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L.A. Law
Paul Hastings doesn't look like your typical midmarket firm. Headquarters spills across several floors of a gleaming high-rise in downtown Los Angeles. The spacious reception lobby is clad in acres of white marble with designer furniture and a corporate art collection on display. Picture windows look upon expansive views of the hills north of the city; far below, Southern California's ceaseless traffic courses through a freeway interchange, and the flitting cars are reflected in the other glass office towers of downtown.
"We're not driven by IT, but there's a high degree of collaboration between senior management and IT engaging in a dialogue to set priorities," says managing partner Greg Nitzkowski, the firm's No. 2 executive. "We look at technology through the prism of 'How does it help our clients or give us a competitive advantage?' We sell responsiveness. We sell excellence. That's what distinguishes one law firm from another."
The firm was founded in Los Angeles in 1951 by three Harvard Law School grads: Lee Paul, Robert Hastings and Leonard Janofsky. In 1974 the firm expanded into nearby Orange County. But the real growth surge started in 1980, when the firm began opening offices around the country. And in 1988, Paul Hastings went international, hanging a shingle in Tokyo.
In recent years, the firm has added two offices a year, giving it a total of 17 locations and 1,000 attorneys from Brussels to Shanghai. The American Lawyer ranked Paul Hastings 23rd in revenue in the U.S. -- one of only two firms founded after World War II to have made the top 25 list. This year, revenue is projected at $667 million.
Yet when Derek Smith, whose undergraduate degree is in computer science, joined Paul Hastings in 1991, the firm was far from the cutting edge of technology.
"When I started, we didn't have email," Smith says. "Standalone PCs were pretty much all we had. Any document was on a C drive. Electronic file transfers required a dedicated line. We were slow in upgrading some of our operating systems. We were on Windows 95 for a long time. We don't fall behind like that anymore."
In 2000, Smith became chairman of the technology committee, which works closely with the CIO to figure out how IT can best serve the business. Often that means negotiating new work habits, which can be difficult because a professional focuses on his or her own task, not its overall impact on the organization's efficiency.
That was the case when Paul Hastings revamped its conflicts process. Whenever the firm takes on a new case, it first needs to vet the client to ensure that the firm has no conflicts of interest, such as representing rival clients. Such a check used to require substantial manual labor until the firm moved to a process that automates folder creation and filing.
"It used to take several days and tons of paper," says Smith. "Before, there were eight different manual processes. Now it's an electronic process. The perception for the secretaries is [that] it's more work, but in the whole scheme of the firm it's so much less. It might be double the work for a secretary, but as a whole it's 90% less work."
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