This month, we have been working through the 5 phases of the Practice Accelerator Framework, a step-by-step approach you can use to making your legal and business processes more efficient. Why? So you can be more profitable and productive, without spending as much time or effort!

Today, we are analyzing WHY you work the way you do.

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In the last couple of weeks, we’ve talked about identifying what your client wants or needs (Define) and given you two tools you can use to establish your baseline or current state (Measure) and spot the opportunities to improve it.

Now it’s time to start asking questions.

            What’s causing that delay, or that bottleneck, or that recurring problem?

            Why do you do a particular wasteful step or activity?

            Is it just because you’ve always done it that way?

            What would happen if you didn’t do it?

It’s tempting to stop with the first answer and focus on solving that. But you might only be addressing a symptom of the real problem. It’s a bit like treating a fever. If you don’t treat the underlying problem, you may find that fever comes back again and again. 

In the Analyze phase, you look for ROOT causes of your process problems, so you can eliminate them at the source.

The Five Why Technique

We recommend an easy tool to help you find the root causes of the wastes and frustrations you identify in your processes: 5-Whys.

You start by asking why the problem you have identified is happening. Seems simple enough, right?

But that first answer is unlikely to give you the real reason, the actual root cause, for the frustration you are experiencing. It’s likely just the superficial symptom.

Why do you have the chills? Because you have got a fever…but you know the fever itself isn’t the real problem, right?

When you get that first answer, you need to ask Why? again. And you have to keep asking until you don’t have any more answers.

Is it the Lawyer, the Client, or the Form?

Here’s an illustration that may help. Your firm is regularly filing clients’ personal injury claims at the very last minute, although the filings should be pretty routine.

The lawyers are frustrated and blame the clients for the last minute rush. But the practice group leader thinks It is because the lawyers are not managing their workload properly.

Use the 5-Why strategy to find the real root cause.

Why do our lawyers regularly file clients’ accident claims at the last minute?

Because they receive personal injury assessment questionnaires back from clients so late. 

Why does it take the clients so long?

Because clients put off completing the questionnaire despite the incentive of getting compensation for their injuries. 

Why do the clients procrastinate?

Because they need to print the questionnaire, fill it out, and then send it back by mail, or scan it and send it as an email.

Why is the form like that?

Because we set it up it that way 6 years ago.

Why?

Because back then, we didn’t have the ability to create fillable PDF forms that can be returned in a single click, and no one has bothered to go back and change it.

Why?

Because we didn’t know the form was the problem…

So what started as a problem caused by lawyers mismanaging their workloads, or possibly by clients procrastinating, turned out to be a problem caused by a cumbersome form.

Knowing this, you can now focus on improving the form.

If you had stopped at the first answer, that the lawyers were not managing their workloads properly, you would focus your efforts on the wrong issues.

Always dig deeper.

Join us next week for more on building a profitable and productive law practice. Sign up here to receive it in your inbox every week so you don’t miss it!

Thanks a lot everybody! See you next week.

P.S. Have you wondered what it would be like to get regular training in process improvement AND coaching in other key areas in your practice, like business development and pricing? That’s what you get inside the Practice Accelerator Membership. Learn more - there’s a link below.