If you’ve read my blog at all, you probably know me as the “lean training” guy. I’m the one who wants to support maximum efficiency at law firms through training programs that function lean-and-mean. The more efficiently an attorney can work, the more he or she can get done, ultimately delivering more high-quality work to the client.

Efficiency. Quality. Increased Productivity.

Those three words, when combined in actionable and repeatable firm-wide systems, can have a powerful effect on a law firm’s bottom line. Therefore, the lean training that Savvy provides to law firms enhances attorney productivity by leveraging advanced technologies to maximize efficiency.

Which brings me to a company called Microsystems. One of the biggest drags on a law firm’s productivity is in document creation and management, and that is the Microsystems sweet spot. They create the technologies that make document creation, development and delivery as efficient as possible.

For example…

Contract Companion by Microsystems

Documents are at the core of a law firm’s daily operations. They demonstrate the firm’s capabilities, communicate its value, and reflect the integrity and professionalism of its work. And yet, alarmingly, one in three legal professionals admits to skipping proofreading tasks. Those attorneys who do take the time to thoroughly edit their documents find that they’re losing precious time for client relationship-building or case research.

For example, Johan Hübner, Partner with Swedish Law Firm of the Year, Delphi, says, “Ensuring the right level of quality-control over contracts usually requires two proofreads – one for the actual content, and another for issues of formatting. The second one is tedious, people don’t like it doing it, but it’s also where errors can occur because of the time pressure on client delivery.

Microsystems took a look at this painful process and came up with an artificial intelligence tool called Contract Companion, which reduces proofreading time by up to 90%.

Delphi adopted Contract Companion and Hübner reports, “The time savings vary, of course, depending on the document’s length, but it’s possible for a proofread that was once several hours to take as little as 15 minutes… so Contract Companion really improves my stress levels as well as the firm’s efficiency.”

There’s that wonderful word again! Efficiency! When law firms work efficiently, they maximize technologies, time and talent delivering positive bottom-line impact.

Likewise, law firm Clifford Chance adopted Contract Companion and Applications Director Anthony Vigneron reported: “The latest statistics we have show that fee earners are saving around an hour every week, solely in proofreading time. When you multiply that by the number of people who are still working with hourly rates, it’s quite a significant number for us. And it isn’t just an internal saving. It has an impact on the turnaround time for sending these documents to clients.”

Other Microsystems Products

• 3BClean: This product secures and protects documents when transmitted by desktop, phone and tablet by cleaning documents of metadata at the server level. By providing centralized control and having a single point of administration, IT professionals can easily secure the firm’s documents across multiple platforms.
• DocXTools: The delivery of legal documents is an intricate, collaborative process. On complex matters with multiple document contributors, tight deadlines and reduced support staff, the result is an unstable document with inconsistent formatting and style. DocXTools ensures consistent document standards and quality.

Training for Maximum Efficiency

As with any new technology, however, law firms must commit to training their attorneys, otherwise you’re missing an important piece of the “efficiency equation.” If no one knows how to use the fancy new tool, they can hardly apply it to their work efficiently, dragging down productivity.

Luckily, the Microsystems tools are very user-friendly, requiring less training than some other ultra-efficient tools that you may roll out. If you’re purchasing a Microsystems product, you can plan on some rollout training, ongoing new hire training and you should keep training materials in your learning management system (LMS) for easy access from any desktop in the firm.

Of course, Savvy Training & Consulting is a certified training partner for Microsystems products. We can help you launch the tool into your firm and then help you to create learning paths for new hires.

Would you like to learn how Microsystems’ products can make your firm more efficient? Contact me today at Doug@SavvyTraining.com, or 303-800-5408.