Sound and fury? (#4 of 5)
Graeme Johnston / 3 March 2023 This is the fourth in a series of five posts about time recording and billing in legal work. The first three outlined the history, current status, benefits and problems of that system in England & Wales, and in the United States. This one discusses the forces which may tend […]
This petty pace (#3 of 5)
Graeme Johnston / 24 February 2023 This is the third post in a series of five. It covers the benefits and problems of time-based billing and why change is so difficult. In contrast to the prose of the first and second posts, this one comprises lists. The fourth and fifth posts will explore their implications. […]
A walking shadow (#2 of 5)
Graeme Johnston / 17 February 2023 ‘You have your principles, but then there is also the commercial reality’ Head of a specialist litigation function at a law firm, quoted by the Solicitors Regulation Authority – 14 February 2023 This is the second post in a series of five about time recording in legal services. The […]
Syllables of recorded time (#1 of 5)
Graeme Johnston / 10 February 2023 This is the first in a series of five posts discussing time recording in legal services. The intended topics are: 1) Setting the scene – the history and current status of time-recording practices – this post, Fri 10th Feb 20232) Different types of pricing and target – appearance and […]
Information as power
Graeme Johnston / 30 January 2023 Informating …[A]ctivities… are transformed into information and thus become visible and measurable… [This] can be empowering. However, it can also be used to centralize power… [to] enable… monitoring… and [to replace people] by machines. However, these machines create new forms of information that can be used, simultaneously creating new […]
Making progress with process in complex legal work
Graeme Johnston / 24 January 2023 If you mention ‘process’ to many lawyers, it tends to conjure visions of something handed down from above. Potentially imposing burdens upon you for the benefit of others. Possibly managed by people who don’t really get the realities of legal work. It may in some contexts also have the […]
The price of everything (in the law)
Graeme Johnston / 9 January 2023 After the Roman period, the first laws surviving in written form for part of what is now England are those of King Æthelberht of Kent, around 1400 years ago. As you can see from the image, they were much concerned with putting a price on unhappy occurrences. A simple system […]
Trees, imperfection and disorder
Graeme Johnston / 30 December 2022 A perennial topic is whether to conceptualise work, organisations, documents, knowledge – and information generally – in The more flexible approaches have benefits which are so well-known that I won’t try to summarise them here. Trees also have serious limitations and dangers, also well-known. So. Nobody would claim that […]
Improving how legal stuff is addressed: ten old themes
Graeme Johnston / 27 December 2022 This is the first in a series of posts on how I think the ways legal topics are handled are likely, or unlikely, to change over the next decade or so. My focus will be on the UK, but some of the themes will be of broader relevance. Although there […]
Two types of transparency in legal work
Graeme Johnston / 23 October 2022 There has, for years now, been great talk of ‘transparency’ as a thing to aim for in legal work, though sometimes more instrumental words are used, like reporting, analytics and dashboards. The desire is, I think, typically to know: On the surface – what’s being done and, more pointedly, […]