Stop the pain
Thursday, March 4th, 2010This is the fourth of a series of posts about the compelling business case for quality assurance in law firms.
The third characteristic of successful quality assurance programs in law firms is that they focus on the greatest risks and attack the biggest quality problems.
We favor a practical approach. The best methods do not seek to perfect each and ever task, function, and process in the firm. Unlike methods such as ISO 9001, we do not recommend detailed documentation of each and every process. However, we do recommend intense focus on the ones with the greatest risks. In law firms, most quality assurance issues can be isolated to one or two critical weaknesses. Our approach focuses on these “significant few” issues, rather than every possible one. In particular, we recommend that a firm start by improving the processes that are currently causing the greatest problems. Focus on problems that annoy the clients the most, such as missed deadlines, errors in documents, and untimely or inaccurate bills. In our experience, most of these problems can be mitigated substantially, and sometimes even solved entirely, with relatively simple, low-cost improvements.
Norman Clark
