Friday Cocktail Leadership

Good morning or evening (or both) and Happy February to all.

A special hello to Autonomy's Mr. Hornsby who today is on a course all about safe driving (see you in March). Also a shout out to congratulate Mr. Black of IBM, to wish Jeff and Nat luck in the coming last few weeks of silence before the new baby, to wish Jabba a good trip, and to say Happy New Year to our friends at King & Wood.

Life is spinning fast here at Janders Dean HQ as 2011 gets into full swing. We've been busy working with a number of existing and new clients in both the UK and Australia, and also partnering up with a number of our old friends on some cracking engagements including the guru himself Mr Craig of Baker Robbins and Navigant fame (stand by for news from Tribeca), and the immaculate Mr Mehdi of Ashurst and Clifford Chance fame.

Our time with David of course has led not only to a great new entry into the team at an Australian government regulator's office, but also to him decoding the New York City Starbucks code to replicate the Australian "flat white". For those Australians visiting the US and missing the joys of a good flat white, ensure you ask for a DSNFL (double shot no foam latte) in an "unadvertised" short cup in order to get your fix.

For those who could not make it to New York for Legal Tech, or for those who drowned in the social media flood of tweets, blogs and status updates, there is a solid summary of product and vendor specific news items from the show by Sean Doherty of Law.com here. All in all an adequate show this year, with no real major "market moving" announcements, and once again being dominated by eDiscovery.

Analysis of the show from Inside Legal suggests that 53% of all sessions and tracks contained an eDiscovery related topic and 73% of all educational sessions were sponsored by eDiscovery or litigation support vendors. Moreover, in 2010 there were 96 LegalTech vendors with an eDiscovery/litigation support solution slant compared to 103 vendors in 2011 (representing 43% of all exhibitors).

Many of you would have seen our story here on Allen & Overy. More news is coming in regarding the move to transfer their support staff to Belfast. The Belfast Telegraph has revealed that Invest NI backed the firm with investment incentives of £2.5 million. See more here.

For some scary reading this weekend, we recommend this article regarding emails found within JP Morgan which all up highlights the power of e-discovery and the need for corporate litigation readiness strategies.

For some light weekend reading, we recommend this article from Harvard Business Review on the "Hire for Attitude/Train for Skill" approach - reminds us of a conversation in London held during a long summer's evening in 2010 in the garden of Janders Dean HQ with current Queensland Minter Ellison CEO, past Mallesons alumni, and all round hero to Janders Dean, Mr Andrew Todd. The "hire for intelligence and attitude, train for skills and experience" is a mantra that we see too often ignored or forgotten even by the most senior of managers during the recruitment phase. Thanks to Mallesons' Michelle Mahoney for bringing this one to our attention during our morning TweetDeck review.

A few bits to get you through the weekend. Check out Battle at Kruger on YouTube (thanks to Dean and the team at BLG for this one). Annoying Fruit (thanks to the Innocent team as always). The new Becasse begins.

We'll see you in London next week and Sydney the week after. Looking forward to seeing everyone at the first of the 2011 Janders Dean "Food for Thought" Breakfast Briefings on the 17th of this month in Sydney (with special thanks to BTP Australia and Lawyers Weekly), and also at the cocktail evening that same week (with special thanks to Michael Boot for pulling it together). Also looking forward to catching up with old friends and new across Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne on this latest roadshow.

Enjoy the weekend team.

Janders Dean.

Integreon Appoints Richard Susskind to Advisory Board

Legal outsource leaders Integreon have announced that Professor Richard Susskind will chair a new client advisory board. Full story courtesy of Legal Week here.

Janders Dean "Food for Thought" Breakfast Briefing - Sydney 17th February 2011

Following on from the successful senior management events in 2010, the first of the 2011 Janders Dean "Food for Thought" Breakfast Briefings will be held in Sydney on 17th February in association with BTP Australia and Lawyers Weekly magazine.

Hosted at the award winning Becasse Restaurant in Sydney, this panel session will bring together thought leaders from some of the countries leading law firms to discuss the challenges connected to managing a professional service environment.

Particular attention will be placed on improving operational efficiency and firm profitability by recognising and leveraging opportunities to enhance business processes, while also focusing on extracting the most from existing information assets, and leveraging newly emerging technologies.

Invited attendees will be given the opportunity to hear exclusively from our panel including Michael Boot (CEO of Gilbert+Tobin), Gerard Neiditsch (CIO of Mallesons) and Janet Young (COO of Freehills) who will be discussing previous project successes, future efficiency focused initiatives, and trends across an industry known traditionally for being slow to change support models or innovate.

The event will be facilitated jointly by Janders Dean Director Justin North and BTP Australia's Managing Director Ian Dunn. We are pleased to announce that the event is now fully subscribed with over 40 senior management from across the country's law firms attending.

Please contact info@jandersdean.com if you are interested in future events in the 2011 Janders Dean "Food for Thought" Breakfast Briefing series.

CMS Cameron McKenna - Support Staff Outsourcing

The CMS Cameron McKenna news from late 2010 regarding the firm's massive support staff outsourcing deal to Integreon continues to be the most popular story for reader comments on both The Lawyer and Legal Week sites.

It is estimated that 9% of staff will face redundancy, with a further 21% facing relocation requests (to either Bristol or India). In total, the move impacts 363 support staff from the firm (half of which are located in the firm's current London headquarters).

As reported by The Lawyer magazine on 25th January, Duncan Weston (Managing Partner) outlined some of the reasons behind the move in a recent note to all staff “The changing legal landscape requires constant innovation in the way we do business. This new approach to our business services will give us the ability to focus on our clients and provide a more sophisticated service.

“It creates greater flexibility to scale support services based on demand, and gives us access to a more advanced technology with the benefits of future investment by Integreon towards building a unified business model. It’ll also allow us the option to integrate our approach to business services across our international businesses.”

With numerous emotive comments being posted by readers on the above mentioned article, at the very least it indicates that the CMS Cameron McKenna support staff are reading the legal industry press.

Stripping the emotive comments aside, as one reader states "They're doing this to cut costs aren't they and if that means cutting some of the flab out of the headcount so be it. This is a business after all".

As per our recent item on Allen & Overy and Herbert Smith moving elements of their support functions out of London and across to Belfast, how long before firms in other high cost regions in the US and Australia look to do the same?

Allen & Overy - Support Function Savings (Belfast Move)

In addition to the firm announcing a multi-million pound deal with Savvis (where the management of the European and UK networks and data has been outsourced) aimed at saving in excess of 10% on the firm's IT costs (see story here), further details were publicly provided overnight on magic circle firm Allen & Overy's move to shift professional support personnel from the firm's London headquarters to a central hub in Belfast.

An initial setup up of 180 staff will move across, with as many as 250 support personnel (and the possibility also of 50 fee earning personnel) being based in the Irish city by 2014.

The Allen & Overy Belfast hub will see teams from the Human Resources, Information Technology, Finance/Accounts, Business Services and Library departments all located in a single site aimed at generating a cost saving to the partnership of up to £10 million over the initial five years.

If this approach of Allen & Overy follows the offshoring "regional hub" approach that was led by global giant Baker & McKenzie a number of years ago, Allen & Overy's Belfast hub will look to provide support to both the UK and EU located offices of the firm in the future.

The differences here between the Allen & Overy approach and other recent press items around legal support outsourcing and/or offshoring, is that the firm's partnership specifically refer to the fact that this move is "onshoring" (e.g. the hub site is within the UK), and that the Belfast office is an Allen & Overy office - a clear indication that the provision of a quality support service is the leading driver - rather than an overly aggressive cost reduction position being the driver.

Allen & Overy are not alone in reaching across to Belfast - Herbert Smith also announced a similar deal at the height of the PIGS financial concerns late last year, and are currently in implementation mode. What is unique about the Herbert Smith move is that their Belfast move is being led by the dispute resolution/litigation support practice. Will we see this as an area where low cost "staff attorneys" undertake low cost first level reviews?

We expect to see Asia based equivalent hubs grow in popularity over the coming 3-5 years to complete the "follow the sun" 24/7 support jigsaw for truly global firms, which may well see the support functions in areas such as Australia lose out to cheaper cost bases (particularly given the unattractive high rate of the Australian dollar) in other regions such as Singapore, Manila (where Baker & McKenzie already have one of their global hubs), and even New Zealand.

DLA Phillips Fox Formally Merge With DLA Piper (Announcement Expected From World Economic Forum Davos)

Happy New Year from Janders Dean.

The first major merger announcement for 2011 has been reported (some say earlier than the firm would have liked) by Mark Kleinman of Sky News noting that Australian firm DLA Phillips Fox will formally merge with its global partner firm DLA. The new global entity will be known as DLA Piper, and will now be positioned as the biggest business law firm in the world.

A formal announcement is expected from Sir Nigel Knowles today from the World Economic Forum in Davos. Today's news follows the 2010 trend where we witnessed the arrival of both Allen & Overy and Norton Rose in Australia. So who will be next?

Full posting here.

SharePoint DMS in Legal

After a few "yeah but, no but, yeah but" conversations being witnessed on various LinkedIn forums, it looks like the competition is now really hotting up with a number of announcements around MS SharePoint being (finally) used (really, actually used) in private practice and in-house legal departments as a DMS platform.

This just in from the team at ClearPeople in London:

"ClearPeople is proud to announce the deployment and go-live of their SharePoint-based Document Management Solution (DMS) for law firm Winckworth Sherwood LLP. The DMS, which went into production in July 2010 for one of the firm’s departments, combines SharePoint with MacroView DMF and Winckworths’ own bespoke WS-eOffice system. The remaining departments within the London office are being transitioned to the new solution over the next three to six months."

Expect to hear much more in the coming weeks and months around the MacroView product and the primary competitors - particularly out of the UK....and no, this is not necessarily the bells of doom for Autonomy or others in the market. Everyone is different, everyone has different needs, and we see room for both of these platforms. See here for our thought leadership on application selection.