Eastern Legal Systems was recently referenced – favorably, I might add – in a blog post by John Heckman in his legal technology blog “Does it Compute?” We are cited in the post as one of a handful of new “Premier-Level” consulting firms associated with LexisNexis, and John speculates that this is likely to be an emerging trend among law practice management consultants.
While this sounds impressive, and has led to a round of appreciative back-slapping internally, we are all caught a little short by the question, “But why does this matter for our clients and prospective clients, who are just looking for someone to fix their system?”
Let me attempt to answer that by way of a little background, and a story.
Eastern Legal Systems, LLC is the result of a collaborative effort by five separate consulting firms, covering a geographic span from New York to Virginia (hence the name “Eastern”; we are neither based in Mumbai, nor practice Transcendental Meditation, despite rumors to the contrary). We collectively represent – and are certified to support – virtually all of the mainstream legal software products used in the typical law firm today. These include:
- Time Matters
- PC Law
- Amicus Attorney
- Timeslips
- PracticeMaster
- Tabs 3
- Worldox
- Workshare
- Quickbooks
- Peachtree
All of us have been acquainted with each other for quite a few years, and have met each other from time to time at various software and other legal-oriented conferences. In the fall of 2009 we spent a great deal of time talking through this venture prior to our January 2010 launch, for precisely the reasons cited in John Heckman’s blog post.
It was not sufficient to simply position ourselves as “standing under the umbrella” – it was essential that the practice styles of everyone involved meshed well, and that we could learn to both collaborate well and trust each other. We entered this venture with a set of shared beliefs. Principal among them was that clients benefit most by working with consultants:
- Who bring to the engagement knowledge of more than a single software application;
- Who have demonstrated expertise implementing business software applications within a professional services environment.
- Who have “people skills” as well as technical skills, and can effectively listen to and interpret a client’s software requirements, translating them into a realistic plan of action
After nine months I am happy to report that this collaboration is happening quite effectively, and we have learned how to “pass the ball” among and between us very athletically.
And we have a lot of balls to pass! In addition to the LexisNexis products (Time Matters and PC Law) which all of us support, and which was the initial impetus for forming this new entity, each of us has long been certified in one or more of the other “specialties” listed among the products above.
And now the story, with small factual deviations from what actually transpired, in order to “embellish” the point a bit.
This past April one of my partners (Dana Riel) was vacationing in the south of France with her family, when she received a panic message and follow up email from a client in the Washington, D.C. area. As fate would have it, she just happened to be in Europe at the same time that the Icelandic volcano decided to reassert itself and snarl all transportation (air and ground) throughout Europe. Dana’s internet connection in the French village where she was holed up with her family was spotty, at best.
I happened to be vacationing in Morocco at the same time, and also happened to be reading email while vacationing (wireless Internet is available virtually everywhere in Morocco, despite what one might think). I picked up Dana’s email plea for help, and was able to dispatch one of our Timeslips consultants based in Blue Bell, PA to contact the client with the billing emergency in Washington, D.C.
Beyond impressing everyone with our cosmopolitan travel tastes, the point of the story is this: with a combination of collaboration tools (various Citrix products, VMWare, LoginMeIn, etc.) and an ample local presence in our regional market area, we can gracefully backstop each other in various “overload” situations, providing either remote or on-site assistance, . Expertise in the legal software products we support doesn’t happen overnight, and ramping up new staff is both a time-consuming and expensive endeavor for a small firm. Leveraging the available resources of five very experienced, very active consulting organizations allows each of us to individually “ratchet up” the types of services that we can offer to our clients, including such things as 800# telephone support via a “pooled” call center, annual software maintenance contracts, and similar value-added services.
This blog itself is an example of leveraged resources. No one of us would have the time, the resources, or the expertise to create and maintain an ambitious blog posting schedule that encompasses a wide range of legal software products. By pooling our resources it becomes a feasible objective, and we’ve already found our client base benefits from the knowledge we are able to collectively provide. This couldn’t – and wouldn’t – happen working only within our own firms.
So, to come full circle to John Heckman’s blog post, we became a “Premier-Level” consulting entity as a result of careful planning, a willingness to mesh our practice styles, and an implicit trust in each other based on our experience with each other over the years. By doing so, we have significantly expanded the scope of services to our individual client bases, provided faster and more effective support when needed, and transferred a higher level of technical and product knowledge to clients than would otherwise have been possible before our collaboration.
And after all, isn’t that what a client is ultimately looking for when they need someone to fix their problem?
So take advantage of our deep knowledge of legal software, accounting, and training to get the right products for your firm, correctly implemented and configured. Give us a call at 1-877-ELS-0555 if you would like to learn more about how we can help you fix your problem.
Jack Schaller has been active in the field of law office technology since 1989, and has worked with a variety of commercial accounting, legal billing, practice management, and document management software products during his twenty plus years in the software consulting field. During his tenure as a software consultant he has garnered many sales and service awards for his work with legal software products. Jack is a frequent presenter at legal conferences and seminars, and is a regular contributor to TechnoLawyer and other technology publications.