner or senior management buy-in.

We then listened to  Caroline Ferguson of Allen Overy LLP and Stuart McRae of IBM argue whether Is Legal Anti-Social? In some ways, yes legal IS anti-social. Lawyers are risk-averse, work in hierarchical and siloed structures, like to have the answer, whose value is contacts and knowledge (and thus don’t always feel comfortable sharing). And yet, lawyers ARE social because relationships are key to what they do. Knowledge itself is not power, it is the application of that knowledge that is valuable.  The takeaway from that session was Caroline’s motto “Try and Fail but Don’t Fail to Try”.

Overall ILTA INSIGHT was a great event with lots of networking opportunities throughout the day, over lunch and drinks afterwards. If your firm is not a member, I encourage you to explore membership. It’s not that expensive and everybody at all levels in IT will benefit. Perhaps see you at ILTA INSIGHT next year?

If you attended ILTA INSIGHT this year, what was the highlight for you?

Three killer reasons to outsource your IT service desk

Whether or not to outsource the IT service desk is a hotly debated topic in law firms. In my career, I have managed a wide variety of service desks: decentralised, centralised, in-house and outsourced. I have also worked for a leading outsourced service desk provider. This experience, as well as conversations with Heads of IT and IT Directors, and various outsourced providers, gives me insight into what prompts a law firm to explore the outsourced model.

1.     Better manage spikes in volume

Every firm, no matter how robust your infrastructure, no matter how well planned your change initiatives, every firm will experience spikes in call volume to the service desk. How do you manage these currently?

A reputable outsourced provider has systems in place to effectively manage spikes in volume. Typically your firm will be serviced by a dedicated team of analysts with a contingency team in place who act as a backup in times of outages or other spikes call volume such as technology rollouts, office relocations, firm mergers etc.

The contingency team or backup pool is often a select group of very experienced analysts who have demonstrated their ability to handle users at all levels, from both the technical knowledge and interpersonal skill perspective. Outsourcing provides you and your firm with increased resilience and robustness.

2.       Give away the staffing headaches

In the survey that I did earlier this year among law firms, 14% of respondents had last sent their IT service desk on formal training more than two years ago. In today’s fast-moving technology world, two years without any formal training, be it technical or interpersonal, is a long time.

Often working on a service desk is a thankless task. Indeed one of the survey respondents cites “motivation in the face of thankless lawyers” as their biggest challenge. Staff need to be valued however they also need to be stimulated and interested to maintain their motivation and focus.

A service desk analyst working on one desk for one firm, learns all the ins and outs of that firm, and then that’s it, stagnation. Whereas an analyst working in a team of analysts working for a few different firms, has the opportunity to learn many more applications.

Often it can take years for an internal promotion opportunity to arise. This means that there is very little career progression available, leading to higher staff turnover on the service desk. High staff turnover leads to increased recruitment costs and the quality of service suffers while your new analysts come up to speed. Whereas the outsourced provider can offer specialist career progression from service desk analyst to team lead to account manager.

Giving away the staff retention headache, also hands over the pain of managing absences whether for training, sickness or vacation. Let the outsourced provider manage resourcing levels.

3.       Consistency in support 24×7

As remote access improves, users are more mobile, work over longer timeframes yet still want consistency in support. For those firms with international clients or offices world-wide, it is important that the end-user experiences the same level of support at 3am as at 3pm in every location. This is where, in my view, an in-house service desk just cannot compete with the outsourced model.

Using in-house staff to manage a 24×7 or 20×7 service desk is expensive. Dedicated overnight staff need to be managed – absence management can be an even bigger headache when you are faced with trying to organise sickness cover at short notice. Additionally because they are not called upon to use their knowledge as often as daytime staff, technical knowledge or skills can flounder when faced with an urgent client situation. Using an outsourced provider for your off-peak hours, you leverage the provider’s ability to use the same staff to service several clients, and therefore reduce costs.

So let’s hear from you, what would make you consider outsourcing the service desk?

If you do decide to explore the outsourcing model further, do read my earlier blog on the questions that will make your outsource provider squirm.

Vegas, Baby!

Did you watch the TV series the World’s Busiest?  I watched the episode about Shinjuku in Tokyo, billed as the world’s busiest station.  Never mind the crush of commuting on London Underground, that’s nothing compared to having a team of customer service agents physically pushing 4000 Tokyo commuters onto a train designed to carry 2000.  As for the busiest hotel – that’s in Las Vegas.  Guess where ILTA‘s next conference is.  Yes, Vegas Baby!

If you have not been to the ILTA (International Legal Technology Association) Conference and you work in legal technology, seriously you need to put this one on your agenda for next year.  This year’s event takes place 18-22 August at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas. Why such a huge venue, you might be wondering?  They NEED the space.

The first time that I attended, I was completely blown away by the size and scope of the conference: something like 3000 attendees at the four-day educational and networking event.  It was like going to a month’s worth of training days all rolled into one.  The range of topics (200+) is so broad: from The Evolving Role of the IT Trainer to How IT Contributes to the Success in a Merger & Acquisition to Using Your Service Desk KnowledgeBase More Effectively or Microsoft Exchange Server 2013.  The event is all about Inspiration, Education and Networking.

If you don’t know ILTA, do look them up.  ILTA is the leading education and peer-networking organisation for anybody that works in legal technology.  Although their members are predominantly in the US, there are many UK law firm members too.  The Annual Conference is the jewel in their crown but they also have informative egroups, regular regional meetings, webinars, seminars and they produce useful data and whitepapers on relevant topics.  For example, the 2012 Technology Purchasing Survey.

Later this year, on 14 November, ILTA comes to the UK for ILTA INSIGHT.  The UK event is not (yet) as big an event as the ILTA Annual Conference, however it is packed full of educational and networking opportunities.  The event is aimed at CIOs, Directors, Managers, and technologists. The 2013 event provides 15 educational sessions across three tracks:  Technical, Litigation Support and Knowledge Management.  What’s more, it’s FREE to register (just click here) for delegates from law firms and law departments.

However if you’re going to the big Vegas event, and it’s your first time, make time to plan ahead which sessions  to attend and which ones are the ‘must not miss’; take lots of business cards; follow up on the contacts that you make via LinkedIn, Twitter etc; use the hashtags specific to each session.  And check out Natalie Alesi’s top tips too.

Have fun and let us know what you enjoyed most.

#ILTA13