Virtual Supply Chain of the Legal Process

Where’s my legal stuff?

Yes, even in the industry of law, we ask the fundamental question of “where’s my stuff?” You can also view all 40+ articles on Queueing Theory.

Similar to the supply chain and service chain of iPhone Supply Chain, Order Pipeline of Events, the Pizza Supply Chain, Ecommerce Supply Chain, the Domino’s Pizza Supply Chain, the BMW Supply Chain,  the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain, the iPhone 4S and Fedex Tracker, and even the Supply Chain of the White Truffle Mushroom – we ask a similar question for legal documents – Where is my stuff? When will my work be done? What is expected of me?

And, we know that informing the client or the customer helps him or her to feel as if the waiting isn’t so bad. That’s a fundamental law of queueing psychology.

I recently incorporated a company using Legalzoom. Legal work is very complicated, as can be read on this article on Lean and the Law. But, what makes it less complicated is informing the customer where they are in the process – in the service process. That’s what Legalzoom does incredibly well.

What makes legal work complicated, in general, are the following:

1. A lot of stakeholders involved, which leads to waiting.
2. Many stakeholders means there are several hand-offs. Hand-offs leads to defects.
3. Hand-offs involves communication and there is very little of it in the legal industry. In other words, the client or the customer is almost always in the dark.

And, we know, that a supply chain or a service chain with little or almost no information flow is a poor one.

Having said that, now take a look at Legalzoom’s information flow – their attempt at keeping me, the client, up-to-date on where my service is in the order pipeline of events:

• Check to see if Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) name is available
• Awaiting signatures from me, which I had to FAX to Legalzoom
• Signature received
• Application sent to the state in which my LLC filing was made
• Awaiting for the state to approve my filing
• Notification that the state approved my filing
• Processing final documents for review
• Awaiting approval from me
• Approved