Abby Stover, Chief Talent Officer at Honigman LLP discusses why the firm chose BigHand Resource Management. 

Abby: Not only were lawyers unable to walk down the hall and find staffing, they also were busier than they had been in recent memory. So that was one real driver - staffing matters, getting folks to work on them understanding what they were working on, and why they may not be available. Another driver is the clients themselves. As I mentioned, we do love to hear from our clients, we involve them in our Innovation Day festivities. 

The clients have really grown very sophisticated, as everyone knows, and they're looking for appropriate staffing, staffing that provides the value that they want. It's not always it's not necessarily a cost issue, but they want the work done by the best and most efficient biller possible. So, that was another issue. 

As I mentioned, we have an entire client service team that provides these alternative models. We have a full legal project management cohort that works with our clients to staff. This is another piece that was plugging in - the data piece of this. Who’s busy, who's not busy, who can take on more work, who is the most efficient and cost effective and experienced person to put on the file. Finally, as you touched on in the introduction - diversity, equity, and inclusion metrics which this tool provides. Many of our clients are large multinational corporations that have their own goals and who look for that data when they are engaging counsel. 

How did Honigman LLP approach the change management process? 

Abby: The pilot process was an important component of building some buzz, to get some folks fluent in it, and then to have the leaders in our system. Generally, the practice group leaders are the resource managers, so having the resource manager from the private equity group and the resource manager from our professional attorney practices brought into it and be able to start talking about it before it even rolled out. 

We also put together a drip campaign where we roll out an initial training, explain the features of the tool and why they're important. What's really key was the "Why does this help you? How does this help you?". 

In Q1, we're rolling out the skills portion. I was updating all the skills, which in our system are relatively old, and the BigHand tool has a much nicer interface rather than a yes/no checklist which we've seen in other products. It has a spectrum of experience which makes it easier, also searchable, which is great. So, we'll be then going back out to our practice group leaders and attorneys hitting them again with “Oh, and now we have this new feature. Let's check it out together again”! 

BigHand Resource Management surfaces actionable data to allocate work more efficiently. 

Abby: The dashboard that is available to both the resource managers and the "resources" is super cool and provides a lot of data. I like to show attorneys who are the resources - the associates, the staff attorneys - I like to show them the KPI card that shows their progress toward meeting their hours goal. They find that really helpful. Their six-month historic utilization, they find very helpful. 

The thing that always generates the most conversation is the comparison KPI that allows attorneys to see how they are performing in terms of productivity, versus other attorneys in their department with the same title or other attorneys firm-wide with the same title. It creates a little bit of healthy competition, and they can see where they fit. So, those things once I remind them that those are there, they're like, "Yeah, I'd much rather look at that than just the time entry system and try to figure out how my progress toward my goal is”. 

Then, with the resource managers, again it's just the main dashboard where they can see all the folks in their practice group – what their one week or four week average is. The data is available in other ways, but it was very clunky. It didn't display - you'd have to put together different pieces using different reports. This is sleek, it’s streamlined, and it gives the information immediately. I show them that and say: “if you do nothing else besides look at these things, this will be useful to you”.