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Kenneth A. Grady Profile picture
Kenneth A. Grady
@LeanLawStrategy
Author | Lawyer (ret.) | Researcher | Coder (Python, Rust, XML) | Mentor | Speaker | he/him/his
Aug 27, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This question comes up all the time in situations where lean thinking is being introduced. The question is not unique to the legal industry. There are several ways to tackle the time issue: ... 1. Accept that you actually do have time to spend on initiatives. You make choices every day how to allocate your time. If process improvement becomes a priority, you will allocate time to it and not to something else. So, the "I don't have time" is really a false choice ...
Sep 29, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The obvious answer is that may be true. But, at this time we have no evidence that supports that conclusion. To get there, we would need to radically transform our current approach. For example:
1. Winnow out the many issues that are not legal.
2. Leverage tech heavily ... in a good way (that is, to do those many simple, repetitive things that tech is good at and can be used to reduce work people should not be doing).
3. Aggressively simplify processes throughout the system (reg bodies, courts, agencies) so that resources are not spent on waste...
Sep 26, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Putting together all that I have read so far:
1. Amy Coney Barrett meets/surpasses all of the objective criteria one could reasonably apply to determine whether someone should be on SCOTUS.
2. Her personality-liberals, conservatives, students, colleagues-agree is well-suited ... to being on SCOTUS.
3. On ideology, I would disagree with her on almost everything (if not everything).

So, in normal circumstances, the Senate faced with her nomination should confirm. Of course, we are not in "normal circumstances". ...
Sep 26, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Imagine you belonged to a party that was not supported by the majority of people in your country. Indeed, the party's leader has said many times that its members wd not get elected to office if they played fair and square. So, you look around at other countries to find ... parties in similar circumstances. You need a model. A party that can force its views on the majority. To do well in that party, you must show rigid adherence to the party's ideology. You need an organization that will help screen for adherence and a way to award the faithful. ...
Sep 25, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Profound-perhaps, uncommon-not in my experience. Unless someone will be in a very subject-specific area at a large company, they will need to acquire a lot of knowledge. For viable candidates, that is a given. But, skill levels are very uneven and require more ... hands-on teaching.

I'll second @peterdlederer's comment - reading/writing skills rank at the top. Undergrads come to law school with weak skills in these areas (obv. exceptions exist). Law schools don't bring them up to adequate levels (many reasons). Law firms/in-house ...
Sep 24, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A thread that won't do justice to the issue, but here goes (and apologies to ethics scholars for the brevity):
One of the major historical reasons for Rule 5.4 was the "runner" issue. A lawyer would pay a runner to bring him clients. Unseemly (unprofessional). ... Fast forward decades and the rules has become intertwined with issues such as money transfers between a firm and others (let you mind run free: retirement payments, estate payments, etc.). But the basic notion goes back to professionalism.

The second rule, Rule 2.1, also ...
Sep 22, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Interesting question for many reasons. 1st - most seem to assume "positive" impacts (though a few not negative impacts). 2nd - some repeat tropes w/o data (case research is "better" or "faster" w/o eval accuracy of results as well). 3rd - what "tech" incls ranges ... widely (e.g. moving from oral history to paper was tech, from quill to pen, from written to typewritten).

If we narrow our focus to the PC era (roughly 1980 to present), then a persuasive argument can be made that tech has had a negative impact on law (viewed ...
Sep 21, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The real issue is assessing future potential to a firm. If a firm believes Associate X will be a future "start", then paying $$ to employ Associate X makes sense if the present value calc yields a positive value (or PV over some threshold). If not, dumb move. ... Secondary issue: who pays for Associate X. Since all firm revenues come from clients, the answer is obvious. This is a bit diff than other entities, who raise money from prod/svc sales and from other parties (e.g., banks, private investors). Ultimately, however, ...
Sep 17, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
One of my daughters is a carpenter. She loves working with her hands, the feeling of accomplishment when she builds something, and working outdoors. She thinks of herself as a professional and we've talked about professionals versus those who work jobs.

She took her ... truck into a nearby shop this week to get a persistent leak fixed. She switched from going to the dealer to going to this local shop for several reasons, including cost. The shop is owned and run by a local guy and it came highly recommended.

We had narrowed the ...
Sep 16, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Many in the legal community have gushed about GPT-3 hypothesizing that it will move the legal world. Draft complaints, draft briefs, take over your legal practice (okay, the first two have been suggested, the last was my add on). But if you know anything about AI, ... you know that GPT-3 is the AI problem on steroids. Or, put another way, GPT-3 has absolutely no idea what it is "reading" or "writing"-no semantic knowledge. It is a massively expensive, resource consuming, idiot pattern engine.

"But, but, ..." you splutter. ...
Sep 12, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Because when you look deep into the issue (vs the emotional response) you see there is a lot of merit in having a sophisticated citation system (for now). Why? There are 9,998 court jurisdictions in the US. Plus all the international, federal, state, and local ... non-court jurisdictions. Getting them all on one, simple system would be great-and in our current environment nearly impossible. So, we need some system to handle all the citation issues.

Is the Bluebook good? No, absolutely not. But it is what we have and in the age of ...
Sep 9, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
@GTeninbaum and @jamesondempsey have a new article out "May it Please the Bot?" advocating for judges writing opinions in anticipation of the application of machine learning to the opinions. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

I agree (sorta). And wadda ya know, I have been working ... on an XML schema and associated scripts: the Tribunal Proceedings and Resolution Encoding System (TPRES). TPRES provides comprehensive XML tags for briefs, transcripts, decisions, etc. from tribunal proceedings. The system includes scripts to help with tagging. ...
Sep 9, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
One of the (many) culture change initiatives I went through at companies where I worked had a meme I used the rest of my working career. Put things to do into one of three buckets: blue chip, red chip, white chip (they used poker chips as the visual reminder). ... Blue chips are important, move the needle tasks.
Red chips are meaningful, but not earth-shattering.
White chips need to be done, but have low importance.

We tend to fill our days doing white chip tasks. Easy to do, check them off the list, makes us feel good (busyness). ...
Sep 6, 2020 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
(Kinda) not true. Chicago is a grid system. So, taking a macro view, you see major roads N-S and E-W, with minor roads forming a grid in btwn major roads. Pretty straightforward.

Major trains run North, South, West, Northwest, etc. Many years ago, each line looked ... like a string of pearls. The larger suburban cities lined up along each major trunk of the train routes. Today, the space between the pearls and between lines has been filled in (going way out). So the trains hit the historical pop centers, but not all the fill-in ones ...
Sep 4, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Another unfortunate aspect of firm mis-management is the relentless elimination of all who aren't "fee-earners". As many tasks that were done manually by others (e.g., travel arrangements) have become possible through apps, that work has shifted to fee-earners. This ... practice (up-delegating) adds more work to the most expensive individuals in the firms, takes time away from tasks they are more suited to perform, and adds to stress burdens. It is the anti-thesis of what a well-run biz should do (delegate down). You want to move work ...
Sep 2, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
When I was a law student, I took Corporate Finance. My prof was a leader at the time in the Chicago School of Economics applied to law (he was visiting at Northwestern). I had a background in experimental psychology (today it would be called cognitive science). ... I kept struggling with the Chicago School's rational economic actor. The prof would say X, and I would say "that just isn't what people do in real life". Today, behavioral economics explains why I struggled.

COVID-19 may be revealing another such discontinuity. ...
Aug 30, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Sort of short response. To change perceptions, you need to overcome bias. For that, you need, among other things, metrics.

Bias: "Good" school + "Good" grades + Law review = high future performance.

History: "That is who we have always hired, and we have done well." ... To counter (again, among other things) you need metrics to show that the bias is faulty and how.

Challenges: We really don't know what it takes to "do well" in, e.g., Big Law (or what it will take). What does "do well" (now or in future) mean? We also don't have ...
Aug 26, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Part of the "problem" is that we have been trained by our academic experience to think of things falling into boxes (e.g., chemistry or biology, sociology or psychology, law or something else). Lawyers have become experts in categorization (IP, labor/employment, ... securities, etc.). We resist thinking holistically b/c of perceived gaps (knowledge, training, skills, tools). Instead, we focus on staying in our lane.

Client has paid rent on time every month for six years. Client loses job, has no cushion, misses rent payments, ...
Aug 21, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Hmm. Before we get too excited, let's think this one through. First, I agree college education needs serious disruption. But the Google IT program and this new program have some serious risk issues. Yes, today we need more individuals in certain jobs. However, ... history shows that the job market will self-correct in a few years. Let's give it a decade. We then have XX individuals who were trained for one job over 6 months, but may not have the skills for other jobs. We also have a cohort who have not been exposed to ...
Jul 18, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I've watched with shame and growing anger as the bar examiners (and many licensed attorneys) defend having bar exams or postponing exams over the diploma privilege. As I've fought my personal battle with cancer over the past 2.5 years, I have tried to look harder for ... positives in bad situations. My take:
1) It has been hard to elicit passion from new lawyers for reforming the legal industry. This issue may have ignited that passion. As these fighters join the bar--and they will--I look forward to seeing them drive reform throughout ...
Jul 13, 2020 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
As the list of larger retailers filing for bankruptcy grows, some argue the trend indicates a devastating effect COVID lockdowns have had on the economy. My perspective.

A thread ... 1) Remember that companies filing for bankruptcy after the relatively short period we have had lockdowns (which only partly shutdown retailers) were in very poor health before the pandemic. The shutdown may have been the last straw, but the straw pile already was big.