1. The ability to assign complex research tasks to the right attorneys and staff at the right time.
Implement an elevated approach to legal research where assigning attorneys collaborate to identify, prioritize, and allocate tasks based on complexity, criticality, and the capability and capacity of attorneys and staff. This smooth method replaces prevailing ad hoc approaches that generate friction every time junior associates get stuck and turn to staff for assistance or a more senior attorney takes time to give feedback and redirect their search strategies.
With this approach, assigning attorneys in a practice group consistently work together across client matters to gather the issues and legal questions raised in their cases. They partner in pairs or small groups to leverage their own expertise and the firm’s knowledge bank to give feedback on their respective lists with the aim of anticipating possible future directions and pointing to existing knowledge that targets the legal issue. After finalizing the research questions and compiling them in a place they can all access, they use a rubric to score their complexity and criticality.
Assigning attorneys, with visibility into the research needs of the entire group, prioritize and allocate tasks based on researchers’ current workloads (i.e. how much more they can do and still meet or exceed expectations on their most critical assignments), their familiarity with the topics, past performance, and the potential for cumulative gain (i.e. researching this question may make the junior associate more efficient when they go on to research the next question). The most complex and critical questions are prioritized most highly and an assigning attorney allocates a question to the most capable researcher that isn’t already at capacity. If there is an unexpected and urgent research need that has to be met by an attorney or staff member already at capacity, this approach is flexible enough to allow assigning attorneys to reallocate that researcher’s lower priority tasks to other capable attorneys and staff. Yet, how “unexpected” the request was and how to limit such occurrences in the future must be directly addressed.
In the interest of efficiently assigning tasks to minimize costly time overruns, assigning attorneys consistently work together to learn from past rounds. They review results to improve their ability to accurately identify and score research questions, give feedback to assignee attorneys and staff on their research performance, and collectively update their priors on assignees’ research strengths and weaknesses.
2. The ability to quantify how well individuals at your firm are doing at assigning or performing legal research and to use it to motivate more progress.
Leverage a scorecard based around what legal research success looks like at your firm so that all attorneys and staff have clear and manageable activities they can focus on. Update the scorecard to promote detailed and numbers-based performance conversations as opposed to the typical annual performance review focused on billable hours and overarching subjective feedback.
For assigning attorneys, the scorecard your firm uses can have units like:
- The number of “Surprise Tasks,” a measure of the number of assignments that arise outside of standard processes (described above).
- “Missed Tasks” are how many surprise tasks that could have been anticipated using the firm's existing knowledge base.
For assignee attorneys and staff, the scorecard could have units such as:
- The “Resolution Efficiency” of a researcher's tasks, considering the complexity and criticality of each assignment.
- A “Comprehensiveness” score that assesses the thoroughness of the deliverables produced from research activities.
The scorecard empowers you to integrate research efficiency into continuous performance evaluations. It’s imperative to recognize outstanding contributions when merited and coach attorneys on areas for further development when warranted. This real time targeted feedback approach not only motivates continuous improvement but also fosters a culture of excellence within the firm.
3. The command to measure the relationship between research performance and business outcomes and reward high performers with greater compensation.
Quantify the relationship between scorecard units and business metrics critical to your firm, such as realization rate, referrals, repeat business, cross-selling opportunities, and client satisfaction survey results. Measure the expected bottom-line impact of improvements in research efficiency, such as an associate progressing from a “2 to a 3” on an assignment. Link compensation to research performance to incentivize ongoing improvement.
One way to approach this is through a historical trend line chart. One line, for an individual attorney or staff member, a practice group, or the entire firm, can represent scorecard results over time. Another line on the same chart can represent a business outcome or an index of business outcomes for a matter, client, or sector. The firm can track how much one trend line changes with the other to reward the highest performing attorneys and staff working on the most impactful work to the business with the highest incentive pay awarded to their groups.
