When we get together for mentoring sessions I have begun to notice a pattern. For a few weeks now I have tried to figure out just what is going on. The symptoms are; something comes up usually with IT or marketing and no one person is in charge. After some investigation I determine that the owner or senior partner has vendored out a piece of the puzzle and the Firm Administrator or Business Manager are focused on legal cases. So I ask who is in charge of this area and I get blank looks back. There seems to be a few things going on here;

1. I do not find an understanding that the business of law includes all the support elements. The most prevalent understanding I find is that the case is all important. This is great for a general focus but there are a lot of elements that go into handling or settling a "case".


2. I find a belief that marketing and IT support are necessary evils in this economy, but the business is settling client's cases.

I also discover that there is little understanding of what is involved to run this law business. Let's narrow it down a little so I can better convey my point. I was called into a law firm that is totally driven by their case management system. That, to me, would mean that their information technology was a key element to their business. On this day their server locked up and to get out of this problem the battery backup system had been powered down. They thought that this was the server. Anyway, when this happened all the servers powered down and they could not get the system back online. Not only did they not know which "box" was their server, they did not know what it controlled or who was responsible for the system. What I discovered was that they had signed contracts with several vendors to provide support on pieces of the IT system to save cost, but no one vendor or person had total control. The Firm Administrator had no idea what all that hardware did. So as long as everything worked (which was 90% of the time) all was well.
This is one of the elements that should have been addressed in strategic planning. Many law firms today have complex IT systems that support their business. These systems are a marvel of modern technology and include hardware, cables, software and many control tables. The systems are self checking and many times self repairing but if an element fails it is not always obvious to someone that has no idea what that system was designed to do. If this is the backbone of your business why would you have an administrator or a business manager that did not understand that system. That would imply to me that this person does not understand your business. If that were true how would you expect that person to administer or manage your business?
Having someone that understands your business and all the elements of your business is a key role. This is not the place to skimp. If you are going to give this responsibility to a vendor make sure that vendor is responsible and accountable for all the elements. I have had a firm administrator call me up to fix a printer that was unplugged and was holding up a client meeting. Take a good look at your "business" not just your deliverable and make sure that you know what drives your business and who is in control.