I've been chasing two careers for decades, in technology and law. I have a law degree from the University of British Columbia (1983), and remember, even there, fiddling with the 300 baud modem into which the telephone handset fit to connect to the (only) legal research database in Canada. This because I'd pursued 3 of 4 years of a Computer Science degree in undergrad, and just couldn't put it down.

It's been back and forth ever since - 4 years in law practice, 5 teaching computers to lawyers, 3 running my own tech consulting firm, 7 as the IT director and a lawyer at a 500 person Vancouver firm, then more consulting, and now more law practice, but still with tech projects all the while.

Starting in 2014, I was seconded to a transformation team working on a mix of process, technological and organizational change in the Legal Services Department at the City of Vancouver.

The Department's legacy architecture created ever-increasing risk and departure from corporate standards. The re-fit presented an opportunity to rework our service delivery process and human resources mix. The Legal Services Transformation Project undertook a top-to-bottom review and overhaul in all three areas.

One core vision was recognition that we needed to design and equip ourselves to manage our practice - enabling practice management objectives including metrics and KPIs. Our Practice Management System incorporates and extends Matter Management, Document Management and Knowledge Management, among others.

The Department is currently transitioning from project-think to continuous process improvement, with its promise of ongoing impact.