Alternative approach to legal problems

I have spent a little time looking at alternative customer service techniques and it occurred to me that there may be a very interesting alternative method of attending to legal queries that come into a law firm.  For the most part a client will bring a problem either to a specific attorney with the intention that the attorney deal with the issue or the client will approach that attorney knowing that the matter will be handed to someone else.  Either way, the usual practice is for one attorney to take the lead on the matter and perhaps involve a colleague.  The bottom line is that the matter will go to one person who will be responsible for the matter.

What about having an instruction come into a firm and opened up to all the attorneys on the basis that everyone could pitch in behind the scenes and perhaps bring a greater diversity of opinion to the party with the end result that the client will benefit from various perspectives and a strong (I would hope) culture of teamwork in the firm?  Wouldn’t this be an interesting exercise?

Of course such an approach would have a knock-on effect for the firm’s culture which would have to place greater emphasis on teamwork rather than on billable hours and budgets for the individual lawyers and suchlike.  The emphasis would be on value added and not how many hours one lawyer spent on the matter.  That wouldn’t be such a terrible thing either.

By the way, if the format of this post looks a little different it is because I am trying out a different blog editor called Qumana

Tags: alternative approach to legal problems, teamwork, billable hours, team effort, law firm.

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