1.6. The story

With this book, you will not take your journey alone. Alice and her team will accompany you, or rather, you’ll accompany them. We will describe their journey through a litigation procedure, which is set up using the Agile toolbox for their first time. We have chosen this story because most attorneys will know how a court case functions and can therefore draw their conclusions out of the litigation team’s experiences. The methodology can be applied in various settings (e.g. M&A deals, complex contracts, juggling a multitude of different requirements), but it might be easiest to start using a setting with few deadlines and outer requirements when you implement it in your firm.

Story

Alice meets Bob

Alice is an attorney and partner in the law firm Lawyering & Co. LLP, one of the renowned litigation firms in Newcity. She heads the firm’s litigation group and is known as a respected trial attorney. She has a team she highly values, all people without whom she could not imagine successfully leading the case. She has noticed that they often wait for her input, which is wasting valuable potential in her opinion, so she wonders how to involve them better in the planning stage, especially in more complex cases. Her core team consists of three people, with a few other colleagues she often involves. Fiona is a senior associate who has years of experience and leads a few mandates herself, while Gabriel is relatively fresh from law school but has previously worked for several years as a carpenter and only later decided to study law. Not to forget Oliver, who is the team’s assistant and very valuable as he is adept in keeping an overview of all the detailed puzzle pieces needed for the case. Then there is Igor, the IT expert who often helps them out with small automations. Alice would love to enable her colleagues in the team to work somewhat more independently of her, while maintaining their high quality outputs and personally keeping in the loop with them, knowing what they are working on and why.

Today is an important date, as Alice is expecting a visit from a potential new client. They have contacted her for help on a mid-sized litigation, but she expects that this might turn into a long-term business relationship. The person who will visit is Bob, boss of an equally mid-sized general contractor in the construction business, one of the more renowned companies in the area. They have an issue with one of their subcontractors, an electric installation company, for an office building they worked on in their city.

Alice, Fiona, and Gabriel go to the meeting room, where they greet Bob and the project manager of the specific building project, Caleb. After a round or introductions, they start discussing the case which has brought Bob to their office.

Bob’s company, Horizontal Builders Ltd., has been contracted to build the new headquarters of a small, up-and-coming company, to provide a sleek, modern, environmentally friendly building in a newly built district of the city. As a general contractor, Horizontal Builders is responsible for contracting all relevant crafts, coordinating the work and keeping the build quality high. As they are experienced, they chose reliable contract partners but due to availability constraints they had to engage a new electrical installation company, Eric’s Electro Builders, which proved not to meet the high standards Horizontal Builders usually set. The electrical works have been delayed and, while being in line with what is required in many parts, they do deviate from the required standards in significant places. Caleb estimated an overall damage of 100,000 Euro, maybe a little less if Eric can correct the deviations within a short period of time. At the time of the meeting, they cannot yet say whether that will be the case.

As usual, Alice not only asks Bob to detail the relevant facts of the case, but she is also keen to understand his business standpoint and understand what the key expectations are. For example, she wants to know how aggressive the litigation will be, what is important to other stakeholders and how closely Bob would like to collaborate with the law office. To her delight, Bob quite exactly matches what she likes best in a client: he wants to follow his rights while keeping a fair and partnership-based attitude. That is to say that he is open to settlements and to finding flexible solutions that also work for the counterparty. He and Caleb seem very flexible as to how they and the law firm collaborate for as long as necessary.

Bob, as he already expected based on the recommendations he received, is impressed by the attitude and business acumen the team shows and confirms that he wants to pursue this relationship.

Alice has been giving some thought to an Agile book she recently read and wonders whether this might be a good case to try it out on. She considers the key decision points on whether to go Agile, noting that the Agile methodology specifically makes sense where work has unknowns. That seems to be a good fit for this case, which will likely go to litigation but has quite a few unknows with the required proofs Bob’s company would need to bring and the big unknown of whether and how this could potentially be settled. She remembers the notes about transparency in the discussion and asks herself whether that might even help move towards a more independent way of working with her collaborators. She thus decides to give Agile a try for this case and informs her colleagues in the next team meeting, inviting them to share their views and to note their experiences throughout the process but also to note any criticism. In the team meeting they discuss whether it is wise to give a new methodology a try with a new client; while it evidently bears a risk that a new client comes in contact with a process that is not well established, they resolve that it is likely nevertheless the best choice to try it here. The case seems a good fit and it is easier to introduce a new process where none is established yet.

Overview of the people involved: In the law firm, Lawyering & Co. LLP:

• Alice: partner, attorney, litigation

• Fiona: senior associate

• Gabriel: junior associate (with practical background)

• Igor: IT specialist

• Oliver: the team’s assistant and magician for all office and file-related questions

From the client, Horizontal Builders Ltd. (~200 million EUR turnover, general contractor):

• Bob, the CEO

• Caleb, project manager

The counterparty, Eric’s Electro Builders (6-person overall, electro-installation company, incl. 2 apprentices and 1 office administrator):

• Eric, owner of the company, electrician

Further participants

• Sara, a friend of Gabriel’s who is a project management methodology savvy IT management consultant working for the top-tier consulting firm.