Collaboration – What This Means for the Law Library Today

By Michael Feit | Associations , Legal Information Trends , Librarians , Modern Law Library

A key component of the Modern Law Library is moving outside the realm of Legal Research Support. Law firms have always depended on library and information professionals to support the research needs of their lawyers. While this is still true, great success now depends on the Library taking a more active role in their organization to help support the day to day business of law. See a need, fill a need.

Whether embedded in a practice group to assist attorney teams or partnering with client development to support business development and increase revenue streams, the Modern Library plays a vital role. No one size fits all when it comes to organizational structure.

Begin by assessing your organization and consider who you might target with your message of providing support. If you are going to propose new roles, talk to the involved departments. Understand what they do, their needs and their workflow. How might you assist them with library resources and staffing already in place?  

Beyond Virtualization: Transforming the Law Library elaborates in detail on the concept of collaboration and the many various components worth considering in modernizing your Law Library. Release date is Friday, January 26th. Pre-release pricing now available. Click here to learn more.

ROI of a Modern Library Audit

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting , Librarians , Modern Law Library , Resources

The Modern Library requires individuals to change their mindset from maintaining the status quo and becoming open to new ways of doing things. What is the ROI of your Law Library? What tools are you utilizing to track metrics? Do you feel the library’s resources are being optimized?

Whether you are an Administrator or Librarian, the goal of becoming a modern law library can have many obstacles – money, time, firm culture.

In a Modern Library Audit, our team of experts evaluate resources, personnel, technology, processes, and overall usage of the Library and its’ resources. In analyzing all of these components, a unique business plan is developed with workable recommendations that are specific to your firm’s needs and culture. Recommendations will include clear steps to increasing the Return On Investment of your Library.

Let an objective team of experts develop a business plan for optimizing your Law Library to support the business of law. Contact Feit Consulting today to set up an initial call on how a Modern Law Library Audit can benefit your firm. 

When to benchmark your Legal Information Contracts

By Michael Feit | Benchmarking , Best Practices , Contract Negotiations , Feit Consulting , Legal Information Trends , White Papers

Contract negotiations not only set product/vendor pricing for the next contracted term, but can also determine the pricing path your firm will be on for years after. We all know the story–3-5% increases year over year. Once you lock in at a price and terms, this becomes your new baseline for future negotiations. Vendors will only want to increase over your current price.

However, price corrections can be made at your next contract negotiations. Feit Consulting sees about 15-20% of the large law firm market paying substantially higher than the market mid-point. Firms that fall into this category won’t be able to reach the market mid-point in one contract cycle; it could take several cycles to price-correct.

There are two secrets to securing optimal pricing in your next legal information contract negotiations: planning and market knowledge (benchmarking your contracts).

Allocating enough time to plan for negotiations is one element. Due to secret pricing, no one firm can truly know whether their contract is exceptional or fair without outside knowledge. Benchmarking your legal information contracts is a worthwhile exercise to understanding your starting place going into contract negotiations.

Feit Consulting has been a leader in optimizing legal information resources for firms since 2001.

Have your legal information contracts benchmarked by Feit Consulting, and receive a firm-specific benchmark. Alternatively, Feit Consulting’s white paper, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing shares Feit’s market benchmarks on Spend Per Attorney, Discounts and more.

Contact Feit Consulting today to get started.

Leverage in Contract Negotiations

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting , Resources

What leverage does your firm have going into contract negotiations?

Many firms wait until around three months prior for legal information contract expiration to come top of mind. However, if a firm can allocate more time for planning and evaluating its legal information resources’ value, the extra time creates a huge leverage for the firm. Firms that obtain market knowledge to compare their contract pricing, coupled with key metrics to assess contract resources’ value, will gain significant leverage in legal information contract negotiations.

Planning ahead with the right tools and knowledge is not only critical but absolutely necessary for success. Key leveraging points may include change in size of firm, ample time to make certain contracts co-terminus, firm-wide interest in the sole-provider option, usage and value of each legal information resource, to name a few. A multi-year plan allows one to know ahead of time what the firm’s goals are going into contract negotiations.

Feit Consulting’s latest report, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing, provides market intel to compare your firm’s contract pricing, as well as key leveraging points to utilize in your upcoming legal-information contract negotiation. This resource shares tactics to achieve optimization. It also shares how to optimize your legal-information pricing and terms with Lexis, Westlaw, Wolters Kluwer, BBNA, and other products.

Get ahead of the vendor’s strategy and timeline. Don’t wait to prepare. Optimizing Legal Information Pricing is a tool that will help your firm prepare in time with the essential leveraging tools to achieve success. Learn more here.

Upcoming Webinars on the Modern Law Library

By Michael Feit | Modern Law Library

The concept of the Modern Library is ambiguous. Feit Consulting has recently conducted research to further understand how Administrators and Librarians are moving towards developing their Library into a Modern Library. Our expert on Library Modernization and Library Management, Monice Kaczorowski will share insights on the Modern Library and what initial steps one can take to modernize.

Join us in one of our two upcoming 30 minute webinars on the Modern Library.

Steps to the Modern Library – Friday, January 19th

The Modern Library Defined – Tuesday, January 30th

Monice M. Kaczorowski, M.L.S. is the Vice President of Library Strategy and Innovation. Monice leads client engagements and develops resources that are focused on library modernization, library audits and the Sole Provider Viability Process. As a former Chief Knowledge Officer, she has been a proponent of law firm KM as a way to improve attorney workflow and foster efficiencies within the practice of law. Managing her own consultancy firm prior to joining Feit, Monice has a keen sense for the large picture while understanding the micro-nuances of legal information management.

The Value of Membership Libraries to Support the Business of Law

By Michael Feit | Best Practices , Feit Consulting , Modern Law Library

We advise that the Librarian should look at potential membership libraries to make sure the choice supports the needs of the firm beyond the basics of research services and document delivery. Evaluate their general, special and archival collections and ancillary services. Outline the benefits. What is the Return on Investment (ROI) to your firm? Prepare a Business Case so that management or finance understands. Membership means something entirely different in this context and you need to explain it in terms they can understand.

When we perform Modern Library audits, we are always looking for creative ways to advise firms on how they can supplement shrinking collections and tight staffing. One solution we have found to be of value is to recommend that firms explore joining a membership Library to support their specific needs. Generally speaking, membership libraries can help with additional research and content support, just in time document delivery, and access to specialized collections.

It is not just research and documents, membership libraries have embraced new models to support their members. We like to tell our clients that membership libraries can fill needs you may not even know you have. Consider that some offer plug in apps that interface with SharePoint pushing curated information that the Library can use to enhance their online catalogs and practice group pages. Others provide remote office and meeting space and even advertising opportunities. One size does not fit all when it comes to choosing a membership Library or a level of membership; however it is worth your time to investigate how a Membership Library could be a wise investment for your firm.