Ark

Artificial Intelligence Use Cases for Law Firms #ArkKM

VMaryAbraham

Title: Artificial Intelligence: Use Cases in Law Firms

Session Description: Artificial intelligence is in mainstream and legal media headlines daily – and often with much hype. What’s real and what’s not? And what exactly is AI anyway? And are law firms really using it? Today, there are as many questions about AI as there are headlines. In this session, we will answer some of the key questions. These law firm use cases will illustrate what problems they are trying to solve and/or what benefits they create with AI. As well, the corresponding software providers will also explain how their products work and fit into the broader AI picture. Attendees of this session will also hear what it takes to create a working AI system, who might use it, how to encourage adoption, and where AI is likely headed within law firms.

Speakers:

  • Jonathan Talbot, Director, IT Enterprise Systems, DLA Piper LLP,
  • Marlene Gebauer, Director of Knowledge Solutions, Greenberg Traurig,
  • Steve Obenski, CMO, Kira Systems,
  • Ryan McClead, VP, Client Engagement & Strategy, Neota Logic
  • Moderator: Ron Friedmann, Partner, Fireman & Company

[These are my notes from the 2016 Ark Group Conference: Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession.  Since I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error.  Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • What led the law firms on the panel to AI?
    • At Greenberg Traurig, they were looking for ways to automate processes and become more efficient. They wanted to adopt new technologies that would provide greater capability. This led them to Neota Logic.
    • At DLA Piper, their due diligence group wanted to improve and automate their due diligence process. This led them to Kira Systems.
      • They are using this across several practice groups.
      • Clients are outsourcing due diligence work to DLA Piper. This is an expanded source of business for the firm. (They support this with their low-cost service centers.)
    • At Norton Rose Fulbright, Ryan McLead used the platform as a prototyping tool. He could automate a process and show his internal clients a prototype in just a handful of days.
  • What’s Kira Systems?
    • It is a machine learning tool for taking unstructured content in contracts, and then structuring it in order to expedite document review.
    • Their platform ingests contracts, OCRs them, analyzes them, does entity extraction, and then enables reporting.
    • Some firms are using Kira to digest and analyze outside counsel guidelines.
    • Kira encourages potential clients to compare the results of their own due diligence processes against the results from using Kira Systems.
  • What’s Neota Logic?
    • It is a platform upon which you can build algorithmic expert systems = knowledge builders. It is engine that produces repeatable, reliable and consistent results. It makes your knowledge exponentially scalable. It is no longer trapped in one head.
    • It can do risk analysis.
    • Some law firms use the platform for document automation — although they are not a document assembly tool.
  • This is not magic! Humans need to put in the time and effort to create the models.
    • Plus, both tools aim to provide some transparency regarding how they operate and make decisions. They are trying to dispel the anxiety of the “blackbox.”
    • Who should be allowed to train these systems?
      • Each firm needs to make this choice carefully. Do not simply give this job to the most junior person (on the theory that they are young and therefore must be the most tech-savvy???). It is wise to have an internal vetting process.
    • The person who builds the expert system often becomes the expert.
  • What are the related human issues?
    • Help them understand the extent to which this new tool might (or might not) make them redundant.
    • Help them understand the extent to which the tools augment what they do, allowing them to do more value-added work. “Kira does not practice law. YOU practice law.”
    • Give them sensible incentives to participate.
  • These tools leverage good process
    • This means that you need to know and understand your processes.
    • This also means that you need to ensure that your processes are smart ones. (Don’t automate a faulty process!)
  • Key Lessons Learned
    • If you understand the lawyers’ process, it is not hard to show the value of automation. And they will get it.
    • Even the most entrepreneurial law firms are VERY conservative.
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KM, Artificial Intelligence and Information Security #ArkKM

VMaryAbraham

Title: Data Security is Required. KM is Demanded. AI is Here: Armageddon or Utopia?

Speaker: Peter Kaomea, Chief Information Officer, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

[These are my notes from the 2016 Ark Group Conference: Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession.  Since I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error.  Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • “When powerful forces collide, you can get either great devastation or great beauty.”  Here are the big forces that are coalescing now:
    • Knowledge Management
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Information Security — this one is top of the agenda now because of cybersecurity concerns.
  • The PERFECT song to describe the degree to which our lives are surveilled or disclosed is “Every Breath You Take” by the Police.  (See video below)
    • Peter Kaomea then did a fantastic “dramatic reading” of the lyrics of the song to show how all the behaviors described in the songs are now being done by technology. We ARE being watched and analyzed with every breath we take.
  • Security Challenges:
    • Hackers are more sophisticated. There is a group that monitors mergers & acquisitions transactions and then “injects” itself into the email traffic.
    • Hackers inject themselves into transactions in order to redirect payment into their own accounts.
    • Ransomware — now even on smartphones (which contain a great deal of sensitive personal information)
  • Pressures: Clients want additional protections on their information
    • Client external law firm guidelines contain a huge number of restrictions on the way data about them can be stored and used.
    • Law firms have to change their behavior to comply with these guidelines.
  • Perfect Storm Approaching
    • The hardware, software and data handling tools are reaching the point where enormous and dangerous security breaches will be regular events.
      • By 2025, you will be able to buy the computing power of a human brain for approximately $1000.
      • By 2045, you will be able to buy the computing power of all human brains for approximately $1000.
  • How can KM help Security?
    • Help information services people manage the client data security contracts they are required to sign.
    • Focus on how to protect information even as we are trying to share it.
    • Purging information once you have finished using it.
      • The less you have, the less you have to protect
    • Put super-sensitive information in an “Enclave” — offline repository that requires the user to go a physical place to retrieve it in person (an updated version of using microfiche)
  • Thinking about using Security to improve precision AND recall.
    • There is a mathematical way to calculate how to achieve precision and recall. For example, removing unnecessary data makes it easier to find the useful data
    • This is a nice way of switching perspective: don’t see information security concerns as a handicap for KM, see them as enablers/opportunities.
  • How can KM and AI work together?
    • Profiling content
    • Profiling users — e.g., what’s the ratio of send to receive? Has that behavior changed? What could that change indicate?
    • Automating taxonomy creation
    • Automating knowledge workflows
  • How do Information Security and AI work together?
    • Anomaly detection programs watch the traffic over the system. Is there a spike in traffic that correlates to the work day in Russia or China? Could it indicate possible infiltration?
  • “Too big to know”
    • What happens when you join data sets that have never before been joined? This can turn up valuable insights. It can also expose information that was considered hidden/secure.
  • How should you converge KM, AI and Info Security?
    • Entity extraction can be helpful to understand your content. Can you also automatically delete those entities to achieve quick document sanitation?
    • Can you use auto-classification so that fewer people need to handle sensitive materials?
    • Can you use auto-purging processes to strengthen security?
    • If you are watching activity anyway, can you create behavioral analytics and then use those insights?
    • Can you use these three areas of expertise to improve access to justice?

 

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Rebooting KM with Purposeful Collaboration #ArkKM

VMaryAbraham

Title: Rebooting KM with Purposeful Collaboration, Silo-Busters, and Ambient Knowledge

Speaker: Stuart Barr, Chief Strategy Office, HighQ

Session Description: Traditional KM has focused on accumulating and organizing knowledge that you know people need and trying to make sure it’s available when they need it. But what about what is known but not documented? Or the knowledge trapped in silos that are completely unstructured and inaccessible? In this session, Stuart Barr will explore how to break down traditional barriers to knowledge sharing, capture knowledge as people get their work done and automate knowledge extraction to drive new insight from your historical data.

[These are my notes from the 2016 Ark Group Conference: Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession.  Since I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error.  Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • Traditional Approaches to KM
    • Collecting knowledge
    • Connecting that knowledge to people
    • Tying that knowledge to the organization’s productivity systems
    • Automating knowledge systems
  • Challenges to Traditional Approaches to KM
    • They usually are manual processes
    • They are siloed — both the repositories are siloed and the processes are siloed
    • They often are concentrated on “known knowns” — mainly the obvious knowledge is “hunted down and captured.”
    • People are not always motivated to contribute
    • You need to connect the knowledge to people more effectively
      • connect with experts
      • enable people so they can ask their questions in the open — this openness spreads knowledge and emboldens people to ask the questions they might have been afraid of asking.
    • We are stuck in very old ways of work = Ineffective Collaboration
      • Email is a massive “Black Hole” of knowledge. It is where knowledge goes to die.
      • Most firms have not found a way to collaborate. They do not realize that email was not designed for true collaboration.
  • Why is Social Collaboration Useful?
    • Assuming it is implemented correctly, it can provide a “peripheral vision” or “ambient awareness” of what is happening within an organization. This makes a knowledge worker much more plugged in and effective.
    • It provides passive access to information (e.g., the activity stream, group conversations, etc.)
    • It also enables active collaboration (e.g., shared workspaces)
    • It helps people share information actively, for example, by @ mentioning someone to draw their attention to an issue or to specific content.
  • Digital Transformation can drive KM. That said, KM should be at the heart of your digital transformation strategy. When done properly, digital transformation changes the way people connect, communicate and work.
  • What comes next?
    • Analyzing the data that are captured through your knowledge tools and social collaboration tools.
    • Coupled with machine learning, you can understand what content is important. In fact, you could provide digital assistants that can help knowledge workers find the content they need.
  • Conclusion
    • We need to keep doing traditional KM
    • But we also need to use more social ways of
    • We need to connect our systems of record to our systems of engagement
    • Collect and analyze the data about our work behaviors so we can make our systems and processes better
    • Use machine learning & AI to take these insights and enable digital assistance at the point of need
  • Audience Discussion:
    • How social collaboration helps strengthen law firm information security:
      • Meredith Williams (CKO, Baker Donnelson) noted that phishing is one of the biggest information security vulnerabilities for law firms. Often the dangerous emails masquerade as internal emails. (She estimated that 20% of emails are purely internal.) If you move those internal conversations into a social platform, you reduce the number of emails that can be used for phishing schemes.
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Integrating KM into Practice Management #ArkKM

VMaryAbraham

Session Title and Description: The Evolution of Practice Innovation:
Are We Successfully Integrating and Embedding KM within Practice Management Systems?
Law firms continue to re-examine traditional approaches to the practice of law, and along the way many have implemented a wide range of changes that enable firms to deliver client services more efficiently. These innovations touch virtually every aspect of our practice and the way our firms are run. Clearly, KM has not been left behind or subsumed into other support functions. However KM must continue to evolve in step with demands that are reshaping the business of law and redefining service delivery models. This discussion will seek to characterize the foundation of a true practice management platform, as well as the ever- changing issues and challenges that KM is trying to navigate. Is KM the cornerstone of a “post-silo” law firm strategy? Or is practice innovation squarely focused on “Business Intelligence” and financial data points, while missing the context in which KM solutions can be deployed?

Speakers:

Toby Brown, Chief Practice Officer, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
Keith Lipman, President, Prosperoware

[These are my notes from the 2015 Ark Group Conference: Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession.  Since I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error.  Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • What is practice management? Managing matters to achieve client satisfaction and firm profitability.
  • What is the goal? Revenue and Profits!!!  How do we do this? By lowering the cost of delivering services to clients. The answer is not just buying cheaper pencils. It means you need to push work down to the lowest-cost resource within the firm. You need become more efficient in the way you work.
  • What’s the strategy?
    • Few law firm partners are empowered to understand their own contribution to revenue and profits.
    • Far too many law firm partners experience “pro forma surprise.” They do not really know what their matters have generated in terms of maximum billable suntil they see the pro forma. If their team has not billed as much as expected, then their maximum billables are down.
    • You need to know your firm’s profit margin. And you need a clear methodology for achieving that profit margin. Profit measure must be clear, simple and understandably
  • State of the Legal Market: Hyper-competition and flat demand. Corporate Counsel have bigger budgets, but not spending on law firms.
    • Now outside counsel are just a vendor to be handled by the client’s procurement office. In Toby Brown’s words, we are just another toilet paper vendor. This leads to more RFP processes to try to standardize the process for purchasing legal services.
    • Corporate legal departments are growing. They are both controlling the spend and spending differently. In fact, they are moving legal work in-house.
  • How can KM Participate?
    • To quote Kingsley Martin, think about every KM project and ask how far from the bottom line.
    • Consider yourself the provider of “Knowledge Services” rather than a “knowledge manager.”
    • Help lawyers see that increasing their own mastery of KM tools will help them become more efficient.
    • An obvious place for KM concerns “the numbers.” This means providing information and context for numbers such as the cost of a matter: what goes into that cost, what are the variables, etc?
    • Toby estimates that only 10% of law firms actually measure true profitability rather than some proxy for profitability. When the audience was polled, most did not know if their own firms actually measured true profitability rather than some proxy for profitability.
    • Become the best friend of the pricing person in your firm. They will know where the pain points are and which partner is really in pain.
    • There is a great opportunity for KM to help manage outside counsel guidelines and then track performance against those guidelines. At a minimum, read these guidelines to get an early look at emerging trends (e.g., clients are less willing to pay for online legal research).
  • 2016 is going to be really hard
    • The M&A cycle is coming to an end.
    • There is no major litigation wave on the horizon
    • The prospect of significant bankruptcy work is poor.
  • KM needs to be front and center in making 2016 more tolerable (and even successful) for law firms.
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Build a “KM Rapid Response Team” #ArkKM

VMaryAbraham

Session Title and Description: Firm Mergers – How to Build a “KM Rapid Response Team”

When key groups join law firms, or when firm mergers occur, KM is often left standing on the sidelines. Finance, IT, Records, (etc) all spring into action—but what about Knowledge Management? Shouldn’t KM really be the ‘keeper of the playbook’ and able to ‘prep a program’ that can be triggered on a moment’s notice (see: cross-office training and team-building, professional development, experience capture and dissemination, systems integration, exposure of laterals to firm expertise and leadership)? This discussion will explore how firms can leverage KM to support rapid change initiatives in relation to mergers and acqui- sitions. How does a firm’s value proposition change following a merger? And who’s job is it to disseminate, redefine, and characterize the breadth of expertise at the firm? What tools and methodologies can be employed to help integrate new practices and/or resources—while maintaining a common sense of identity or culture?

Speakers:

Silvia LeBlanc, Director of Knowledge Management, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Vishal Agnihotri, Chief Knowledge Officer, Akerman LLP
Ginevra Saylor, National Director, Knowledge Management, Dentons Canada LLP

[These are my notes from the 2015 Ark Group Conference: Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession.  Since I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error.  Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • KM has the benefit of broader perspective.  KM tends to operate across silos. It works with a variety of people and functions within the firm. This gives KM professionals diverse knowledge and the ability to connect the dots. This also makes KM the perfect group to create the law firm merger playbook or new hire onboarding resources.
  • Why involve KM? When the firm is in merger mode, the firm will call in marketing, finance, etc. They don’t think to call in KM. However, the KM department is one of the support functions that thinks about business problems the same way
  • Communication. Marketing is extremely good at external communication. KM needs to be just as good at internal communications. Focus on the concerns and anxieties of the people who are on the receiving end of change. If the people in the firm are unhappy or anxious, they cannot deliver great service to clients.
  • Getting a seat at the table.  Bully your way to a seat at the table. Then justify your place at the table by solving problems and getting things done.
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KM’s Role in Leading Innovation & Managing Change in Law Firms #ArkKM

VMaryAbraham

Session Title and Description: KM’s Role in Leading Innovation & Managing Change in Law Firms

Innovation and change management are processes, not projects. And in today’s law firm setting, there is demand for both but great sensitivity around how much change the organization can endure at one time. This next case study will explore the theory and process behind successful innovation as well as how to make change stick—transforming best intentions into best practices—sharing examples concerning the role of KM in innovation and change projects at White & Case.

Speakers:

Alicia Hardy, Director of Professional Support, White & Case (UK) Oz Benamram, Chief Knowledge Officer, White & Case

[These are my notes from the 2015 Ark Group Conference: Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession.  Since I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error.  Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • How they innovate.
    • Innovation is about accelerating the cycle at which small experiments fail.
    • Turning successes into processes by normalizing them and then scaling them up for wider adoption across the firm.
  • Innovation in law firms is hard.
    • Innovation is often the result of a big crisis. However Big Law does not feel that it is in crisis. So the drive to innovate diminishes.
    • Lawyers and law firms are risk averse.
    • Lawyers and law firms are not tolerant of failure.
  • KM should become the R&D function inside law firms.
  • Managing Change.
    • Focus on the emotional and psychological reactions. A tone-deaf approach to change management will amplify natural human emotions of fear and anxiety.
    • Be aware of dangerous assumptions such as one way is better than another.
    • The stages of acceptance of change are not dissimilar to those in Elisabeth Kubler Ross’ study of the five stages of death and grieving. So be aware of this inevitable journey for every one of your internal clients when you propose a change in the way they work.
  • Kotter’s 8 steps to change
    • (See the wikipedia summary)
    • the burning platform = a sense of urgency
    • pull together the guiding team
    • develop a shared vision and strategy for the proposed change
    • plan at the very beginning for good communication to enable understanding and buy in
    • empower others to act
    • produce short-term wins
    • don’t let up — persistence pays
    • create a new culture — this is about anchoring the new way of being/behaving so people cannot backside
  • Lessons from case studies.
    • Communication is key. People will resist that which they do not understand.
    • Be flexible. Your original plan will  inevitably have to be adapted to special or local conditions. Be open to this — within reason.
    • There is no change without casualties. So be strategic when you pick your casualties (i.e., when you decide who will pay the price for change).
    • When there is real risk attached to project, create a cushion. For example, when you are making dramatic change to the work environment (e.g.,  the DMS), allow people to work in either the new version of the DMS or the old version for a transition period.
    • Because people do not read email, they tried alternative forms of communication. Their most successful method of communication turned out to be sending everyone a postcard.
  • Conclusions:
    • Understand the problem.
    • Adapt the solution to fit your firm.
    • Have a plan, but be prepared to change if..
    • Communication is key. Communicate and promote at every opportunity.
    • Prepare to play the long game. Then everything is possible!
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Why Change Management Strategy Places KM at the Forefront #ArkKM

VMaryAbraham

Session Title and Description: Why Change Management Strategy Places KM at the Forefront

The Intersection of KM, Innovation and Change Management at FMC Technologies At its most basic level, knowledge management is about connecting and collecting. Connecting people so that they can share what they know, and collecting critical knowledge for reuse. When based on achieving business outcomes and done strategically, both connecting and collecting accelerate the rate of knowledge transfer – and therefore the rate of change, the diffusion of innovations, the ability for organizations to learn from their experiences and evolve. Knowledge management underpins the “learning organization”, for which one definition is: “an organization that acquires knowledge and innovates fast enough to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing environment.” There’s a process at FMC Technologies for capturing and leveraging collective knowledge. It is an organizational capability that harnesses synergies between KM, quality, communications, change management and other process improvement initiatives. This talk will illustrate how the company utilizes knowledge management strategies and tools to accelerate collaboration, support innovation and manage change, resulting in cost savings and continuous improvement.

Speaker: Kim Glover, Manager of Knowledge Management, FMC Technologies

[These are my notes from the 2015 Ark Group Conference: Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession.  Since I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error.  Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • KM Depends on Culture. The core values of the organization set the stage for (or against) knowledge management. Key core values are quality, safety and innovation.
  • Quality. Instead of talking about change, talk about being a learning organization. That focus on effective learning will drive higher quality across the board.
  • Collaborative Environment.
    • Agile/adaptive
    • Efficiency
    • Diverse/Equal
    • Safe — create a “safe-to-fail” environment
    • Accessibility/reciprocity/trust – “You know trust exists when the pronoun ‘we’ is used more often than ‘I’.”
  • A Map for more innovative collaboration and knowledge management:
    • collaboration
    • facilitation
    • learning
    • knowledge architecture
    • knowledge capture
  • Their KM toolbox.
    • Wikis
    • Facilitated collaboration
    • Advanced search and auto-categorization
    • Datamining services — this can provide data and surface trends
    • Surveys
    • Events — including KM events (wikithons) and events regarding corporate values such as safety.
    • Discussion Forum — it allows for up-to-the moment conversations by people at the frontline, which then fuels new learning/teaching opportunities and possible changes in procedures and documented knowledge.
  • 70-20-10 Model of Learning. 
    • 10% of learning happens in formal training sessions.
    • 20% of learning comes through social or informal interactions.
    • 70% of training is experiential and happens on the job.
  • How to support change with KM.
    • Your KM team should perform as internal consultants. Help your internal clients identify their business problems and potential solutions
    • Embed KM in the flow of work.
    • Think big, but execute isn bite-size pieces.
    • Try things!
    • Cultivate favorite internal customers.
    • Be humble and let happy customers sing your praises.
    • Listen. Listen. Listen.Then Listen again. Learn what your internal customers want/think/feel.
    • Tie everything you to do business outcomes.
    • Connect with other departments. Empower them with KM.
    • Repeat your mantra/message again and again. But use plain language. Market internally until your internal customers start using your words to describe your services and impact.
    • Bring diversity to your program and your outlook.
    • It takes both a top-down and bottom-up approach to achieve good KM.
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Matter Profiling: What’s in it for Me? #ArkKM

VMaryAbraham

Session Title and Description: Matter Profiling: What’s In It For Me?
Law firms are increasingly invested in matter profiling to help support the collection of knowledge and data that can be mined for more effective search and analytics. Experience capture, financial data and other knowledge artifacts are critical to the success of any LPM, process or pricing initiatives, and can involve disparate teams throughout the matter lifecycle. This panel discussion will tap various firm functions for their unique perspectives concerning both how and why client and matter profiling is critical and how each function benefits from a “matter lifecycle” focus.

Speakers: 

Peter Kaomea, Chief Information Officer, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Vic Peterson, Chief Information Officer, Stinson Leonard Street LLP,
Brent Miller, former Global Director of Knowledge Management, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP

[These are my notes from the 2015 Ark Group Conference: Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession.  Since I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error.  Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • The data is the knowledge. Stinson has created a Unified data platform that shows the tools they own and how the data in each of those tools flows across tools/platform. They have moved beyond an old-fashioned data warehouse to database field relationships. The trigger for this effort was the move to Thomson Reuters 3E.
  • Throw away the word “profiling.”  What we are really doing is attaching useful metadata to specific records and then linking that metadata in meaningful and useful ways to enable better knowledge transparency and flow within the firm. Creating and applying the right metadata requires real expertise and skill. This is an area in which KM professionals could shine.
  • What does good metadata enable? Here are a handful of examples:
    • legal project management
    • alternative pricing arrangements
    • representative experience
    • business development
    • precedent retrieval
    • cyber security that provides security without crippling the practice of law
  • What are the big “waves” or challenges KM must confront?  You need both the content AND the metadata in order to respond effectively to:
    • Resilience: law firms downtown have learned that digitizing their records, coupled with a strong network, allows them to be up and running despite disasters and disruptions such as 9/11, the northeast power outage of 2003, the Japanese Tsunami and Superstorm Sandy.
    • Cyber Security: the challenge is to provide extreme security (e.g., completely locking down the entire DMS and email archives) while enabling massive sharing. If you do things incorrectly, people are working blind.  If you do it well, the relevance (i.e., signal) goes up and the distractions go down (i.e., noise). A lockdown of the DMS and email archives at Sullivan & Cromwell triggered renewed interest in KM. Suddenly practice groups started mining their documents and data, and then providing it to colleagues. (S&C does allow lawyers to see some metadata on locked down matters. If lawyers find a possible match in matters, they can request that KM review the matter to see if there are documents that would in fact be useful to the lawyer making the enquiry.)
    • Cognitive Computing: Cognitive computing is an example of technology enabling enormous new heights of productivity. As computer power grows, we facing an opportunity and a threat. We should plan for it.
  • Ask the right questions and then study the facts. At Stinson, they did a study of their DMS use and found that most lawyers used only 3% of the DMS, and these were largely recent documents. Therefore, they felt comfortable with their limited hybrid approach to locking down parts of the DMS.  Because they did the study, they were able to make the case for overriding a lawyer’s “hunch” that they need unrestricted access to the entire DMS at all times.
  • “A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste!”
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Working Backwards to the Technology #ArkKM

VMaryAbraham

Session Title and Description:  Working Backwards to the Technology:

Focusing on User Experience to Enhance the Practice of Law Technology is an important—indeed critical—enabler for knowledge management, but allowing the technology tail to wag the KM dog can lead to serious problems. Focusing first on user experience is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive; but doing so will help ensure success.

Speaker:

Patrick V. DiDomenico, Director of Knowledge Management, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C.

[These are my notes from the 2015 Ark Group Conference: Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession.  Since I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error.  Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • Steve Jobs: “…you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it.”
  • Lessons:
    • Technology is an important enabler for KM. So don’t be a Luddite.
    • Good user experience is time-consuming and expensive to create, but worth it.
    • If the user experience is too demanding, the user will become frustrated and depleted. It’s a lot like decision fatigue. (See the Isreali Parole Board study.)
    • If the technology provides bad or incorrect information, the customer experience will be suboptimal.
    • The best technology disappears and the best user interface disappears. They leave a great user experience.
    • Don’t settle for bad user experience. Question things.
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Making Law Firm KM Easier for Lawyers #ArkKM

VMaryAbraham

Session Title and Description: Connecting and Collecting: How Law Firms of Various Shapes and Sizes Make it Easier for Attorneys to Use and Contribute Knowledge

Legal KM succeeds when attorneys use it frequently through their matters and when knowledge collection requires minimal extra work. This panel discussion will feature KM leaders from firms of various sizes discussing how their organization effectively connects their attorneys with knowledge resources — as well as how they efficiently collect knowledge resources from their attorneys. The panel will address connecting and collecting techniques at each phase of a matter; the differences in resources and cultures among firms that may result in different approaches to the connection and collection challenges; and practical ways for KM leaders in different types of organizations to get started with either more effectively connecting, more efficiently collecting, or both.

Speakers:

Meredith L. Williams, Chief Knowledge Management Officer, Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC,
Patrick G. Dundas, Associate, Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP,
Kevin Colangelo, Vice President, Strategic Accounts, Bloomberg BNA

[These are my notes from the 2015 Ark Group Conference: Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession.  Since I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error.  Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • 5 Phases of Law Firm KM
    • Traditional content management
    • Technology and content enhancement
    • Client-facing KM products and services
    • Using technology to enhance practices and products
    • Total practice management
  • The Low-Impact KM Resource Journey.
    • Buying an off-the-shelf content product such as model documents and practice notes from The Practical Law Company.
    • Implementing better technology — but a good document management system requires human input for content and for metadata.
    • Enable search or provide concierge search services.
    • They collect all of the “pardon the interruption” or “request for information” emails that are sent to solicit experts and work product. This helps connect people to the resources they need.
    • Document assembly projects are a great way to distill the knowledge of the firm.
  • Data Classification.
    • Baker Donelson undertook a project to identify all their critical systems, all the data points in each critical system, and how the data flows between these systems. This means that they understand all the matters, phases and tasks. And they know specifically which KM resource will be helpful for each matter, phase and task. They also have information governance standards because they do a great deal of healthcare work and must comply with regulation regarding information confidentiality and preservation.
    • Instead of classifying individual documents, classify at the matter level.
  • Should we be in the business of creating and maintaining precedent databases?
    • Schulte Roth says no. It is an uphill struggle that never can be one.
    • Baker Donelson says it is only possible with the full cooperation of practicing lawyers. The firm provides billable hour credit to do this. And, when the resulting work product is sold to clients, the creators receive some of the sales price (after the firm’s venture fund is repaid).
    • How to involve attorneys when you do not have a venture fund? Dundas suggests publishing the unapproved forms with warning labels that they are beta-test ready but may not yet have the highest-level of internal approval. Then get the necessary improvements and approvals as you use them in the course of a matter.
  • Shadow the lawyers in the firm.   This is the best way to understand how the attorneys work and whether they have the right tools. Then make sure you give them the right tools.
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