The most litigious countries in the world are the United States, Australia, Germany, and Sweden.* How much is spent on litigation in the US? As of 2016, the cost of litigation was $429 billion, or 2.3 percent of U.S. gross domestic.** With so much litigation worldwide, what role can Lean and Six Sigma play? We will see what law firms and a legal leadership center have to say and finish with a video short course on how to run a Lean law firm.

*Source

**Source

 

Lean Six Sigma Methodology Applied to Litigation Planning

 

A short article titled “Lean Six Sigma – Plan Ahead For Litigation Like Any Other Business Process” from the Edwards Law Firm discusses potential litigation wastes and improving and standardizing a variety of pre-litigation and litigation tasks, projects and processes.

The article lists what should be done before a litigation dispute to achieve litigation improvement.

You can access the article here.

 

Lean Six Sigma Methods Applied to Litigation Practice

 

In a comprehensive article titled “Applying Lean Six Sigma Methods to Litigation Practice” originally published in Practical Law, author Lisa J. Damon explores continuous improvement methodologies that can be applied to litigation practice.

The article includes:

  • Errors or variations in the litigation process that may be identified as waste
  • List of litigation tasks, projects and processes, including generating protocols that can be improved and standardized
  • Defining Client Value
  • Measuring Current Performance
  • Sample Process Map for Commercial Litigation
  • Analysis of Opportunities to Reduce Waste
  • An Example Case: Managing the Litigation Portfolio
  • Root Cause Analysis
  • Y as a Function of X Technique
  • Improvement and Control Processes
  • Legal Project Management
  • Legal Technology Solutions
  • Enhanced Strategies
  • Future Solutions
  • An Example Case: An Integrated Approach to Litigation Savings
  • Focus on Litigation Management
  • Implementing Change

You can read the excellent article here.

 

Lean Methodology and Legal Teams

 

An article titled “Lean law - Lean methodology and legal teams” from The Centre for Legal Leadership discusses the utility of Lean methodology applied to legal teams.

The article includes:

  • Four stage process to identifying opportunities to streamline and reduce waste
    • Identify opportunities for improvement
    • Plan for process improvements
    • Implementation
    • Sustaining change

The purpose of Lean thinking is to deliver better value to the client.

What are the factors for delivering better value to the client?

  • Deployment
  • Skills
  • Technology
  • Management
  • Culture
  • Understanding the Role

You can read the article here.

 

How to Run a Lean Law Firm

 

Larry Port, CEO of Rocket Matter, and co-author of The Lean Law Firm delivers a short course webinar  on running a Lean law firm.  The video is from LegalFuel and the course was approved by the Florida Bar.

NOTE: This video runs nearly 48 minutes, but the course matter ends at 36:30. The rest of the webinar is a discussion of the use of Rocket Matter software.

You can watch the video here.

 

 

 

 

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