New Company Points to Expanding Legal Operations Business

A new company launched this week seeking to advise corporate law departments on Lean Six Sigma and other efficiency optimization — the latest sign that legal operations specialists are growing more important.

Called LegalShift, it adds to a growing list of consulting firms and organizations aimed at improving operations and process of knowledge management, billing, strategy management and other areas in the legal industry. The company aims to offer clients ways to gain price predictability and better value on legal projects, according to CEO Dan Safran.

It was founded late last year, with funding from a majority outside equity investor, Safran said. The company also has a strategic alliance through which it licenses technology from the law firm Baker, Donelson, Beaman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, he said. The company has no offices and operates virtually, with about 30 employees and long term contractors located across the country, according to Safran.

“Baker Donelson is actually an ex-client of mine,” he said, explaining he worked with the Tennessee-based law firm when he was executive vice president of Project Leadership Associates.

According to the company’s website, the BakerManage App Suite has tools for legal project management that uses principles from Lean Six Signma, a technique for managing workflows more efficiently; as well as tools around legal pricing, workflow automation, matter management and practice support.

“There’s a variety of toolsets that have been tailored to be legal focused,” said Safran. “So if a senior lawyer is working on something, we want them to be working on something that a senior lawyer should be doing as opposed to something a paralegal should be doing.”

It aims to consult corporate law departments in two ways: on the operations side, to improve its matter management, technology and process workflow. But it also aims to help in house counsel practice more efficiently, by adopting better workflowsaccording to Safran.

LegalShift is also aiming to help law firms on the infrastructure side with IT, records management, human resources, finance and other areas, he said.

In May, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium an organization with legal operations specialists from Adobe, Google, Starbucks and numerous other companies is planning a three-day conference on the topic in San Francisco.