The Agile Lawyers Association is for anyone interested in helping lawyers become more efficient. The name comes from the shared belief that lawyers can benefit from using the principles, practices and processes developed by "Agile" software developers. Why Agile? Because it is an evolving set of practices that are proved to reduce waste, increase efficiency and empower professionals to practice at the highest level.
"Agile" is a way of thinking about process, project management and the relationship between people sharing common objectives and tasks. It is, perhaps, best thought of as a set of strategies lawyers can transpose to legal practice, fairly intact, and realize significant gains in productivity over time.
Agile is needed in today's legal economy
The legal economy is experiencing significant fallout from the financial market meltdown of 2008-2009. Unlike the consolidations of the early 1990's which resulted the creation of a number of "mega-firms," the current legal economy is driven by clients who understand efficiency and are beginning to demand that their lawyers follow suit...pun intended.
Couple the call for better return on their legal investment with technical advances in knowledge management, and the need for true partnership between lawyers and their IT staff and vendors becomes apparent. One way to effect that partnership is for lawyers to understand some of the cutting edge thinking that drives software development, and learn how to integrate that thinking into their legal practice.
Agile Project Management Works!
Lawyers are not trained in project management. This is a skill we have to learn either on the job,--or through additional coursework. Very few lawyers are good at it. ALASSN is absolutely committed to helping lawyers gain competency in project management from an agile perspective.
Agile is not the only way and it's not an easy way. But we think it's the best way. The principles, practices and processes are founded on the idea that when a smart group of people are given a structure that empowers them to do their best work, they are best left alone to get it done.
"Agile" requires participation from top to bottom and side to side. It requires that legal vendors operate in a transparent way. It requires that lawyers share information with their clients and spend more time gathering requirements from their clients. it requires that lawyers empower their staff, and that associates be trained to work more collaboratively within the firm, to increase competitive advantages outside of the firm.
Agile is a revolutionary practice for lawyers. But, it doesn't require wholesale adoption. We think that adoption over night is not realistic. There is a learning curve. For some, it will be too steep, but the ALASSN will support those efforts and ease the way for lawyers who have the determination to create a better law firm by using best practices ported over from the software development community.
Lawyers can go "agile"!
Our mission is to assist lawyers and firms seeking to implement agile principles and processes in order to better serve their clients.
- Understand Agile principles, processes and practices
- Implement Agile 3Ps in the workplace
- Integrate Agile into the practice of law
- Welcome lawyers to the Agile community
- How else can we help you?
Agile is a big concept, a highly useful framework and a way of "engineering" the practice of iterative legal processes to increase customer satisfaction and quality. Please join us!
