First, Build a Foundation
When Doug Caddell became CIO of Chicago-based Foley & Lardner eight years ago, leaders within the 2600-employee law firm didn't look to IT for much of anything, let alone business innovation. Caddell spent the first few years just fixing what was broken. "We provided a basic, solid infrastructure and built back-office technology that actually worked," Caddell explains.
Then he looked for a way to help his tech-sceptical lawyers understand what IT could do for the business, adopting the credo "Build it and hope to hell they will come". So, without any formal buy-in, IT developed new Web-based revenue-enhancing systems it knew could benefit the business. "This was totally against what I learned [about delivering systems] in school," says Caddell. "But I knew if we didn't do it, we'd just be running Exchange servers and managing document management systems forever."
It worked. That suite of Web-based technologies enabled the firm to boost revenue and garnered it a CIO 100 honour in 2006. Better yet, it began to transform IT's role. When the firm's executives created a team to develop new ways to increase business with existing clients by cross-selling legal services — the Client Share initiative — IT was invited to the very first meeting. Lawyers, says Caddell, have always "kept the clients to themselves, even if there were attorneys in other areas — like M&A or bankruptcy — that might have other services the client needed". It's the "eat what you kill" mentality, he says. But the Client Share system that came out of that meeting enables lawyers to share clients and this year earned IT another CIO 100 honour.
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