Opportunity Knocks : Litigation Support Staffing : The Cowen Group : Ediscovery Recruiters, Candidate Search, Practice Support, Position Placement

For the past year, The Cowen Group has been surveying the marketplace to determine staffing trends, in light of the tough times law firms, vendors and corporations have gone through.  We have just launched our Q3 survey and have some preliminary “tidbits” to share with you.  The good news for all, is that only a small fraction of our surveyed database plan on reducing staffing the upcoming quarter.  Next Wednesday we will have the comprehensive results of the survey to share with you, including data on work load, outsourcing, etc.

As I look forward, I realize that the data that we have is significant for all, but there are many other issues that concern our industry and we have the opportunity to examine those issues in depth.  I have partnered with Jeanette Slepian , former Sr. VP Sales and Marketing at Fios, to develop a comprehensive survey of our industry which will identify leading trends in not only staffing but spending on related litigation and e-discovery services.  What professional and IT-enabled services will law firms and corporations be investing in?  Will the trend of “vendor consolidation” gain further momentum in 2010?  These and numerous other critical issues will be analyzed in our first annual forecast. Stay tuned for more details.

P.S. Congratulations to Jared Coseglia, our Senior VP, for the first Episode of his Career Corner Podcast posted on ILTA… John Kapp (Shearman & Sterling), Jeannie Larrea-Manzano (Wachtell Lipton) and Brad Schaffel (WilmerHale) share their insight about the exciting evolution of their careers in the litigation support industry. Listen Here

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In my session at ILTA on the future of Litigation Support, I asked how many people were working longer and harder today compared to six months ago. 70% of the group raised their hands.

This show of hands, combined with recent data collected by The Cowen Group, indicates that the Litigation Support industry has hit the bottom of the recession (I can’t speak for the entire legal industry or the economy at large). Most litigation support professionals are working harder and longer for one of two reasons:

1)      Because staff cuts have forced them to do the job of two or more people; or

2)      Because their organization has experienced a net increase in work.

Working long and harder, month after month, is not sustainable. Eventually, litigation support and E-Discovery departments will need to add headcount and expand their ranks. Is this expansion happening yet?

We invite you to participate in our Q3 Staffing Trends Survey which will be distributed next week. In it, we ask the following three questions:

1)      Are you and your team working harder and longer compared to three months ago?

2)      Do you plan to add headcount, reduce headcount or keep staffing levels the same between now and the end of the year?

3)      What is your greatest challenge entering the 4^th quarter of 2009? Technology, Workflow/Process Improvement or People?

The Cowen Group’s Q2 Staffing Report found that nearly 1/3 of surveyed Litigation Support departments in the AmLaw 200 planned on adding staff before the end of 2009. I am looking forward to reporting the most recent data next week.

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Last week’s ILTA conference was better than ever. Although attendance was down considerably, I believe that less is more this year.

Fewer people means increased intimacy, more meaningful discussions and enhanced opportunities to create relationships and engage in a long, uninterrupted exchange of ideas.

This year, the people who were able to attend ILTA were clearly decision-makers and influencers, not lieutenants and junior professionals. Everyone came with specific purpose – to learn and engage in a meaningful senior-level exchange of ideas. Attendees and vendors alike could spend more time with key decision makers than in past conferences.

We attend ILTA to explore new technologies, work flows, processes, vendors and systems but at the end of the day, it’s about the people. The technology doesn’t create itself, sell itself or run itself. Workflow and process improvement can’t be canned, packaged or replicated without talented people involved in the technology’s inception, implementation and execution.

While at ILTA, I polled 100+ people on their greatest challenge entering the fourth quarter of 2009. Of these attendees, 20% said their greatest challenge is technology, 60% said it is process workflow and 20% said it is people. If 60% of the challenge is process workflow, isn’t that truly a challenge about people? Without the right people, you can’t originate, implement or execute the process or make informed technology decisions.

People come to ILTA for a variety of reasons. They want to learn about technology improvements, workflow and process improvements and new vendors. But, at the end of the day, it’s really about the people.

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Five years ago, when I first attended LegalTech in New York, the litigation support industry was beginning to come into its own.   32 conferences and 5 years later, I am thrilled and honored to be speaking at this year’s ILTA conference on evolving roles and the future of our litigation support profession.

I’ll be speaking with Ruth C. Hauswirth, Director of Practice Services and Professional Development at Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, Joanne R. Lane, Director of E-Discovery Strategy & Litigation Support at MetLife and Ellen Jones Polhamus, Practice Technology Director at Morgan at Lewis & Bockius LLP.

I hope you’ll join me on Tuesday, August 25^th at 1:30pm as we examine recent trends and look into the crystal ball to see what might be on your career horizon. 

In the meantime, I invite you to take a sneak peak at the presentation. 

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New technologies and process have made, and are making great strides/improvements in reducing the volumes of data that must be reviewed by someone somewhere. Whether you’re in-house, onshore, farmshore or offshore – the quantity of documents to review is finally beginning to drop.

Unfortunately, the ability to fully utilize these new technologies & processes – Clearwell, EnCase, Recommind and others – is a different story. There simply are not enough people that have a deep and meaningful experience with these tools/technologies to satisfy the industry’s needs. The talent is scattered – some Corporate, some Vendor and a fair amount within Law Firms.

Why don’t we have more deep talent? The industry has simply grown too much too fast – there just hasn’t been time for the appropriate amount of talent to be trained and developed.

And to be truthful… I do not see much real training going on.

We’ve been here before. During the late 1990’s, when Microsoft and Cisco were taking over the world - corporations were installing new versions of software every 6-12 months and demanded employees with Microsoft and Cisco certifications. Understandably, when corporations (or anyone) spend millions/billions on new technologies and business process improvements, they want more than the local copy shop boys.

Back then most/many corporations paid for their employees to get those certifications. It was in their best interest and significantly cheaper than paying recruiter fees. Certification, $6,000 vs. recruiting fee, $25,000… it’s a no brainer. And many tech gurus paid for their own training because it represented a clear career path up.

Yet here we are 5 years into this E-Discovery explosion (2004 – 2009), in a reportedly $4B industry (growing/shrinking?) and there is no organized /recognized training.  If we do not address this issue/opportunity, we will return to the War for Talent we just witnessed from 2004 – 2008.

There is something terribly short sighted going on here.

What’s the solution? Ask me what I think vendors need to be doing in order to lead this industry.

I will be at ILTA from Sunday, August 23^rd to Thursday, August 27^th and am speaking with Joanne Lane , Ellen Polhamus and  Ruth Hauswirth on Tuesday at 1:30 PM on “The Future of Our Litigation Support Profession: What Lies Ahead?”

http://ilta.ebiz.uapps.net/personifyebusiness/EducationalProgram/SessionDetails/tabid/187/Default.aspx?productId=948

The answer is easier then you think.

David Cowen

Executive Search & Market Analysis

“We Know The Right People...  Right Now”

www.cowengroup.com

www.opportunityknocksblog.com

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How time flies when you’re not writing a blog… It’s been two months since my last post, and it feels good to be back in the saddle.

As many of you know, The Cowen Group has been hosting regular Breakfast Roundtables in New York City that bring together top E-Discovery professionals and attorneys from the corporate and AmLaw space to discuss the evolution of critical trends in the industry.

Now more than ever, it is important for E-Discovery professionals to stay connected and build meaningful relationships with one another. To that end, we have expanded our Thought Leadership Breakfast series to Washington, D.C., Houston, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles – if you are in one of these cities and would like to know more about the Breakfast Roundtables, shoot me an email.

On that note, we just concluded our New York City Breakfast Roundtable on Early Case Assessment: Analyzing Today’s Tools. Thank you to our participants, and particularly to our Panelists, Patrick Oot, Glen McFarlane, Ronke Ekwensi, Mike Merlo, and Alysia Solow.

Our next Breakfast Roundtable will be in Washington, D.C. this Tuesday, August 4^th.

Glad to be back,

David Cowen

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I thought you might appreciate the below Seths Godins article on growing a customer base…

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/05/deeper-or-wider.html

If you want to grow the size of your customer base, you need to confront the buffet dilemma.

Any decent buffet has foods that please 85% of the population. Meats, cheeses, potatoes... the typical fare.

Once your business hits a natural plateau, it’s tempting to invest in getting more people to come. And what most buffets do is double down. Now, they have bacon, plus they have beans with bacon and turkey-wrapped bacon. Now, instead of one chocolate cake, they have three.

This is essentially useless. You haven’t done anything to grow your audience. The base might be a little more pleased, but not enough to bring in any new business. And the disenfranchised (the vegans, the weight watchers, the healthy eaters, the kosher crowd) remain unmoved and uninterested. And one person like this out of a party of six is enough to keep all six away.

So, there are two ways to go. Much deeper, or a bit wider…

Deeper would mean a bacon-focused buffet, a dozen bacon dishes, including chocolate-covered bacon. Deeper would mean a chocolate-obsessed dessert bar, ten cakes, fondue, everything.

Deeper gets you people willing to drive across town to visit you. It’s remarkable. It’s not like every other buffet but a little bit bigger. It’s insanely over the top. People will bully their friends in order to get them to come.

The other choice is wider. Instead of adding a handful of dishes that mildly please the people you already have, why not add brown rice and tofu and vegetarian chili? Now you’ve opened the doors to that last 15%.

This thinking isn’t available only to buffet owners. It works for summer camps. Resorts. Conference centers. Spiritual institutions [and E-Discovery firms]. It works for any business that seeks to attract customers that come in groups where people have different wants and needs.

.....Do you have the right talent in place to execute your growth strategy?

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The AmLaw Litigation Support/E-Discovery job market is poised for a rebound in the later part of 2009, which will extend through 2010. However, many law firms anticipate building flexibility into their hiring plans by relying heavily on Temp-to-Perm employees.

When surveying over 100 Litigation Support and Human Resource Managers, we found that 42% of the AmLaw100 report an increase in hours worked since Q2 2008. As a result, 31% anticipate adding temporary staff within the next 6 months. In the AmLaw Top 50, 70% anticipate adding temporary staff within 6 months. For the most part, permanent hires in the AmLaw 100 remain flat.

These trends reinforce a shift in the market that The Cowen Group has observed internally: permanent employees at AmLaw200 and AmLaw300 firms are expressing interest in temporary positions within the AmLaw Top 50. They see the transition from permanent to temp-to-perm as a chance to at with the best-and-brightest – firms which have best-in-breed technologies and the largest, most complex cases.

If you would like to receive our full report on these, and other emerging trends in the E-Discovery job market, please email David@CowenGroup.com.

The Cowen Group provides an inside-out look at the E-Discovery space by conducting quarterly surveys into salary, hiring and other critical trends within the AmLaw, Corporate, and Vendor spaces. 

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I just wanted to write a quick thank you blog to Martha Mazzone, Patrick Oot, David Boyhan, Warren Solow and everyone who participated in our Breakfast Roundtable on Tuesday morning, April 21^st to our discuss Measuring and Evaluating In-House E-Discovery Legal Spend.

Our preliminary Critical Trends Survey on the subject came back with some interesting facts:

• 90% of Corporate E-Discovery managers are not able to track the details of their E-Discovery budget.
• Only 30% of Corporate E-Discovery managers are able to calculate their E-Discovery legal spend budget. For the rest, legal spend is simply a line on their cost sheet.
• While 58% of Corporate E-Discovery managers currently have E-Discovery hosting In-House, another 24% intend on doing so within the next year.
• While 33% of Corporate E-Discovery managers currently have E-Discovery processing In-House, another 31% intend on doing so within the next year.
• More Corporate E-Discovery managers have advanced degrees (65%) than do AmLaw200 E-Discovery managers (18%).

Our next Breakfast Roundtable will be held June 9^th, where we will discuss How to Compare and Contrast Early Case Assessment Tools and Offerings.

If you would like a copy of this report, or if you would like to join the June 9^th dialogue by taking our preliminary survey, email William@CowenGroup.com. 

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