PBwiki in the Legal World

How PBwiki Can Improve

Efficiency and Productivity
In Your Law Firm
Introduction
 PBwiki helps boost productivity and
efficiency in the:
 Transfer of Information (email)
 Retrieval of Information (legal databases)

 Analysis of Information (case facts)

I. Transferring Information: Email
 Current Practice:  With PBwiki:
 Flooded email  Clean inbox!
inboxes from: • PBwiki can store your
• Emailing reference reference docs in a central
documents location
• Outlook as data • No need to fear the “delete”
storage button!
• Using your email as • Administrative processes
your administrative can be handled centrally via
task manager wiki
Storing documents in Storing Documents in
Email: the Wiki

VS
Donʼt Email Reference Documents to Small
Group -- Store Them in a Wiki!
 Emailing reference  Storing reference
docs: docs in wiki:
 You have to predict  Anyone who needs it
the individuals who in the future can find
will find the it, anywhere, anytime
documents useful  Happy, empty inbox
 Floods inboxes  You can update
 Document cannot be reference doc anytime
changed after sending  Delete away!
 Recipients might Document is there in
delete it the wiki when you do
need it.
In the 2008 Lexis Nexis survey,
53% of respondents spend at
least one hour searching for
documents or emails. Almost
20% spend from 2-4 hours.
 Administrative Tasks Can Be Streamlined
by Wikis!

 No more, “Did you do  A wiki can be a

this yet?” emails or collaborative task
“Note to self: add manager
user to database”
Let the wiki keep track for you! It’s online
and collaborative.
II. Retrieving Information: Databases
 Current practice:  With a wiki:
 “Practice makes  Wiki as a “learn as you
perfect”: how to make go” supplemental
initial “practice” training tool
painless  Provide “road-maps” for
 User-unfriendly legal hard to navigate
databases databases
 Swamped “specialists”  Free the specialists for
truly urgent requests!
Practice Makes Perfect! But if you donʼt
have time to practice…
(or, “I havenʼt touched this database in 2 months. What the heck do I do!?”)

 Your memory:

After 2 months
Let PBwiki be your memory.
It won’t matter if it’s been 2
months or 6 months; PBwiki
will keep you up to date, when
you’re ready.
Provide Maps to Navigate through Databases
 Each database is different. PBwiki help you
“navigate” through their individual quirks.
A Database Map Also Saves Time for Your
Specialists
 Let PBwiki act as the central reference: reroute simple
requests to the wiki instead of flooding your specialists
with requests.
A wiki never gets tired. It just
keeps going and going and
going..

Your specialists, however,

do.

Save their expertise for all of your crucial issues.

Let the wiki handle the rest.
“Approximately 67% of
legal professionals wish
that they can spend less
time organizing
information, and more
time using information
that comes their way.”
III. Analyzing Information: Case Facts
 Current Practice:  With PBwiki:
 CaseMap, OR
 Collections of case
facts are placed into
MS Word documents,
which are:
• Hard to update and
distribute
• Difficult to search for
and organize
 Wikis are perfect for managing
dynamic collections of facts,
with:
• An extremely user-friendly
editing function
• No need to distribute updates
every few days
• Instant available access for all
team members
• A comprehensive search
functions and the option of
multiple “tags” for every page
According to the Lexis-Nexis survey,
legal professionals reported difficulty
in finding the correct or most recent
version an average of 5 times per
week.
 Wikis are Dynamic and Instant
 No more punching holes for binders, or printing out
new versions of indices.
 No more emailing five successive versions of the
same document.
 No need to worry if you have the most current
version, or waiting for someone to send you the
most current version (or its location)

Your clients want instant results;

shouldnʼt you get the same from your
own documents?
PBwikiʼs Open Collaboration Platform
Helps Prevent Overlapping Labor:

18 hours 18 hours
Combined effort can
get things done in half
the time.
Let’s take a quantitative look at how a
wiki can help you:

 If we just look at the advantages of a wiki

in reducing email:
 “A 2004 study conducted by the ePolicy
Institute and the American Management
Association that surveyed 840 U.S. businesses
showed that nearly 60% of participants
spend at least 90 minutes per day on email
alone. 20% spend between three and four hours
per day on email, and 10% spend more than
four hours - half their workday - per day on it.”
http://orange.eserver.org/issues/5-1/pratt.html
Estimate: Lower End
 1,900 billable hours/year (2,300 office
hours/year)
 Cleaning email, learning how to use a legal database
arenʼt billable!
 If email is 20% of hours, thatʼs 460 hours/year; every
email interruption wastes several minutes
 Reducing non-billable email usage just 20% reclaims
almost 100 billable hours/year!
• At $400/hour, thatʼs $45,000/year in additional billings
• PBwiki costs $96/attorney/year
Estimate: Higher End
 Studies show that upper level management
actually spent the most time on email
 1,900 billable hours/year (2,300 office
hours/year)
 If email is 30% of hours, thatʼs 690 hours/year; again,
every email interruption wastes several minutes.
 Reducing non-billable email usage just 20% reclaims
128 billable hours/year!
• At $500/hour, thatʼs $64,000/attorney/year in additional
billings
• PBwiki costs $96/attorney/year
And That Doesnʼt Even Count Time
Wasted On:
 Waiting for specialists & paralegals to respond to
requests.
 Overlapping labour (e.g. 3 different employees organizing
3 sets of the same 100 emails distributed within a group).
 Dealing with email-induced errors (e.g. overlooking an
important request or task because of an overflowing
inbox).
 Orienting new team members under time pressure (storing
reference information means that to orient new members,
youʼll have to dig through your mailbox and forward those
emails, contributing to the cycle).
To Take Another Approach:
 “In Cavanagh’s 2003 study, 72% of
respondents reported that they spend
significantly more time managing their
email than they did just one year earlier,
and that they work longer hours as a
result… Cavanagh estimates the average
loss in annual revenue due to email
overload to be 12%.”
 Calculation:
 Skadden brought in $2.7 billion in revenue last
year.
 12% of $2.7 billion is $324 million.
 If the wiki even reduces the amount of “email
overload” by 10%, that should bring in an
additional $32 million per year.
 With ~ 2000 Skadden attorneys, this means an
additional $16,000 per attorney per year.
 PBwiki costs $96 per attorney per year.
 If PBwiki reclaims $16,000 per attorney per year,
that comes out to a daily return of ~$44 per day. It
takes only 3 days to make the cost of PBwiki
back.
Conclusion:
 PBwiki provides:
 A central, easy to reach repository for
reference information and administrative
details.
 A road-map to help navigate through the
most difficult of legal databases.
 A dynamic platform to manage and organize
your case analysis.
Sources
 Memory graph: http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-
05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=2
 Flooded inbox picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebecca_jeffery/967763135/
 Drowning in email: http://www.flickr.com/photos/will-lion/2625715043/
 Email Overload: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaxmac/2632052680/
 Spaceball email overload: http://www.flickr.com/photos/palapainyelapa/31323858/
 Email overload 2: http://ola.wkkf.org/klcc/klccnewsletter/2007/Mar/images/tech.jpg
 Empty inbox: http://mcnitt.com/images/inbox-large.png
 Information Overload: http://itorganization2017.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/information-
overload.jpg
 Collaboration:
http://steves.seasidelife.com/Collaborationnotsomuchabouttechnoloogy_F196/collaboration5.jpg
 Information overload 2:
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/cwl/lowres/cwln893l.jpg
 Overworked: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beforethecoffee/2404849371/