Case Studies

Lean Six Sigma Improvement Initiative Law Firm 

Situation:

The client is a nationally recognized, highly respected law firm with a reputation for excellent performance. The managing partners of the firm had experienced marginal success in their efforts to implement Lean Six Sigma projects prior to engaging The Doug Williams Group. After successful launch of two “pilot projects”, The Doug Williams Group was asked to implement a challenging Lean Six Sigma Improvement Initiative in the firm’s largest and most geographically diverse practice group. Client satisfaction, paralegal productivity, employee morale, and billing revenue were at all time lows in this practice group. The Doug Williams Group was given four months to turn the situation around.

Services Provided:

The following summarizes the services that were provided during the term of this project:

• Performance Improvement Team Leadership (Lean Six Sigma)
  • Formed and led a Practice Group Improvement Team (PGIT) to ensure consistent application of improvement methods across eight locations.
  • Developed and delivered a customized Lean Six Sigma educational program for the PGIT.
  • Created “as-is” process maps for all critical processes, at every location.
  • Developed prioritized improvement opportunities at both the location and practice level.
  • Led several improvement implementation teams at both the location and practice level.

Impact:

The following were noted by the client as examples of the return on investment in the services provided by The Doug Williams Group:

• Significant number of improvement opportunities identified (over 230), positively impacting all locations.
• Numerous dramatic process breakthroughs that reduced case processing cycle time by 5 days to 3 weeks, depending upon the process.
• Immediate reduction in client complaints due to call-back responsiveness.
• Productivity savings of 1.5 hours per paralegal, per day, per location. Incremental billable time due to this improvement was $45,000 per month.

Client Comments:

The client’s Practice Group Manager commented during the final project status review meeting: “Perhaps most significant are our intangible results. Because of the assistance provided by The Doug Williams Group, we created a forum for improvement, where best practices and synergistic breakthroughs were realized by empowered teams. Overwhelming chaos and firefighting have been replaced with dialog, brainstorming, action planning and continuous improvement.”