Inside CLM’s Inaugural Litigation Management Symposium

In October 2019, some of the best minds in litigation management assembled for CLM’s inaugural Litigation Management Symposium (LMS), a brainchild of CLM’s Litigation Management Advisory Board that was designed to discuss current best practices and innovations in an open and collaborative setting.

The one-day event brought together approximately 110 leaders and innovators in litigation management, legal operations, and law firm leadership. With an agenda designed to explore both current and future-state visions for litigation management, participants presented and exchanged information on changing our industry.

Setting the Edge With a State of the Union

The symposium was designed to allow for direct presentations during the first half of the conference in order to “set the edge” for the roundtables that followed in the second half of the event.

Representatives from AON Inpoint shared key observations related to the current and future state of claims and litigation management, including efficiency improvements, necessary skillsets, and file-handling improvement opportunities.

Concentrating on the law firm side of the house, HBR Consulting representatives discussed the critical challenges that firms are facing now and in the future, including innovation, product development, differentiation, retention, profitability, and diversification.

Innovation in Motion

Following the “state of the union” session, six pioneering law firms provided details on unique and innovative practices that their firms have deployed to advance client value, including process improvement, project management, workflow advancement, artificial intelligence, knowledge management, resolution enhancement, collaborative client platforms, and client analytics. The presenting firms included Carlton Fields P.A.; Goldberg Segalla LLP; Hermes Law P.C.; Littler Mendelson P.C.; Luks, Santaniello, Petrillo & Cohen LLC; and McAngus Goudelock & Courie LLC.

Although approached uniquely, each firm was dedicated to providing value to their clients by developing actionable insights to ensure that the core needs of the clients would be met. A number of firm innovations centered on creating client-centric workflows and robust client metrics from firm performance data and making that information available to clients through new methods. The future of “shared” environments for matter management and client metrics in order to improve overall client alignment were discussed and identified as likely areas of future growth.

Roundtable Collaboration: Driving for Solutions

Part two was dedicated to three roundtable hypotheticals, which required participants to collaborate and share experiences and ideas to create potential solutions. The roundtables created a foundation for an in-depth dialogue between legal purchasers and firms on these critical issues: how to improve relationships between counsel and clients; how to design effective performance metrics; and how to improve outcomes while taking advantage of early resolution opportunities.

Relative to firm-client relationships, participants identified several areas for improvement, along with effective and productive tactical steps to move relationships to the next level. On the topics of metrics, key performance indicators and metrics discussed fell into five core categories: process-related, cost, predictive, resource utilization, and qualitative.

Regarding resolution strategies, participants discussed how to classify early-resolution files more quickly and effectively. At the same time, attendees tackled the broader issues that roughly three percent of files in this industry still resolve by verdict, with acknowledgement that severity has increased, verdict values are becoming increasingly more unpredictable, and both generational shifts and social inflation will be important influencers in litigation portfolios.

What’s Next?

The LMS provided a unique atmosphere to discuss industry challenges and solutions in a collaborative and open environment. The symposium concluded with the best of all outcomes: a unanimous desire to do it again next year, and we certainly look forward to that.