Key non-performance indicator

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Key non-performance indicator
/kiː nɒn-pəˈfɔːməns ˈɪndɪkeɪtə/ (n.)

No: not “key performance indicator”; “key non-performance indicator”. A virtuous inversion of that measure of articulated fatuity, the key performance indicator. The “KNPI” measures the number of formal, pointless, bureaucratic procedures in your firm that serve only to nourish the rotten fiefdoms and layers of administrative sediment that undermine its aspiration of meeting the aspiration of its (equally fatuous) mission statement.

There is one key-performance indicator that no firm in the western, eastern or for that matter southern hemisphere monitors: key non-performance indicators.

Legal value

For legal eagles — especially inhouse ones, who struggle to show their worth at the best of times, there is a serious point here: how do you demonstrate your value to the organisation, in a way that the boxwallahs of the executive suite will understand?

Orthodoxy recommends key performance indicators, but these are best for counting actions and widgets and monitoring incoming and outgoing revenues: simple, formal, legible things that translate directly into the financial statements.

The legal craft is not like that.

Legal value, as often as not, resides in what you do not do as what you do. The classic case: which is more valuable — resolving a client dispute by flawlessly managing six months of industrial-grade litigation, going to court and winning hands down, with costs, on all fronts — or the ten-minute call you put into the client when the incident happens to talk it off the ledge, apologise for the misunderstanding, make salutary amends and preserve the ongoing relationship, therefore avoiding any litigation at all?

Clearly the latter: but then: how to you manage that? With what metric could you demonstrate all the trouble your legal department is avoiding?

It may sound lofty, but it is true: legal eagles don’t make widgets. Operations makes widgets. Any legal process you can fully operationalise — contract automation, for example — is no longer a legal process. Legal is not part of the operational stack.

Legal handles exceptions. It requires judgment, experience and wisdom. Legal is — okay, okay, should be — distilled magic. That is why lawyers are expensive.

So here is where the “key non-performance indicator” comes into its own. Since you cannot measure the ineffable wonder a legal eagle brings to her task, you must instead measure its inverse. Where does her moondust fall on stony ground? When are you flaring off that impish wizardry, rather than harnessing it towards the profitable good order of the firm? What can you do to keep her slate clean: to give her the time and space so she can work her wristy magic?

KNPIs can help here: they can point your legal ops team to low-value things they should be minimising or getting rid of. All of these will be tedious; many will be processes mandated in the first place by the legal ops team, so do not expect this to happen any time soon.

The JC’s suggestions for KNPIs

• Time spent on performance appraisals
• Time spent on conference calls
• Average length and number of participants on conference calls
• Time spent compiling management information and statistics (including KPIs)
• Time spent per week on committee meetings
• Time spent doing mandatory continuing professional development (personally directed self-education quite different)
• Time spent on counsel management, law firm panel management
• Legal invoice approval and payment
• Time spent on netting opinions and compliance

• Number of KPIs by which a given individual is monitored — a sort of meta-KNPI.

See also

• The law of inevitable tedium
• Inhouse counsel
• Key performance indicator
• Modernism versus pragmatism