Legal Process Improvement
Industry
Achieve your growth aspirations with our transformation process
WHAT IS LEGAL PROCESS IMPROVEMENT?
Legal Process Improvement (LPI) is a structured methodology for optimising legal and business processes, so that legal professional and legal organisations can deliver high-quality, cost-effective services in less time and with less effort.
The term Legal Process Improvement was first coined after the Global Financial Crisis, as law firms and in house teams were under significant pressure to change their approach and the fundamental cost model of legal services.
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Firms were going out of business as clients expanded inhouse teams or demanded alternative costing models and better services. Becoming more efficient, improving the service & reducing costs became paramount to the survival of law firms, and this when the legal industry looked to other areas for inspiration on how to achieve this and came across Lean Six Sigma.
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Lean and Six Sigma are methodologies used to improve quality, reduce resource requirement and deliver more in less time. They have been extensively tried, tested and have demonstrated incredible improvements in sectors ranging from manufacturing (their birth place) to hospitals and offices. Using Lean Six Sigma as inspiration and adapting the methodology to be more effective in the legal industry led to the birth of Legal Process Improvement.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?
Proven benefits of legal process improvement
LPI projects in law firms typically concentrates around 3 main areas; time saving for fee earners, cost reduction for support functions & improved service for customers.
Reduce Cost
Reduce resource requirements and support function costs
Save Time
Up to 48% of fee earners time can taken up carrying out "non-value adding" tasks
Customer Satisfaction
Reduce the customer matter lead time and improve quality
The FlowPlus™ transformation process
Implementing LPI successfully can be a daunting prospect
FlowPlus have created a transformation process designed to achieve immediate improvement while also developing your internal skills.
1. DISCOVERY
The first step is a discovery meeting, where our consultants will work with your firm management to get a high level holistic understanding of your firm. The improvement potential of departments will be estimated and a Pilot area chosen for a full assessment.
Gain all the insight in one, concise, step by step assessment report.
01
LPI Maturity Audit
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An audit consisting of 130 questions that will benchmark your firms maturity in 18 categories including Efficiency, System, Client Feedback & many more.
02
Data Analysis
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Collection and analysis of data including time recording, customer feedback, demand and profitability.
Interviews and observations with a range of department heads, fee earners and support staff to understand the working practices at your firms.
03
Gap to potential analysis
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Quantify the gap between your current state and desired state, understand what changes are needed to become best-in-class law firm
04
Implementation roadmap
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Convert improvement actions into projects, and produce a bespoke improvement roadmap aligned with your company strategy.
2. ASSESSMENT
The Assessment phase investigates the unique solutions required to close your gap-to-potential and become a best-in-class law firm. Creating a bespoke implementation roadmap aligned with your strategic aims, we provide you with a practical step by step approach needed to get tangible results fast.
05
Customer Feedback Analysis
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Using AI and advanced machine learning techniques, we will identify what your customers care most about and innovative ways of exceeding their expections.
06
Process Mapping​
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Great processes create great results, Simple but not easy.
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We review your current processes to gain an in-depth understanding of existing pain-points, where information sharing and communication breaks down, waste steps that can be eliminated/automated.
07
Time Studies​
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Quantify the efficiency of your resources with the latest technology. Find improvement opportunities by studying a day in the life of your fee-earners.
08
Flow Analysis
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There is often huge untapped potential when improving the flow of your system. Understand how to balance work and minimise matter lead time with our flow analysis tool.
09
Pricing Analysis
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Through the analysis of quotation history we will evaluate your pricing strategy and highlight areas to improve profitibility and quote acceptance rate.
3. Holistic Improvements
Implementation is what we pride ourselves on. We don't write reports and leave the hard part to you...We roll up our sleeves and make the changes needed.
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Having identified a variety of improvement opportunities in the pilot areas, the changes which will have a positive impact to all departments in the firm (i.e the holistic improvements) will be implemented first.
Implement new case management system
Improve client onboarding process
4. Process Improvement
Once the holistic improvements are implemented, process improvements to individual processes will be implemented. Our consultants will work with members from each department, improving each process within it.
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Workflow Improvements
Pricing Strategy
Task Automation
Work Balancing
CASE STUDIES
A selection of success stories.
Boutique London Firm
Reduced matter waiting time in property department by 43%
Increase in fee earner productivity by 24%
High Street Law Firm
Improved productivity accross departments by 38%.
Implemented new case management system
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Increased quote acceptance rate by 17%
TESTIMONIALS
Legal process improvement was new to us when we approached FlowPlus and they guided us through their transformation plan leading to really impressive results.
David Hall -
Managing Partner
Improvements to our processes had been a strategic target for the last few years ahead of a merger, and the FlowPlus teams involvement was instrumental in us reaching our business targets. They stayed with us throughout the full transformation, from working out what improvements were needed, implementing new systems and helping us verify the results.
Edward Bullin -
MD
The best part of the FlowPlus transformation is their emphasis on leaving us with the skills required to continue making improvements.
Laura Park -
Partner