Talk Like A Pirate Day

Ahoy! Tomorrow, September 19th, is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. The official website at www.talklikeapirate.com has the history of this great holiday as well as all resources you need to plan for an celebrate the day.

Pirate fever is clearly sweeping the nation this year and has already been covered by CNN , The Philadelphia Inquirer and Reuters, just to name a few. For the Pirate who also likes to give back to the community, there’s the Pirates for Parkinson’s walk happening all over the world for the first time this year or the Pirate Invasion event benefiting Feed the Mind.

If you’re concerned that Talk Like A Pirate Day conflicts with the 2nd day of Rosh Hashanah this year there’s a great guide on how to incorporate the two holidays here.

Twitter users should keep an eye on the hashtag #tlapd09 for all the days happenings. Don’t forget to keep checking on Sunday and Monday since a good pirate party tends to last a few days!

Not ready for tomorrow?  Don’t worry, here are a couple of videos that will get you pirate talkin’ in no time:

I hope everyone takes some time to enjoy the holiday tomorrow. Feel free to share your stories in the comments section.

Off ye go, now!

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Event Code: EXEC6
Date/Time: 8/26/09 3:30 pm

Presenter:
Kermit Wallace

Key Points:

  • It’s important to represent yourself, your position, and your firm effectively when working with clients and vendors. You will need to work hard to be perceived as a business person and not “just” an IT person.
  • Communicate the case for IT investments within your firm to:
    • the partnership
    • CFO
    • Executive Director
  • Define your and your department’s communications style and standards
  • Communicate appropriately whether on the phone, in person or via e-mail
    • What would you do/say in front of your Grandmother?
  • Understand who you are and your role in the firm before interacting
  • Be perceived as a business person, not just an IT person
  • Does IT get a seat at the table?
    • Maybe, it depends on who that person is
  • FACTS:
    • Appearance matters
    • Punctuality matters
    • Firm  culture dictates what is acceptable
  • Ask yourself; Is what you want to do in-line with what the business wants to do?
    • You need to understand the points items in order to be able to answer this question
  • Communicating Up; When you ask to spend money you’re asking that person to essentially spend their money.
    • Do you understand the value of the investment?
    • Can you articulate this value as it relates to the the firm’s values and/or business plan
  • What is your style?
    • Is there a firm style for communications?
      • Paper Memos
      • E-Mail Announcements
      • Voicemail
      • Phone ‘blasts’
      • Lobby cards
      • Posters (project specific)
  • What’s appropriate is “restricted” by who you are:
    • There are some things that your managing partner can say that you can’t
    • Don’t speak on behalf of anyone else
  • Is what you’re saying approrpiate for your firm and is it appropriate for your position
  • Professionalism at all times is key
    • Impacts the “seat at the table” question
  • Understanding the firm business model is key to growing beyond being the “IT Person”
  • Know you audience & learn the best way to communicate
  • Some things are better left unsaid
  • Use the experts to help you confirm to & develop a stlye of work
    • Marketing!!!
  • Act the part
    • There are people at the firm that you can use as a model to guide what’s appropriate
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Event Code: FIN4
Date/Time: 8/24/09 4:00 pm

Presenter(s):
Ceyda Tocsoy, Torys LLP
David Lindley, Winston & Strawn LLP
Mary Pat Poteet, DLA Piper

Preliminary Considerations:

  • Support from the top, you must have buy-in from above.
  • Build a business case for why these services are needed and why they should be billed.
  • Don’t allow attorneys to write off these fees. Individual firm culture will come into play, you need to show the partners the value proposition and why it shouldn’t be written off.
  • Need to do your research: “What is being left on the table?” vs. “What would it cost if it were sent out to a vendor?”
  • You need to understand your billing system and what needs to be done to interface with the system. You need to make it as easy as possible for the accounting department.
  • You need to ensure you get to see the pre-bills/bills to ensure what you envisioned is what is being billed to the client.
  • What do you offer in-house? You should clearly documents your in-house capabilities and define when and what to outsource.
  • Market Analysis; What are other vendors changing for same or similar services?
  • The more insight you can get into your litigation support and IT costs for a matter the better you will be able to structure your flat fee arrangements. Build negotiation points into the flat fee arrangements to handle one-offs.
  • In order to do flat fee billing successfully you need to fully understand what all in-house tasks cost. This can only be accomplished by tracking your work over a period of time.
  • In-House fees for services are not designed to replace the use for vendors.
  • Staff your department to the mid-line, never to the valleys or peaks. Then if you can handle the large case that comes in then do it, otherwise you send it out. This can be very is successful if your rates are close/similar to what the vendor would charge the client.
  • Decide what you will bill for? Disk Space? Hosting? Web Hosting?

Billing:

  • Define the roles and assign hourly wages; Litigation Support Manager, Litigation Support Analyst, IT Technician
  • Identify and define tasks. Assign disbursement codes/cost codes.
  • The best approach is a hybrid approach.
  • You need to make friends with the people entering these costs into the system and that are responsible for making sure these items make it on the bills.
  • Aim to break even, it justifies the existence of the group/department.
  • There’s nothing ethical that requires non-attorney names to appear on the bill, so find a creative way to bill these items to avoid questions about non-attorney names.

Services:

  • Outline and define the services for your attorneys. Attorney understanding means there’s a better chance of making it on to the bill. At a minimum, this should be outlined in the engagement letter. For it to be successful, you need to find a balance between what you recover and what is included in the price of the overall service.
  • When faced with “We don’t pay for litigation support services” your response should be “Ok, here’s a list of vendors that can do the work for you”.

Analysis:

  • Know the market and adjust your fees accordingly. You will need to do this constantly as this industry is always changing.
  • Use disbursement codes to track and report.
  • Identify trends and growing services.
  • Negotiate better prices from your vendors and use preferred vendor lists.
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Who I Am:

I am the Chief Technology Officer for an AMLaw 200 law firm.  As stated on the About Page, this is a personal blog and represents only my opinions and not those of my employer. My decision to enter the field of Information Technology came as the result of a 6 week “battle royal” between myself and the IT department at a past employer. Maybe some day I will blog about it.

My first paying IT job just happened to be in a legal environment. I quickly learned that working with attorneys was a sort of specialty and have been working with them ever since. Like many people, I started on a Help Desk and then moved to hardware support and so on. My stronger skills are in application architecture and development but I do seem to know enough about everything to be dangerous.

Why Am I Blogging:

By starting this blog I’m hoping to be able to share and collaborate what I think are good ideas and practical solutions in IT with a slant towards the legal industry. We all have ideas that either don’t work in our current environments or can be expanded in ways that are not applicable and I’m hoping to use this blog as a mechanism for exploring these topics as well.

It is my hope that there will be something here for everyone at some point but it’s too soon to see if that will be true or not. Where this really goes is yet to be seen.

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