If I had to take an educated guess the one area that we have the hardest problem convincing law firm owners on is the matter of quality assurance. In other words accountability for standards set and how you measure whether or not the standards (or goals were met). Until you take this next leap, that of becoming a quality assurance law firm auditor, you will never know if any plan you have succeeds.

Admittedly Dave had to hit me on the head a few times as he is a former IBM auditor, ISO auditor, etc. etc. etc. My first thought was that I didn't see the return on the bottom line profit. However even I can be convinced and over the course of the years started putting in QA in all areas of the law firm.

I have been known to measure the productivity in work product generation. For example a law firm who says we will be an assertive law firm in litigation. The first thing I did was measure the amount of time between pleading due dates. For example, is discovery truly answered on time or is it continued and how many times. What I found was that the turth of the matter is litigation was not assertive, was not proactive but reactive, and that the length of time from cases start to finish was not based on court delays but on firm delays.

I then came in and started factoring in cost per hour for the delays. In other words the longer the case dragged out the more time put on it. I was a bit taken back on the high dollar cost factor on some cases.

The bottom line is that we put in QA metrics. We had a litigation team meeting and told them how we were going to track effectiveness. Each month we did a report on all litigation cases. The litigation lead attorney then put in some parameters that allowed the firm to fast track cases. Three things happened: (1) The actual on-going active trial case load reduced because cases were moving faster (2) We reorganized and actually reduced the section by one support person; and (3) The average fee increased.

There is not one area of your law firm you can not measure from employee productivity to cost expense analysis. All that it takes is a comimtment to define the area to be measured, put in a measuring stick, let everyone know, and hold people accountability. QA is the best kept secret in law firms that are successful in the 21st Century.