In a post revisiting his earlier writings on Six Sigma, Rees Morrison reminds us that "Many people think of Six Sigma as a method to root out defects but it is also a technique for project management." Law Department Management: Six Sigma projects in various legal departments.
He also mentions a white paper on "Six Sigma, The Discovery Process In The Corporate Legal Department" that was presented to the ABA Litigation Section earlier this year. Although I'm a member of the ABA Section of Litigation, I missed this white paper, so I logged into my ABA account and found it under the program materials for the 2009 Section Annual Conference (Atlanta, GA). Actually there were two papers on Six Sigma in the program materials:
I linked to the papers, but I believe that you have to be a member of the ABA Litigation Section to access them.
The first is by Brandon Williams, an Associate at Alston & Bird's Atlanta office. He sets the tone by pointing out that in response to the recession many corporations have implemented Six Sigma to realize cost savings through greater efficiency. Mr. Williams then provides a brief history of Six Sigma and notes that law firms have been resistant to the Six Sigma, believing that the process, which has its roots in manufacturing, does not translate well to the practice of law. He points out that whether or not such resistance has merit, it behooves law firms to understand Six Sigma, at least so they can speak the same language as their current and potential corporate clients.
The remainder of the paper focuses on one area of legal practice that Mr. Williams feels firms can effectively implement Six Sigma: electronic discovery. Six Sigma is a good fit for e-discovery processes, he argues, because the work is repetitive and, therefore, better lends itself to absolute, standardized guidelines than other areas of legal work.
After a high-level summary of the six sigma process, Mr. Williams provides a real-world e-discovery scenario. His fact pattern involves 50 GB of data, which he estimates as comprising 2.5 million e-mail messages and other electronic documents. He explains that:
Review of 2.5 million documents for responsiveness and privilege, achieving "Six Sigma" would only result in 8.5 "defects" or errors in review of those 2.5 million documents.
He then very briefly summarizes Six Sigma's methods for attempting to achieve such results and the organizational roles required for effective implementation of Six Sigma in an organization (executive leadership, champions, master black belts, black belts, and green belts).
While this paper is mostly a rehashing of introductory information on Six Sigma readily found in other sources, it was likely new to most members of his audience. Tying Six Sigma to e-discovery and providing a scenario that puts it into context for the attorney reader is a helpful step to raising awareness in the legal profession for better project management, quality control, and measurement of legal processes.
One statement in the paper, however, should raise the eye-brows of anyone who does a lot of e-discovery work. For his "real life" example, he gives the average billing rate as $450/hour per attorney for the document review. Are you kidding me?! If that is what Alston & Bird is billing its clients for document review, their clients need to shop around. In the current economic environment, licensed U.S. contract attorneys can be had for under $100/hour, even after the staffing agency and law firm mark ups. Perhaps half that in some areas of the country.
Still, his main point, that minimizing mistakes and do-overs in document review can save the corporate client some real money and law firms should look into Six Sigma methods to help create and improve document review processes.
I would have been interested to learn in the paper how Mr. William's firm has adopted Six Sigma to its e-discovery work and how effective it has been for the firm (how close to 99.9997% accuracy have they been able to achieve in their document reviews). I visited the Alston & Bird Web site to see whether it advertises the implementation of Six Sigma in the firm's legal work. A quick site search didn't turn anything up.
I'll review the other paper and look at other ABA materials discussing Six Sigma over the next few days.
Great post Paul! I've become a fan of project management techniques and Six Sigma and began applying them to our processes here at Morris James LLP several months ago. It's refreshing to see growing recognition of their importance in competently managing eDiscovery by controlling costs and reducing risk.
Thanks Chris. I'd love to learn more about how Morris James is implementing Six Sigma.