Matter Management Consulting Groups:
You don’t have to go it alone.

By Ray Harkness

You have just gotten word from the Powers-that-Be that your legal department will be implementing a new Matter Management system. To make matters worse, you have been told that this weighty endeavor is being placed squarely onto your shoulders.

Your day-to-day responsibilities may not be remotely close to those you feel are necessary to successfully lead a Matter Management implementation project or you have implemented a system before and you know that you just don’t have the resources that would be necessary for the success of this project.

Your first inclination may be to put out some job requisitions to try to hire some contractors or permanent employees to fill in the gaps. But, you may quickly find out that it’s hard to find people who have the specific skills you need, knowledge of matter management systems, and willingness to leave their current positions.

At this point, you may decide that your only choice is rely on the services of your Matter Management vendor to help with the implementation. After all, they wrote the software. Who better to implement the package than the people who wrote it?

Even worse than not being able to find resources to implement your selected Matter Management System is that you may not have even been able to narrow down the list of software choices to a point where you can submit something to upper level management for their input.

This is an excellent time to consider the services of a Consulting Group.

I know, I know. When someone says "consultant", you immediately start to have visions of the evil Dogbert character from Scott Adam’s popular Dilbert comic strip. They’re all self-serving interlopers whose only value is to make a lot of authoritative suggestions without providing any concrete ideas on how to implement them.

That is far from reality. Just because someone doesn’t receive their W-2 from your company, doesn’t mean they can’t become as valuable a team member as the person sharing the office next to you.

Here are many ways that a consultant and their group can be valuable:

Planning & Design Phases

If you haven’t had a chance to decide what Matter Management Application you are going to implement, a good consultant (versed in the many applications on the market) will be able to take your requirements and help you pare down the list. Not all Matter Management applications are the same and some are a better fit than others.

If you have selected an application, then a good Consulting Group can help you decided what will work and what won’t. They will be current on best practices and be armed with experience meeting similar requirements on previous projects.

The right Consulting Group will also have established and well-tested relationships with the matter management vendors and be able to help facilitate talks between your team and theirs. To the vendor, you are a new client, but the right consultant may be an old friend.

The right Consulting Group will also be familiar enough with the Matter Management application to guide you through what can and cannot be accomplished with your selected platform.

Build Phase

The build phase is one of the most important, when a good Consulting Group can prove themselves to be a valuable asset to the team. They will be devoted to the project. They won’t be distracted by the inner workings of your department and the non-Implementation related issues. They will also become as intimately knowledgeable of your design as you are. This is not a bad thing.

Data Conversion Phase

Often the internal resources that are allotted to you when it comes to data conversion are database people who may be working with several other departments and their database needs. They aren’t familiar with the design of either your old system or the new one. It’s not usually as important that the old system be familiar to the resource, but it’s very important that the resource be familiar with the new system. Unfamiliarity costs time as new people get up to speed. That time costs money.

A good Consulting Group will have experience bringing data into the chosen Matter Management Application. This will not be new for them and they may have many ideas to bring to the table on how to do it efficiently.

Post Go-Live

As Doug Schulke stated in his article, Keeping Go-Live Expectations in Check: Planning for the realities of a new matter management system, "Let’s face it, after new applications are installed, project teams are dissolved, resources are reallocated, and support is turned over."

When you have the right Consulting Group on the team from the beginning, they become a valuable resource whose departure you can control. You can keep a consulting resource or two embedded with the team for as long as you see fit. Since you’ve worked with them throughout this whole process, you can easily determine which of the resources would most fit your ongoing needs.

Since you know you have a good consulting resource, you can be confident that they will always have your success at the forefront of their mind.

If you didn’t have a Consulting Group employed during the design and build phases of the implementation, it’s not too late to bring one on board. The same factors that make consultants valuable at the beginning still apply. They will be knowledgeable and skilled. They will know the application but not necessarily your design. Fortunately, many bug fixes and enhancements don’t require intimate knowledge of your design when your resources are experienced. The Consulting Group will become familiar quickly and that will just increase their value

How do I find the Right Consulting Group?

The phrase "the right Consulting Group" has been used repeatedly throughout this text. You are probably asking yourself, what makes a Consulting Group the "right" Consulting Group.

If you attend user group meetings, it’s not hard to quickly find which groups are the cream that rises to the top. Just like when you ask people to recommend a pediatrician, dentist, or salon, you know really quickly when the person loves them. Due to our human propensity for common decency, we tend to not "bad mouth" those groups that were under par, unless they were absolutely terrible at their assigned duties. But, we tend to be very complimentary of those people that really impressed us or made us shine in the eyes of our superiors.

The right Consulting Group will have references and resumes of all the resources they plan to utilize on your project. They can readily tell you about things they have accomplished at other client locations, and those clients will happily sing their praises.

The right Consulting Group is the one that will make you look good. The right Consulting Group has already made many people like you in other companies looks good.

Summation

Utilizing a Consulting Group for your matter management implementation is often a blessing in disguise. If you pick the right one, you’ll come to value them as much as you value your own opinion. They will steer you in the right direction and try their very best to make sure your decisions are good ones. In the long term, they’ll be there whenever you need them.

That all translates into happy supervisors and a workplace.