Time Matters -- Five Years Later

When LexisNexis first acquired Time Matters five years ago, in the spring of 2004, we heard the mantra from the Tme Matters people: “we know there are problems with x, y and z. But now we’re just a small unit in a big company, give us time we’re working on it.”  OK, that’s fair enough.  But now, five years later, the mantra hasn’t changed one iota despite massive changes in personnel, the consultant program and how the software is treated. It is worth recapping developments in the past five years.

Exactly two years after the acquisition, Bob Butler was unceremoniously dumped–as were the principals of almost all the other companies that LexisNexis acquired in the same buying spree (PCLaw, Juris, Concordance). So there was clearly a general corporate policy to dump the people who had been primarily responsible for making the software Lexis was acquiring a success.

There then followed a series of more or less ridiculous decisions which were subsequently reversed at least in part (for example, de-branding Time Matters and PCLaw as “Front Office” and “Back Office” – which led to being ridiculed as “the software formerly known as Time Matters”).

People who knew the product were dumped in favor of “managers” with no knowledge of the product or software industry but, mirabile dictu, an MBA!

In February 2007 I wrote “Acquire Merge Destroy,” an analysis of developments at LexisNexis. I sat on this article for a year in the hope that perhaps things might improve or change, and finally published it only in February 2008. This article is available on my web site.

In October 2008, Lexis released a “Service Pack” for Time Matters that corrupted data. It was pulled within a week, but the damage was done.

In February 2009, I did an update to the “AMD” piece.

Aside from information that is anecdotal and subordinate to more important trends (such as the fact that Lexis Nexis came in 21st on a list of “the worst 50 companies to work for”) perhaps the single most important trend in the last year or so has been the dismantling (aka “reorganization”) of support and development. 

This involved significant layoffs of senior tech support people (between 1/3 and 1/2) and the bureaucratization of the support process. It used to be that if you had a complex issue, it was escalated in a timely fashion to higher level support so that it could be dealt with efficiently. That is no longer the case (but.... “we know there’s a problem, we’re working on it”). So now, if you call tech support with what is essentially a training issue (“how do I do X?”) you will probably get a decent answer. If you have a more complex issue that actually needs tech support, you may be in trouble.

In addition, there has been substantial “brain drain” of developers and, more recently, significant layoffs. Some portion of development is or is planned to be outsourced to India (LN would do well to remember that after an similar experiment of outsourcing development to India, Timeslips brought things back to the US). This is the most serious problem faced by Time Matters. Developers with 5-10 years in the product (and for 7-8 years before the LN acquisition, the Time Matters development team had been stable, so that the institutional knowledge of the code base went very deep) know where the bodies are buried, where “kludges” were used in the past to get around problems.  The lack of this knowledge leads directly to the kind of disaster represented by release 9.3 for Time Matters. (The current version, 9.3B, is stable.)

At the same time, Lexis has been jacking up prices and pushing hard toward a “Software as a Service” subscription model with “bundled” services,” analogous to the process known as “churning” in the financial industry.

So customer satisfaction has been plummeting. To counter this trend, LexisNexis is organizing a series of “user groups” across the country. As a power user of Time Matters, I attended the one in New York.

Aside from the fact that the “we’re working on it but Lexis is a big company” mantra is alive and well (and was probably invoked a dozen times during a 90 minute presentation), three things emerged from this meeting.

First, aside from a few lip-service references, LexisNexis obviously does not consider the use of consultants as something that might be desirable or even necessary for a small firm to have the most effective implementation of Time Matters. After the presenter complained about how complex the program was (“1,400 settings and another 400 Privacy Settings”), the only response was “we’re trying to devise more ways to help you (the customer).” Several people asked what they can do to make better and more efficient use of TM. At no point was it suggested that using a consultant might be a good idea (not to mention a necessity) in order to accomplish this. This is particularly true in relation to small firms that resist having to use a consultant (and Amicus has a big lead in this area anyway). In fact, LexisNexis has just listed sales prices of Time Matters/PCLaw as including “getting started services.” This is so new that the sales person I spoke with initially did not have a clue as to what it was, then said “oh, yes, we just got an email on this.” Priced at $1,050 (with reductions if bought together with the software) this is yet another attempt to undercut small consulting firms by bringing consulting services in house.

Secondly, Time Matters will no longer be feature driven, but has come under the sway of “Ease of Use” experts (who have PhDs, so how could then possibly be wrong? – the fact that they don’t know jack about the software is obviously irrelevant). This is not just an issue with Lexis, but across the board in the software industry, led by Microsoft. My favorite recent example is that Outlook 2007 dropped the ability to generate routing slips in the name of “better usability” on the grounds that not many people used them. True enough, but how does eliminating a feature that can be critical for people who use it make a product easier to use?  For years it has seemed that every time I hear the term “usability studies show....” I am about to be deprived of one of my favorite features.

Commoditization

Most critically, LexisNexis obviously believes that Practice Management software is (or will be) in the process of being commoditized, like web browsers or email, word processing software, or legal research. LexisNexis is a research company and this is indeed a commodity. You can switch back and forth between Westlaw and Lexis every time your contract expires with little or no adverse effect. You make the decision based on features, availability and quality of certain information, price and how much you may detest your current vendor (the grass always being greener).

This is not the case with practice management or time and billing software. There is a tremendous investment in data which is extremely difficult to transfer from one program to another, as well as a tremendous investment in training, etc.  You cannot simply switch from one to another and then switch back. This is particularly true because the requirements of different practice areas can be dramatically different in terms of how they need the software to work (that’s why you need a consultant).

As a number of consultants have said since the original acquisition, Time Matters is now in the hands of book salesmen who don’t have a clue about the software industry.

“Dumbing down” a product will not necessarily gain market share, it will just make your clients unhappy. And since none of these programs can be implemented at anything even approaching half of their capabilities without using consultants, it will result in selling the “simplified” software to new people who are then guaranteed to be unhappy because it is not “easy to use” (and Time Matters is notorious for having a steep learning curve). Trying to commoditize the software will lead to the worst of both worlds – the software is still much too complex for attorneys’ to “do it themselves” and old-time users and larger firms will be unhappy because features are being taken away or covered over.

What Is To Be Done?

Sound pretty bleak?  What are your options? Has Time Matters reached a point of no return?

Right now, TM 9.3B is fairly stable and well-tested. There is no reason to let FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) govern your actions. Stay with TM 9. If you are on an older, unsupported version, this would be a good time to upgrade in order to buy yourself some time. When version 10 comes out in September or so, do not upgrade right away until it becomes clear whether there are serious problems or not.

Practice Management software is in flux. In particular, new web-based programs such as Clio and Rocket Matter are growing rapidly but are still not (in my view) ready for prime time.  If you currently have Time Matters 9, you have about a three to four-year time span during which the program will be functional for you (assuming no other new products come out that TM9 will not support/integrate with). At the end of that time, it will be time to reassess and re-evalue and possibly switch.

Comments

[michael shew]

This is a nice, balanced summary of LN and TM.

[Gary P]

Needs to be updated with the new restructuring, Product Champion Charlie Rogers - Out. Product Champion for PCLaw and Juris also - Out. Replaced with one Product Champion who doesn't have any previous TM/PCLaw/Juris expereince. Practice Management is going nowhere. Also, new head of Development has never written a line of code. Former head of QA - which is the real culprit in the buggy releases.