South Carolina Trial Law Blog

I’ve talked previously about using the Theory of Constraints in running a law practice. Discussing the theory of constraints, applying theory of constraints to law firms, the effect of dependent events and John Day’s excellent comments on eliminating bottlenecks.  Where are the bottlenecks (or constraints if you want a more positive term) in your firm? What slows down a case from being ready for trial? What slows down a case from being ready for settlement? I'm a sole practitioner and at my firm at least, the lawyer is the biggest bottleneck. I have 3 full time employees and a part-time employee. They are in the office working all of the time. I'm in court, meeting with clients, taking depositions, going to seminars and giving presentations. That leaves comparatively little time in the office. So how do you minimize the bottlenecks?

Have a case plan – For each type of case you handle, car wrecks, premises liability, product liability… have a case plan, which includes standardized intake, pleadings, discovery and a way to handle that case. It amazes me the number of people that do the same work over and over again. I used to give presentations to paralegals and a common question would be how they could get organized when their lawyer wasn’t organized. A very common exchange would be Lawyer: “I need you to draft a complaint on this.” Paralegal: Sure. Do we have it somewhere Lawyer: “Yes. Somewhere  on the computer.”  When I would recount that, nearly the entire room would laugh in recognition. Having a set case plan minimizes the attorney time and the paralegal time.

• Modify the case plan – Take some time when the case comes in and review the facts against the case plan. Sit down and think about what makes this case different from the standard. What are you going to play up, what are you going to minimize, what facts will you need to bring this one about and let people know from the beginning.


• Standardize Documents – How many different letters does a personal injury firm write? It’s a goodly amount, but not as many as you would think. Get the best of your best demand letters and make certain your staff know where they are. I brought in a temp to copy all of my demand letters from the past 10 years into a single directory. From there, I started sorting them in directories by small car wrecks, big car wrecks, trucking cases, motorcycle cases, wrongful death cases, punitive language, UIM language, bad faith language, commercial premises liability, landlord tenant premises liability, homeowners premises liability, products liability and so forth. Once I had them sorted by directory, I could flip through and find the best of the best and let my staff know where to find them. If there’s potential of a punitive damages, they know exactly where to go and what language to use. I might change a sentence or two in reviewing the documents, but at least we’re starting with good, strong language right off the bat.  


• Delegate what you can – Look at your case plan or at your To Do list and see if someone else can do the task. My guess is that you could clear out a lot of your To Do’s by aggressively delegating. Do you really need to do all of the things on the list? Could your paralegal handle some of them? Could a private investigator handle some of the tasks?

This weekend, I’ll be going to BlawgThink and hopefully I’ll get a chance to talk to Jack Vinson, a certified Theory of Constraints consultant, who writes Knowledge Jolt with Jack. I’m looking forward to working on applying Theory of Constraints to a law firm and having Jack help us with that in the near future. I’ll keep you posted as that develops.