Briefing Tiger Team: WHAT IS IT?

The Tiger Team is a problem-solving approach used by NASA to investigate, and hopefully solve, highly critical and complex issues. Most famously, it was adopted to bring the astronauts safely back to Earth when a module malfunctioned during the Apollo 13 mission. Experts in a range of areas, such as engineers and scientists, are brought together from different centres as required by a specific work project or programme.

Briefing decided to try the concept out on law firm strategy. Could the perspectives of multiple functions operating in different firms perhaps make greater sense of a given business management challenge?

Webinar recordings

Launch video: ‘Cash is king, but process is queen’

What’s it about: In this, our first Briefing Tiger Team session, we have the chief operating officer at Hogan Lovells (Darren Mitchell), head of legal project management and process improvement at Ashurst (Kate Bassett), finance director at Fieldfisher (Mike Giles), and director of BI and finance and practice management systems at Herbert Smith Freehills (Allison Scanlan). Also on hand to address the challenge was Mike Bailey from our partner, the leading technology consultancy Pinnacle, and in the chair’s seat, Briefing’s content director Rupert Collins–White.

The scenario this month could hardly be more critical to the overall operation – what has a law firm needed to do from a financial management and process perspective to help it eventually come out of lockdown and into whatever awaits us in the best shape possible?

Link: Click here.

Video: ‘Thinking differently for a new normal’

What’s it about: Thinking differently is a firm-wide focus, looking at the strategic approach to managing people brought out by a new working environment. This time around, Briefing editor-in-chief Richard Brent is joined by Karen Jacks, chief technology officer, Bird&Bird; Sid Welham, chief operations officer, HFW; Brian Dunlop, global director of strategic pricing, White & Case; and Tony Pullman, head of business transformation and chief operations officer, Pinnacle. Briefing also spoke to two additional tigers before the event: Sarah Ball, director of group and BLS operations, at Irwin Mitchell and Kathryn DeBord, chief innovation officer at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner

This month, the tigers discussed the top three management challenges at top-tier law firms:

• Managing people working remotely
• Improving the client experience
• Developing people remotely

In the video, we hear how top-tier, global law firms are successfully navigating these challenges, despite a more dispersed workforce. Naturally, some sectors have become busier than others during this time – so firms have needed to have a better grip on resource management and work allocation. Also, the tigers discuss how working remotely affects key performance indicators – and what/why is measured.

Link: Click here.