Episode 32 - Part 2 of Getting Lean with Ken Grady 

The hosts continue talking about Getting Lean by discussing how Lean Law relates to your client management and development. Ken Grady, Lean Law Evangelist at SeyfarthShaw, discusses different pricing models for legal services and the price sensitivity that is creeping into the legal profession.  Part of the way that we can provide quality of service at a lower fee is by getting Lean in our practice so that what used to take you 2 hours now takes you 30 minutes. That allows you to: 
 
• Use the extra 90 minutes to do something else that is profitable
• Pass the savings onto the client which keeps them happy 
• Be more flexible in how you charge clients 
 
The Good News that Ken is helping us spread is that “Getting Lean” only requires basic tools: paper, pencil, post it notes, and some tape. It’s not a resource heavy activity. The basic method is to map out the sequence of things you do to fulfill a particular process – say preparing a complaint. Then create a checklist of those things to see which can be eliminated or consolidated. It also allows you to streamline the process by not having to cycle through the preliminary steps that are common to each complaint. This methodology Ken says can be applied to every process in your law firm to make you more efficient and more profitable. 
 
Ken’s evangelism on this topic extends to law schools arguing that law students should be trained in Lean Law before they graduate so that they can bring these practices into small firms. Surprisingly, Ken does say that solo or small firms should be cautious about investing in expensive and fancy software as the rate of return on that investment is slow and prohibitive to a small firm. In our discussion Ken recommends what software and programs solos and small firms should make parts of their practice to make them more Lean. 
 
In concluding our two part discussion with Ken Grady he tells our listeners to focus on spending time on the things in your practice that make you money and bring satisfaction to your clients. We can begin to do that by cutting out those inefficiencies and redundancies that bog down the various processes we all engage in.