Help clients help themselves and your department’s productivity will increase

The more able your clients are to resolve legal issues, the more your law department can turn its attention to the most challenging and valuable legal tasks. Common names for the constellation of efforts to increase the legal capabilities of clients – client training, provision of resources such as templates and guidelines, empowerment and recognition, and client willingness – are self-service and self-help.

Many law departments have energetically engaged in this reversion of responsibility (See my posts of Sept. 14, 2005: Cisco’s self-service tools; April 13, 2006: Disney’s efforts; May 14, 2006: Intuit’s website; March 11, 2007: Kraft’s joint venture material; and Dec. 6, 2007: Sapient’s offshore contracts.).

Other posts have offered complementary insights (See my posts of Feb. 16, 2006: citation to my article on the topic; Feb. 7, 2008: track client usage of intranet documents; June 28, 2006: client training.)