Ruminations: Will Microsoft Office 2010 have an impact on law firm productivity?

I went to the Tikit Word Excellence Day at Taylor Wessing earlier in the week.  It was, well...excellent... and well chaired by Charles Christian. 

A lot of the discussion was about Microsoft Office 2010, which is just out...in fact I ordered my copy that morning.  Here are a series of semi-random thoughts that struck me in the course of the day...

There are fewer newer features added in Word 2010 than there were in Word 2007, but – as with the earlier release – more emphasis on increased ease of use.  This is key, as lawyers both insist on using Word to edit documents, and at the same time, refuse to attend training courses.  They still don’t (generally) know how to use auto-numbering, cross-referencing and styles properly – to the detriment of overall productivity, client service and document integrity.  There was a discussion about this perennial topic, which has been causing problems for law firms from time immemorial – well, as long as I’ve been involved in legal IT.

Part of the problem is that law firms tend to assume that new recruits already know how to use Word, “after all, doesn’t everybody?”  Well, no they “doesn’t”.  In fact most Word users – who have not received proper professional training – habitually misuse Word, fail to format properly, do not know how to use any sophisticated functionality and hardly know how to use most basic functionality.  For example, I know a long-time Word user who didn’t know that there was a Footnote facility, never mind how to use it.

The next part of the problem is, of course, the lawyers; the screaming little prima donnas.  They hate to think that there’s something they don’t know and that they’re not expert in; and they feel it a badge of honour to be ”too busy” to attend training courses.

Finally there is the issue that senior management in Law Firms does not realise how much of their IT investment is being wasted by poor know-how at the moment, and (even if it does) is not usually willing to enforce a suitable on-going fee-earner training programme: IT training is a process, not an event. 

Theresa Lundquist of Profiscience Partners gave an excellent session on the waste involved in the lack of training in law firms.  She was concentrating on secretaries, who we all suppose to be properly trained, and still her research indicates that most legal secretaries show only an average of 64% effectiveness on Microsoft Word with ‘normal’ standards of law firm training. 

The answer is to define key minimum IT skills for all roles within the firm (e.g. secretaries, associates, partners etc), undertake a skills gap analysis and enforce any training necessary to fill the gaps - with an annual analysis of such skills at each appraisal.

In relation to wider issues to do with Office 2010, not all law firms will want to go to Office 2010, or not in the near future; but it is very difficult to skip two versions of Office, and those who never installed Office 2007 will have to go to Office 2010 over the next few years.  It helps, of course, (in the odd meaning of the word ‘help’ that means NOT) that Microsoft constantly links developments in Office, SQL, Exchange, Windows and Windows Server such that key new features will only work if you have the latest versions of each product.  Windows Vista had a bad press upon launch and as a consequence has never been adopted as a mainstream business operating system – including law firms; but this means that most law firms will seek to implement Windows 7 sooner rather than later.  The reasons are the same as outlined above; it’s difficult to skip two Windows versions, and some new functionality that eventually users will need in Exchange/Office, won’t work without Windows 7.

All this (together with a continued economic recovery) means that there is a likelihood of many law firms seeking to upgrade both their versions of Office and Windows over the next 18 months or so; in which case they may also be interested in a complete technology refresh while they’re at it, which would be good for the whole industry...

PS. Office 2010 is the first version to be released in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.  Since I have treated myself to a new Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit operating system I was anxious to try it out; surely it would be faster and more reliable.  Not so simple; Microsoft actively advise against installing the 64-bit version of Office 2010 as there are no, repeat, no recompiled certified 64-bit versions of any, repeat, any Outlook Add-Ins.   You may ask why this could be so, over 10 years after NeXTSTEP launched a 64-bit desktop operating system and over six months after developers have had beta versions of Office 2010 to play with.   I know I am.