By Kevin Meyer
A year or so ago a reader asked if I'd ever heard of lean applied to the legal profession. I had briefly, but did not have any specific resources. So my fading memory was joggled a bit last week when I somehow came across a video in American Lawyer magazine (don't ask…) that discussed the application of six sigma at law firms.
Regular readers know I'm not a big fan of six sigma – it can be a great tool for optimizing processes, but first you need to take the time (perhaps via lean methods) to ensure those processes are actually necessary in the first place. I've seen far too many six sigma implementations that optimized a process that was redundant or unnecessary, and have bumped into too many rainbow belted dudes that can't see the forest for the statistical trees. And don't get me started on the craziness of colored belts themselves… anyway, you now know my position on six sigma.
But in any case, here's the video for what it's worth. And here's an older blog post from Larry Bodine that also discusses the topic.
Enjoy your Saturday morning while waiting in line to get your new iPad. Yes I know you're there, right?
Sean says
On the other hand there have been quite a few Lean initiatives where they eliminated an essential processing step after a superficial “scientific” investigation that consisted of saying “this step is non-value added.” They then ran a brief “kaizen” test and since the process didn’t break within 5 minutes, they eliminated that step. Later the customer found the product no longer worked. Result-hundreds of thousands of dollars lost. Oh well, at least the process is Lean.
It would seem that in both scenarios (optimizing an unnecessary step and eliminating an important step), the problem isn’t with the tool (Six Sigma or Lean), but with lack of critical thinking, thoughtful investigation, and a poor testing process.
Judging a tool like Six Sigma by its weakest practitioners (that are not even exercising commonsense) is equivalent to judging Lean by the executives that say that Lean is all about cutting heads.
As a continuous improvement junkie that will use whatever tool helps improve the process, I’ll never understand the desire to turn the discussion into factions.
None of these methodologies are perfect or easy to apply and certainly no improvement methodology has all the answers.
Kevin says
Sean – point well made. Both methods need to be applied with a deep understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and not judged based on inexperienced practitioners.
Mark Graban says
Here is a nice blog here by an attorney, D. Mark Jackson about lean as applied to law firms:
http://leanlaw.net/
He seems to have a really good handle on how to apply this intelligently in a law firm setting.