John Alber covered his firm Bryan Cave's journey into innovation in greater detail than I heard before.
Innovation is not accidental. There are steps you can do and thought changes you
can undergo yourself to foster innovation.
Innovation is the bedrock of what clients like Boeing and Google do. Innovation for them covers business processes as well as technology and product development.
John Alber pointed to his spiffy albeit conservative Brooks Brothers jacket and tie ensemble as a metaphor for the conservative state of legal innovation.
There are many opportunities to help clients reduce legal spend. Not just fees, but also insurance, eDiscovery costs, settlement payments, and the like.
IT as Source of Innovation
IT has been the source of some innovation, but innovation is not driven by technology, and IT is inherently conservative. As with Finance, "one person's innovation is another person's disruption" (Rosabeth Moss Kanter of HBS).
You may have to restructure organizations--(though leading legal tech innovator when at Mallesons Gerard Neiditsch would argue that you can keep existing structures and innovate within that. )
Bryan Cave set up three groups to foster innovation. Each named around a benefit.
Client Technology Group
This was a sanctioned and uncontrolled "skunk works" with web developers, business analysts, graphic artists, etc. They are charged with business process mapping and automation. They are more change-focused than IT.
They have created decision support systems ("Trade Zone"); a socially enabled intranet; and more.
Practice Economics Group
This was spun out of CTG; goal was to focus on a different mission, more on managing for profitability & success with engagements. People on the team include web developers, financial analysts, and now attorney project managers.
Goal is to create processes, and then manage them.
They have tools for pricing new engagements; tracking & monitoring engagements; and comparing engagements. They also created a tool to extract task codes from billing entry before LSA. Reporting includes intranet and extranet reporting to clients.
Providing right information in a timely way has measurably increased profitability. Chris Emerson is its director and is very active in sharing best practices through ILTA and other groups.
They've had high success of uptake with partners of their monitoring systems. It's taken a long time. 88% of partners have looked at it over the past year at various degrees of intensity. It's a function of focused attention from management committee and has propagated throughout.
Accelerated Review Team
The ART (!) covers e-discovery, due diligence, and the like.
Every partner retreat, practice group meeting hears about success stories. Separate visibility and naming helps. Because it's broken out, it is easier to give it credit than to say "this part of the IT group" was responsible for a given success.
In 2004 uptake of dashboard was around 10%.
Key to uptake is getting people at many many levels to buy in. Everyone has to feel they have a stake.
Spectrum sales is one area where these groups have applied their efforts.
They analyzed work flow and tracking, and then extracted rules of decision for these complicated sales from the most experienced attorneys. They used checklists and decision branches (what happens if you find X problem...).
"Data collectors" become guides for first-level lawyers. The goal is to let a low-level lawyer do the day-to-day work at a very high level of quality. Other tools manage the work at a higher level (as with eDiscovery management tools), looking at who is productive, quality of work, and the like.
They started with a few lawyers working very slowly under tight supervision, and then were able to scale it up and get a lot more people.
The program has "dendritic logic" like that of a document assembly, allows people without FCC experience to analyze leases for necessary clauses and optouts. Metastorm or Neota Logic can also build system like this.
One big client outsourced all of its spectrum. Average turn time went from months and months to three weeks.
Tools and processes got applied to many many engagements. They expanded to financial sector litigation. With enough information you can produce first drafts of motions to dismiss. These have reached a high level of complexity.
Showing posts with label Client KM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Client KM. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Competition, Collaboration, and Innovative Service Delivery
This is my second post from the Ark Conference in New York. This was a very interesting session that focused, as some sessions at the ILTA conference focused, on client-facing KM and understanding the KM and business landscape in law departments.
These are my notes on another good session at the Ark Conference in New York.
Risa Schwartz
Risa is a KM luminary who has been in KM both in-house and in law firms. The firms need to know what's going on inside client's legal departments so that we can offer things that they need. Offer what they need in a preservable and reusable manner. She's providing an overview of the law department landscape.
Technology:
Most firms have document management systems, but most legal departments do not. Typically there will be 15-20 different repositories. Documents are on CDs, on individual servers (she heard of a "Jessica drive" that was under Jessica's desk and contained "trademark.") Law departments don't have search.
Case Management Tools
Documents for cases are often in email. They may not have matter management, or have only implemented case & matter management for billing purposes.
People & Training
You need to know how training is done. Is it available 24/7 or is it in too small/too big chunks? Are they preserving training in a reusable and searcheable way?
If you start asking clients about these issues you can start offering services.
Volunteer to ask. You can send someone to the client and conduct a needs assessment. Sit in on trainings or even run them.
Understand Client's Business
(down to the level of lines of business)
Clients need business-specific training. Not a generic copyright session, a copyright session about a particular side of the business.
What can KM do?
Show them what you have developed. We have extraordinary products and offerings. If you could hook the client into what you've developed, that would be great.
They are hungry for litigation information. New hires need to know about making uniform arguments based on arguments in previous comparable cases. Offer an extranet or canned report where client can get metrics with outcomes, people, case information.
People finders & referrals can be a big things at law firms. If you can't provide access formally, you can set up an email-based referral system "do you know someone who can do X" and provide replies.
Kathleen Hogan
She started in KM in 2008 and then was asked to join the KM function at Bank of Montreal.
Her bank is one of the "big five." It's been in China for more than 100 years. The banks look at themselves like a reflection of the public.
Her group "LCCG" has 650 people, about 125 lawyers in many jurisdictions. Training is therefore complicated.
Her bank as a whole has 45,000 people. An employee's supervisor could be three interrelated people.
She thinks a lot about stock price and about quarter ends / year ends. Public company cycles generate activity.
Huge institutions make law firms look nimble. How do you roll out Office 2010 across 45K people, hundreds of branches?
CLE
The answers to the "what is KM" question often give short shrift to professional development.
In Ontario you have to get 12 hours of credit annual. She looks after staff in 6 (soon to be 8) jurisdictions. She relies on outside counsel to come to her and tell her what she can do.
Law firms do a good job providing CLEs at their firms.
She prefers to have law firms come to her, sometimes its just fine to provide exactly the same program internally. More often these programs need to be tailored to the bank.
It's hard for her to balance US & Canadian law. Sometimes in a webinar global or cross-border issues need to be addressed, though counsel is hesitant.
She's been able to show a savings of at least $100,000 by bringing in law firms to present CLEs.
Legal Training For The Business
Law department lawyers go out to their business and train on best practices, for instance, on legal holds. The business people enjoy talking to lawyers.
Don't provide training directly to the business line without involving the law department.
Technology Training
Office 2010 rollout just happened. It would have been helpful to get tip sheets, have our trainers come in, give best practices. KM people should volunteer to come in.
Julie Lin and Kathleen co-wrote an ILTA paper about productivity and how law firms can help. How can you help? Law departments are behind on KM issues.
Risa mentioned that webex and other technologies can be used to record a quick training.
Ellen Rosenthal
Pfizer has an integrated alliance with 19 law firms that provides a platform for knowledge management. It includes Ropes & Gray, White & Case, Skadden, and other. The goal is for it to operate a single group. A stable group of lawyers partner with Pfizer and with each other in support of Pfizer. There have only been two changes to the group.
All financial arrangements are under a flat fee, with the goal of removing the competition for hours.
Underlying principles are collaboration, training & development, long-term partnerships, and a new mindset.
Training includes monthly programs (2-4 hours at Pfizer), usually run by a law firm associate with an in-house person. Other firms might even ask for a particularly impressive associate from another firm to be on their team.
Training also includes secondment and reverse secondment.
They give twice-yearly numerical and quantitative feedback.
Basic knowledge management can enhance communications within the alliance.
Their KM approach is very low-tech and focuses on sharing best practices. For instance, last week she brought together the whole litigation and patent cases (inside and outside) and went through a products problem scenario, and came up with five lessons learned from the exercise that were real things they could be doing better.
How can they do continuous quality improvement? Replicate best practices so that they are used throughout. They've talked about doing post-mortems on matters that includes efficiency assessments, because it is in the law firms' interests to be more efficient.
Quarterly litigation strategy meetings sit almost as an appellate panel and hear about strategy on four or five cases at a time.
They'll make a given lawyer responsible for a given product, so that (for instance) the implications of interrogatory or document request responses can be understood and managed.
They are having the conversations but they are not doing a great job capturing the conversations. They can't get people to use the online system.
An audience member noted that client-specific KM systems have been built and no one has come.
Risa responded that the mark of a successful product is adoption, and that you have to involve all the stakeholders in in-house projects in the same way as we do internally. Ask how people do their job. Get the tool to match the way people do their jobs in the same way.
Paul Lippe says that KM should provide material improvement to productivity.
Lawyers are struggling with change and with new ways of doing business.
These are my notes on another good session at the Ark Conference in New York.
Risa Schwartz
Risa is a KM luminary who has been in KM both in-house and in law firms. The firms need to know what's going on inside client's legal departments so that we can offer things that they need. Offer what they need in a preservable and reusable manner. She's providing an overview of the law department landscape.
Technology:
Most firms have document management systems, but most legal departments do not. Typically there will be 15-20 different repositories. Documents are on CDs, on individual servers (she heard of a "Jessica drive" that was under Jessica's desk and contained "trademark.") Law departments don't have search.
Case Management Tools
Documents for cases are often in email. They may not have matter management, or have only implemented case & matter management for billing purposes.
People & Training
You need to know how training is done. Is it available 24/7 or is it in too small/too big chunks? Are they preserving training in a reusable and searcheable way?
If you start asking clients about these issues you can start offering services.
Volunteer to ask. You can send someone to the client and conduct a needs assessment. Sit in on trainings or even run them.
Understand Client's Business
(down to the level of lines of business)
Clients need business-specific training. Not a generic copyright session, a copyright session about a particular side of the business.
What can KM do?
Show them what you have developed. We have extraordinary products and offerings. If you could hook the client into what you've developed, that would be great.
They are hungry for litigation information. New hires need to know about making uniform arguments based on arguments in previous comparable cases. Offer an extranet or canned report where client can get metrics with outcomes, people, case information.
People finders & referrals can be a big things at law firms. If you can't provide access formally, you can set up an email-based referral system "do you know someone who can do X" and provide replies.
Kathleen Hogan
She started in KM in 2008 and then was asked to join the KM function at Bank of Montreal.
Her bank is one of the "big five." It's been in China for more than 100 years. The banks look at themselves like a reflection of the public.
Her group "LCCG" has 650 people, about 125 lawyers in many jurisdictions. Training is therefore complicated.
Her bank as a whole has 45,000 people. An employee's supervisor could be three interrelated people.
She thinks a lot about stock price and about quarter ends / year ends. Public company cycles generate activity.
Huge institutions make law firms look nimble. How do you roll out Office 2010 across 45K people, hundreds of branches?
CLE
The answers to the "what is KM" question often give short shrift to professional development.
In Ontario you have to get 12 hours of credit annual. She looks after staff in 6 (soon to be 8) jurisdictions. She relies on outside counsel to come to her and tell her what she can do.
Law firms do a good job providing CLEs at their firms.
She prefers to have law firms come to her, sometimes its just fine to provide exactly the same program internally. More often these programs need to be tailored to the bank.
It's hard for her to balance US & Canadian law. Sometimes in a webinar global or cross-border issues need to be addressed, though counsel is hesitant.
She's been able to show a savings of at least $100,000 by bringing in law firms to present CLEs.
Legal Training For The Business
Law department lawyers go out to their business and train on best practices, for instance, on legal holds. The business people enjoy talking to lawyers.
Don't provide training directly to the business line without involving the law department.
Technology Training
Office 2010 rollout just happened. It would have been helpful to get tip sheets, have our trainers come in, give best practices. KM people should volunteer to come in.
Julie Lin and Kathleen co-wrote an ILTA paper about productivity and how law firms can help. How can you help? Law departments are behind on KM issues.
Risa mentioned that webex and other technologies can be used to record a quick training.
Ellen Rosenthal
Pfizer has an integrated alliance with 19 law firms that provides a platform for knowledge management. It includes Ropes & Gray, White & Case, Skadden, and other. The goal is for it to operate a single group. A stable group of lawyers partner with Pfizer and with each other in support of Pfizer. There have only been two changes to the group.
All financial arrangements are under a flat fee, with the goal of removing the competition for hours.
Underlying principles are collaboration, training & development, long-term partnerships, and a new mindset.
Training includes monthly programs (2-4 hours at Pfizer), usually run by a law firm associate with an in-house person. Other firms might even ask for a particularly impressive associate from another firm to be on their team.
Training also includes secondment and reverse secondment.
They give twice-yearly numerical and quantitative feedback.
Basic knowledge management can enhance communications within the alliance.
Their KM approach is very low-tech and focuses on sharing best practices. For instance, last week she brought together the whole litigation and patent cases (inside and outside) and went through a products problem scenario, and came up with five lessons learned from the exercise that were real things they could be doing better.
How can they do continuous quality improvement? Replicate best practices so that they are used throughout. They've talked about doing post-mortems on matters that includes efficiency assessments, because it is in the law firms' interests to be more efficient.
Quarterly litigation strategy meetings sit almost as an appellate panel and hear about strategy on four or five cases at a time.
They'll make a given lawyer responsible for a given product, so that (for instance) the implications of interrogatory or document request responses can be understood and managed.
They are having the conversations but they are not doing a great job capturing the conversations. They can't get people to use the online system.
An audience member noted that client-specific KM systems have been built and no one has come.
Risa responded that the mark of a successful product is adoption, and that you have to involve all the stakeholders in in-house projects in the same way as we do internally. Ask how people do their job. Get the tool to match the way people do their jobs in the same way.
Paul Lippe says that KM should provide material improvement to productivity.
Lawyers are struggling with change and with new ways of doing business.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
ILTA Session: Aligning KM With External Client Expectations
Formal Title: Why IT Doesn't Matter and KM Matters Even Less To Clients: How To Align Services With Expectations
Speakers:
Sally Gonzalez
Ms. Gonzalez has seen three stages of KM.
The first stage involved capturing knowledge and professional development & training. They did it in the U.K. because they were trying to manage risk. U.S. lawyers were trying to be more efficient, an uphill battle under billable hour regimes.
Around 2000 law firms started to focus on business development and marketing. Information about people and matters became more important. Sharing knowledge about the work and about firm relationships became important. CRM systems were implemented, often not by KM.
Marketing started to understand the intersection of KM and business development. Freshfields looked at what the client wanted. They didn't want generic broadsides, they wanted content tailored to my company and my jurisdictions [Ed.--how does firm get to know what specific clients want to know about?]
Around 2008 a seller's market for legal service turned into a buyer's market. Law firms used to control basic structure and processes of legal work, which was done under a billable hour model. With the buyer's market, client demands for efficiency and effectiveness have increased. Corporate legal is under price and cost pressure. That's turned into across-the-board demands for efficiency and effectiveness. Firms are beginning to be more efficient and new legal service providers have emerged.
Commercial risk, not legal risk, now drives law firm KM. The client cares that you are providing the right level of legal service at a good price.
With this shift there is arising a third phase of of KM. Traditional KM skills are being applied to the budgeting/pricing context.
So what do clients want now from in-house KM and from outside counsel's KM & IT departments?
Risa Schwartz
Clients want in-house staff and law firms that know their business.
Clients other than HP hire people from law firms. They are typically hiring people who understand sales contracts and the life. What they don't know is how Cisco vs. Apple vs. Google negotiate sales contracts, in other words, they don't understand the business.
Law firms and clients should define "how can everyone on the team get up to speed on the industry?" Lawyers need an *intimate* understanding of the client's business.
Knowledge management and technology staff need to get closer to the business people. Some KM staff were hired without legal or business experience (technologists). Partners would not talk to them and share their expertise and knowledge of the business.
KM initially reported to the IT staff. That was understood as only occasionally successful. The landscape is littered with KM and IT project failures.
KM is now more often reporting to the managing partner. Sometimes they also report to the marketing group.
Felicity Badcock
Ms. Badcock is Head of Knowledge Management at King & Wood Mallesons, an Australian / Asian-Pacific firm well-known for its cutting-edge knowledge management program.
A survey of the Australian Legal market indicated that the 2008 recession drove a change in what buyers were looking for from reliability as the first criteria to understanding the business and industry of the client. Price also became a factor where it had not been before.
King & Wood Mallesons has a Knowledge Management, a "Business Development and Marketing," and "Legal Logistics" groups all reporting to the Managing Partner for Clients and Matters.
KWM has reorganized around key sectors and industries. With clients as the focus rather than the practice it increases the ability to anticipate client needs and know the industry.
Partners are affiliated with a primary sector and a minor sector as well as a practice group. Sectors get a lead partner, business development assistance, learning & PD, and KM support. Revenue is reported on a sector basis.
KWM has developed an enterprise-social-network-style sector community pages that let you see clients, people, and updates about that sector. The ESN encouraged the sharing of information around the sectors. They also rolled out ESNs around practice areas. This is a new way of communicating. Updating information is seen in the context of the sector or practice. They've seen some good knowledge sharing on these sites that has led to additional work or better client service.
They've developed guides to help junior attorneys conduct industry research.
Another tool is after action reviews. There are four types:
A full debrief pulls together lessons learned, financial profiles, client insights, matter profile, market profile, and knowledge sharing. The market profile looks at matters that might be innovative and/or have a good story.
They are trying to embed the process of internal review into the way they do work.
They share reviews through improvement opportunities, lessons learnt stories, media opportunities, and the like. They look across lessons to identify common trends and issues, and try to fit the appropriate lesson learned to the level of the organization (sector, practice area, firm).
Risa Schwartz
Risa addressed some examples of successful legal km projects that involved clients. Unfortunately she was not able to provide the identity of the clients or firms involved. I have previously blogged about some of her work at Cisco.
Most law departments have a static deal room. A successful program at a legal department asked M&A attorneys. They said they were waiting for an email from outside counsel. Sometimes outside counsel don't know when the general counsel need what.
A simple SharePoint site let law firm attorneys update information about hot documents and key deal issues on a site that automatically notified in-house counsel. It was built jointly by law firm and in-house counsel. The technology saved a few weeks of time and a lot in legal bills as well.
In litigation people are desperate for information about related cases. In-house counsel may not be able to find information about comparable cases. Sometimes clients need law firms to build sites or themselves host sites with information about the matter.
Outside counsel can work with in-house counsel, asking what is useful for the business, starting with the general counsel and getting down to the individual counsel.
It's very difficult for in-house counsel to manage subsidiaries. Orrick's system identifies approved lawyers in different countries, for the subsidiaries.
Training needs to identify the business of the client. Some training programs have been built on client intranets. Some have dealbooks. Better dealbooks are on updated platforms such as wikis. Standard clauses, fallbacks, and negotiated points are all on these wikis. Outside counsel can be given access to the wiki, both to supply answers and to learn about the business. Discussion forums also might address specific topics such as clauses within sales contracts.
When an extranet is well-built, clients are willing to overlook their usual preference for sites that they host themselves.
Volunteering to conduct an information management or KM needs assessment at a client is a good way for a law firm km person to start the conversation with the in-house KM person.
Speakers:
- Felicity Badcock, King & Wood Mallesons
- Risa Schwartz
- Sally Gonzalez, CIO, SNR Denton
Sally Gonzalez
Ms. Gonzalez has seen three stages of KM.
The first stage involved capturing knowledge and professional development & training. They did it in the U.K. because they were trying to manage risk. U.S. lawyers were trying to be more efficient, an uphill battle under billable hour regimes.
Around 2000 law firms started to focus on business development and marketing. Information about people and matters became more important. Sharing knowledge about the work and about firm relationships became important. CRM systems were implemented, often not by KM.
Marketing started to understand the intersection of KM and business development. Freshfields looked at what the client wanted. They didn't want generic broadsides, they wanted content tailored to my company and my jurisdictions [Ed.--how does firm get to know what specific clients want to know about?]
Around 2008 a seller's market for legal service turned into a buyer's market. Law firms used to control basic structure and processes of legal work, which was done under a billable hour model. With the buyer's market, client demands for efficiency and effectiveness have increased. Corporate legal is under price and cost pressure. That's turned into across-the-board demands for efficiency and effectiveness. Firms are beginning to be more efficient and new legal service providers have emerged.
Commercial risk, not legal risk, now drives law firm KM. The client cares that you are providing the right level of legal service at a good price.
With this shift there is arising a third phase of of KM. Traditional KM skills are being applied to the budgeting/pricing context.
So what do clients want now from in-house KM and from outside counsel's KM & IT departments?
Risa Schwartz
Clients want in-house staff and law firms that know their business.
Clients other than HP hire people from law firms. They are typically hiring people who understand sales contracts and the life. What they don't know is how Cisco vs. Apple vs. Google negotiate sales contracts, in other words, they don't understand the business.
Law firms and clients should define "how can everyone on the team get up to speed on the industry?" Lawyers need an *intimate* understanding of the client's business.
Knowledge management and technology staff need to get closer to the business people. Some KM staff were hired without legal or business experience (technologists). Partners would not talk to them and share their expertise and knowledge of the business.
KM initially reported to the IT staff. That was understood as only occasionally successful. The landscape is littered with KM and IT project failures.
KM is now more often reporting to the managing partner. Sometimes they also report to the marketing group.
Felicity Badcock
Ms. Badcock is Head of Knowledge Management at King & Wood Mallesons, an Australian / Asian-Pacific firm well-known for its cutting-edge knowledge management program.
A survey of the Australian Legal market indicated that the 2008 recession drove a change in what buyers were looking for from reliability as the first criteria to understanding the business and industry of the client. Price also became a factor where it had not been before.
King & Wood Mallesons has a Knowledge Management, a "Business Development and Marketing," and "Legal Logistics" groups all reporting to the Managing Partner for Clients and Matters.
KWM has reorganized around key sectors and industries. With clients as the focus rather than the practice it increases the ability to anticipate client needs and know the industry.
Partners are affiliated with a primary sector and a minor sector as well as a practice group. Sectors get a lead partner, business development assistance, learning & PD, and KM support. Revenue is reported on a sector basis.
KWM has developed an enterprise-social-network-style sector community pages that let you see clients, people, and updates about that sector. The ESN encouraged the sharing of information around the sectors. They also rolled out ESNs around practice areas. This is a new way of communicating. Updating information is seen in the context of the sector or practice. They've seen some good knowledge sharing on these sites that has led to additional work or better client service.
They've developed guides to help junior attorneys conduct industry research.
Another tool is after action reviews. There are four types:
- Client-facilitated
- Internal facilitated
- Internal-team reviews
- Internal self-assessments (partner)
A full debrief pulls together lessons learned, financial profiles, client insights, matter profile, market profile, and knowledge sharing. The market profile looks at matters that might be innovative and/or have a good story.
They are trying to embed the process of internal review into the way they do work.
They share reviews through improvement opportunities, lessons learnt stories, media opportunities, and the like. They look across lessons to identify common trends and issues, and try to fit the appropriate lesson learned to the level of the organization (sector, practice area, firm).
Risa Schwartz
Risa addressed some examples of successful legal km projects that involved clients. Unfortunately she was not able to provide the identity of the clients or firms involved. I have previously blogged about some of her work at Cisco.
Most law departments have a static deal room. A successful program at a legal department asked M&A attorneys. They said they were waiting for an email from outside counsel. Sometimes outside counsel don't know when the general counsel need what.
A simple SharePoint site let law firm attorneys update information about hot documents and key deal issues on a site that automatically notified in-house counsel. It was built jointly by law firm and in-house counsel. The technology saved a few weeks of time and a lot in legal bills as well.
In litigation people are desperate for information about related cases. In-house counsel may not be able to find information about comparable cases. Sometimes clients need law firms to build sites or themselves host sites with information about the matter.
Outside counsel can work with in-house counsel, asking what is useful for the business, starting with the general counsel and getting down to the individual counsel.
It's very difficult for in-house counsel to manage subsidiaries. Orrick's system identifies approved lawyers in different countries, for the subsidiaries.
Training needs to identify the business of the client. Some training programs have been built on client intranets. Some have dealbooks. Better dealbooks are on updated platforms such as wikis. Standard clauses, fallbacks, and negotiated points are all on these wikis. Outside counsel can be given access to the wiki, both to supply answers and to learn about the business. Discussion forums also might address specific topics such as clauses within sales contracts.
When an extranet is well-built, clients are willing to overlook their usual preference for sites that they host themselves.
Volunteering to conduct an information management or KM needs assessment at a client is a good way for a law firm km person to start the conversation with the in-house KM person.
Monday, August 27, 2012
ILTA Session, Using Document Management Systems for Knowledge Management
|
April Brousseau
April is discussing very traditional document-collection KM. Stikeman Elliot published KM content has its own client/matter numbers, searched through Reccomind. KM content flagged within document management system. Search allows filter and collection creation.
One lawyer transferred boxfuls of paper articles into a locked-down personal collection of scanned documents.
Stikeman sample documents system relies on "canned" searches in Recommind to access up-to-date samples.
They have set up alerts for people accessing content. She's had to call a few people who have been printing out lots of samples, it lets her provide targeted help.
Rick Krzyminski
Search is impossible in iManage 8.5. They have a KM database using SharePoint search, allowing search by different metadata specific to model documents. Handshake has indexed the KM iManage library.
As in regular SharePoint search, there is no filtering possible. Every practice area seems to want its precedents organized differently.
Set up a litigation pleading system that took advantage of "getting the first copy free." Their system allowed lawyers to submit .pdfs for electronic filing. The same system allowed filing access.
Chris Boyd
The challenge is not finding current documents, but finding past precedents. They want to market and sell all of the relevant firm experience. Lynne Simpson's point that law departments want KM to focus on getting law firm lawyers to work as efficiently as possible.
They combine DMS, Enterprise Search, and a Pleadings Index. Their experience is that attorneys aren't very good at applying metadata, and are primarily required to apply a matter number.
The Pleadings Index is primarily a chronological ranking of each final signed pleading. Seeing the final signed .pdf is really important for litigators and helps the case team get their documents quickly.
Case profile detail is maintained at the matter level. Secretaries are asked to maintain the case profile data. The detail can be used for firm experience search, firm precedent search,
Precedents can be filtered by judge or court, and can also find out what happened in the case (did we win that motion to dismiss?)
Eric Hunter
He's got a TRON / mafia theme going on. Has picked up the level of energy quite a bit.
He moved his firm entirely to the internet for document management. They are working with a UK vendor to build a DMS on top of Google Drive. Traditional shared sites are great for sharing information.
If we're going to bring clients into our DMS. He was inspired by John Alber's session last year "Making the Impossible Engagement Possible." Google+ is essentially an internal social network for his firm where lawyers can also share information with clients. They are using archived hangouts.
A big black eye on the whole Google approach is that you can't search contacts, calendars, documents, and social content. They are forming relationships with other vendors like HandShake.
Questions
People had questions about the problem with too much substantive good stuff being in the email system and ever getting filed or searcheable. One audience member has mandated email filing within 2 weeks, "file it or lose it."
Users don't put every substantive email, they wait for the conversation.
Users don't put every substantive email, they wait for the conversation.
Risa Schwartz suggests that email doesn't go easily into a DMS. It's better to have an enterprise search that searches wherever the email is.
ILTA Session: Beyond Extranets: What Clients Really Want
This is the first session of the Knowledge Management Peer Group track (I am a member of the KM PG Steering Committee). The following are my notes on the session (updated 8/28 with format improvements).
Mary Panetta is moderating the panel. This was a very impressive example of two law firms taking innovation to the next level of adding client value and firm profitability.
Panetta
Eight to ten years ago, extranets started to take off. She would have expected that innovative extranets would have developed further.
Experts here have innovated in client-facing KM.
What is the alignment between what law firms are offering and what law departments need? This may vary a lot and there may be different opportunities at different clients and firms.
Meredith Williams
A lot of what the keynote presented can be implemented through extranets. Challenge the norm. What's beyond the extranet? What do our clients not know they need? What are they asking for?
BakerConnect is a whole new Online Services Initiative that forms a collaborative base with clients. Some clients have a "post-it note" type problem where they don't know what they need yet.
In contrast to much traditional KM work, it's not about delivery of information, it's about delivering function. Functionality and information are not the same--it's about what you can do on the extranet.
Baker's hospital client system was driven by workflows around litigation holds.
KM became a profit center. These systems are also being used to sell to and acquire new clients.
She gets $ every year for attorneys to bill time to KM-related projects ($650,000 / year) in a Venture Fund Program.
There are three modules of the OSI:
--an LPM Platform
Baker wanted to be able to share tools or systems with clients, so their SharePoint 2010 is accessible to clients. They have one environment, one "collaboration sharing farm." Every practice area can share precedents, news, or vendor information with clients.
One example of what they are sharing is a "quick and easy guide to labor and employment law" that is essentially an expert / guided guidance system.
They have 10 or so toolkits. They've developed them with the lawyers in the firm, trying to match up what clients needed with what lawyers could provide. Clients in a beta program got it for free, they had to sit down and discuss what the clients needed and what they hated.
The toolkit also allows clients to maintain their own information on BakerConnect, for instance, using a Baker-provided document assembly system, with the client's lawyers creating the work product.
There's a video of Meredith demonstrating one of the toolkits on BakerDonelson.com .
They use Contract Express, and "DocMinder" for a date licensing system. The client doesn't know who the vendor is.
Some of the biggest clients are also provided data mapping. They offer a lot of compliance training to clients, along with tracking for that.
Risks
They are almost acting like a software company for the client.
They have to have licensing discussions because these may not be ordinary uses of the tools.
Each client has a separate collection.
Encryption and security must be addressed with industry-specific standards, such as securities regulations, HIPAA, and so forth.
They are creating a subsidiary to manage the compliance training. That way non-clients can access & pay for compliance programs.
They are looking at automating site provision, and also are rolling out a mobile platform in February. Clients are asking for it.
Scott Rechtschaffen
Littler's CaseSmart program was addressed last year at ILTA. In Labor & Employment a lot more of the work is being commoditized. They took on administrative charge work for a big client and developed an alternative staffing and information management system. It includes automated document generation and tracking of what people were doing.
They thought the value was in the technology.
What clients really were interested in was the dashboards. They could look at efficiency metrics, but they also got actionable intelligence about the type of cases they were having and where. If law departments did this type of work themselves, it wouldn't be privileged.
Clients also want access to "on-demand" information. Their system is called "Littler GPS," they cover 65 subject areas that are maintained for 52+ jurisdictions. It includes links to new legislation (fed by research & library services team). At the bottom is Littler's analysis of the legislation, including what companies should do about new legislation and so forth.
A third product is access to "on-demand" answers. They want answers quicker than email. They offer subscriptions to another extranet. They've added Q & A forums where clients can ask Littler attorneys questions. For instance, benefits people had lots of people answering questions from employees and can come to the forum and find the answer.
General liability and cyber insurance is a must.
They want KM to help firms target information delivery to in-house counsel.
This session comes with a one-page outline prepared by the panelists in advance. It lays out ideas about what law firm clients might be looking for from law firm km, namely, assistance with precedents, current awareness, technology implementation, professional development, KM, matter management, and on-line legal advice. It also lays out a few approaches for km teams that might want to get started.
The panel is very distinguished. 2011 KM Distinguished Peer Scott Rechshaffen is joined by 2010-2011 ILTA Conference Co-Chair Meredith Williams and DuPont general counsel Lynne Simpson.
The panel is very distinguished. 2011 KM Distinguished Peer Scott Rechshaffen is joined by 2010-2011 ILTA Conference Co-Chair Meredith Williams and DuPont general counsel Lynne Simpson.
Mary Panetta is moderating the panel. This was a very impressive example of two law firms taking innovation to the next level of adding client value and firm profitability.
Panetta
Eight to ten years ago, extranets started to take off. She would have expected that innovative extranets would have developed further.
Experts here have innovated in client-facing KM.
What is the alignment between what law firms are offering and what law departments need? This may vary a lot and there may be different opportunities at different clients and firms.
Meredith Williams
A lot of what the keynote presented can be implemented through extranets. Challenge the norm. What's beyond the extranet? What do our clients not know they need? What are they asking for?
BakerConnect is a whole new Online Services Initiative that forms a collaborative base with clients. Some clients have a "post-it note" type problem where they don't know what they need yet.
In contrast to much traditional KM work, it's not about delivery of information, it's about delivering function. Functionality and information are not the same--it's about what you can do on the extranet.
Baker's hospital client system was driven by workflows around litigation holds.
KM became a profit center. These systems are also being used to sell to and acquire new clients.
She gets $ every year for attorneys to bill time to KM-related projects ($650,000 / year) in a Venture Fund Program.
There are three modules of the OSI:
--an LPM Platform
--Practice sharing via a collaborative farm
--practice toolkits
Baker wanted to be able to share tools or systems with clients, so their SharePoint 2010 is accessible to clients. They have one environment, one "collaboration sharing farm." Every practice area can share precedents, news, or vendor information with clients.
One example of what they are sharing is a "quick and easy guide to labor and employment law" that is essentially an expert / guided guidance system.
They have 10 or so toolkits. They've developed them with the lawyers in the firm, trying to match up what clients needed with what lawyers could provide. Clients in a beta program got it for free, they had to sit down and discuss what the clients needed and what they hated.
The toolkit also allows clients to maintain their own information on BakerConnect, for instance, using a Baker-provided document assembly system, with the client's lawyers creating the work product.
There's a video of Meredith demonstrating one of the toolkits on BakerDonelson.com .
They use Contract Express, and "DocMinder" for a date licensing system. The client doesn't know who the vendor is.
Some of the biggest clients are also provided data mapping. They offer a lot of compliance training to clients, along with tracking for that.
Risks
They are almost acting like a software company for the client.
They have to have licensing discussions because these may not be ordinary uses of the tools.
Client data may not be work product. It may not be covered by typical insurance. They obtained "cyberlaw insurance." They asked what it would cost to notify people in the event of a breach ($250-500/person).
Each client has a separate collection.
Encryption and security must be addressed with industry-specific standards, such as securities regulations, HIPAA, and so forth.
They are creating a subsidiary to manage the compliance training. That way non-clients can access & pay for compliance programs.
They are looking at automating site provision, and also are rolling out a mobile platform in February. Clients are asking for it.
Scott Rechtschaffen
Littler's CaseSmart program was addressed last year at ILTA. In Labor & Employment a lot more of the work is being commoditized. They took on administrative charge work for a big client and developed an alternative staffing and information management system. It includes automated document generation and tracking of what people were doing.
They thought the value was in the technology.
What clients really were interested in was the dashboards. They could look at efficiency metrics, but they also got actionable intelligence about the type of cases they were having and where. If law departments did this type of work themselves, it wouldn't be privileged.
Dashboards were driven by what the clients were looking for. In one case they are helping in-house counsel drastically reduce the time required for compliance and auditing reports.
Clients also want access to "on-demand" information. Their system is called "Littler GPS," they cover 65 subject areas that are maintained for 52+ jurisdictions. It includes links to new legislation (fed by research & library services team). At the bottom is Littler's analysis of the legislation, including what companies should do about new legislation and so forth.
A third product is access to "on-demand" answers. They want answers quicker than email. They offer subscriptions to another extranet. They've added Q & A forums where clients can ask Littler attorneys questions. For instance, benefits people had lots of people answering questions from employees and can come to the forum and find the answer.
General liability and cyber insurance is a must.
Lynne Simpson
Her backup slides are on paper, Scott's and Meredith's are on iPads. That represents the typical difference between law firms and law departments.
Every client is different. DuPont is in safety & health, nutrition, and other industries, with 70,000 employees, 300+ legal counsel in 90 countries. Most are commercial attorneys, but they also have litigation, environmental, and labor experts in-house. They have about 40 law firms in a "partner network," primarily in litigation and big deals.
What do clients want from KM?
They want law firms to focus on capturing knowledge and providing very efficient service. That's more important to most in-house counsel than logging in to an extranet.
They want KM to help firms target information delivery to in-house counsel.
They don't want another place to go for information. Tokens and password fumbling is the norm.
Clients appreciate having attorneys come in and present on timely topics. It especially matters that the topics is relevant to the business and important right then.
DuPont's business is moving more towards consumer products. Law firms that noticed that and targeted information provided in-house counsel at consumer issues benefitted.
Clients appreciate having attorneys come in and present on timely topics. It especially matters that the topics is relevant to the business and important right then.
DuPont's business is moving more towards consumer products. Law firms that noticed that and targeted information provided in-house counsel at consumer issues benefitted.
A lot of the information we house for clients is subject to the client's security requirements. It may require two-factor authentication and so forth.
Their "EDGE" system requires a token to access.
Up front it shows budget against actuals (updated by a manual process). It houses calendar information, depositions, exhibits, and pleadings. Outside counsel can access or join.
The system is, in Lynne's words, "ancient."
Questions
An audience member asked how the law firm folk convince the attorneys to get in front of attorneys.
Meredith has had to fight to get in front of clients. She had practiced as a corporate attorney, and hired litigation KM people to help with that. She needed a success story.
At Baker, they have a KM or LPM person at every pitch to discuss efficiencies.
Meredith reports to a "Strategic Planning Officer" what gets innovation.
Their "EDGE" system requires a token to access.
Up front it shows budget against actuals (updated by a manual process). It houses calendar information, depositions, exhibits, and pleadings. Outside counsel can access or join.
The system is, in Lynne's words, "ancient."
Questions
An audience member asked how the law firm folk convince the attorneys to get in front of attorneys.
Meredith has had to fight to get in front of clients. She had practiced as a corporate attorney, and hired litigation KM people to help with that. She needed a success story.
At Baker, they have a KM or LPM person at every pitch to discuss efficiencies.
Meredith reports to a "Strategic Planning Officer" what gets innovation.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Client-Facing Knowledge Management
I'm continuing in a KM peer group meeting in a discussion on client-facing knowledge management. There was a good presentation about client facing KM including a very impressive instance of law department and law firm collaboration in KM, training, and beyond.
How can client-facing KM add value and get clients to work more closely with the firm?
KM is perceived as delivering value to internal clients. It can also be structured to deliver value directly to clients.
Our natural tendency may be to focus on the internal clients but there are opportunities with external clients.
It is hard to identify value--"one man's meat [tofu] is another man's poison." Qualitative measurements of value are more appropriate but entail repeated conversations. Ask if particular KM initiatives are delivering value.
What will value look like in the future? Is the recession a temporary dip or a transformational event?
Clients' demands have clearly changed as a result of the recession.
There are three tiers of client-facing opportunities. Every client expects firms to have models, samples, and extranets as commodity services. Above that some KM initiative have brand distinguishing initiatives (e.g., "Blue Flag"). Above that are "bespoke" KM tools such as expert systems that can identify answers or advice to clients through a dialogue (as those discussed at ILTA). Bespoke systems are the most challenging and the most rewarding.
You can't charge for commodity level of services.
Quoting the ACC Value Challenge, "corporate clients want and need value driven, high quality legal services that deliver solutions for a reasonable cost and develop lawyers as counselors (not just content-providers), advocates (not just process-doers) and professional partners." "The problem is not cost per se, but the fact that cost is disconnected from value."
GCs historically have not had good answers when asked for a definite number for annual legal spend. It is not always the lowest cost that a GC looks for, as a predictable cost is of high value to them as well.
What can KM do?
A specific client will have a specific view of what KM can do for them. One classic challenge is resistance from the relationship partner in getting information about what the client needs. Can you proactively get information about KM needs of client? KM managers would have to pitch the internal client. You need to be persistent. It's acceptable to start with small initiatives and build from there.
Case Study
A large company had a GC who had come from a large firm with a strong KM program. He wanted to build a stronger legal department that would allow the in-house team to do more of the legal work themselves. They developed a KM strategy for five business units in six weeks.
Initiatives included a portal, knowledge bank, matter management, expertise management, and enterprise search. They needed some place where the hundreds of in-house lawyers could share knowledge. They created a global knowledge management officer. The GKMO built a global network of "knowledge champions" in different business units. The law department had set of objectives that, after the GKMO came in, included concrete KM goals. KM was seen as a way to link outside counsel and the law department. They have built out four of the five systems (leaving matter management for future development). The company now has sophisticated internal knowledge management.
Their goal was to integrate law department and law firm systems seamlessly through a personalized portal. It's hard for clients to have a view of the law firm's work if they have to visit multiple portals each with their own passwords. They want to be able to search their internal and law-firm created content in their own portal. They also wanted a comprehensive training portfolio.
The value they were seeking was in making their lawyers more effective and efficient; managing their legal spend; improving their lawyers' skill levels; and expanding their knowledge repositories.
One law firm that had a large client team for that company was asked to provide a training program. The discussion started with substantive KM (forms, models and samples) but expanded into communication models, e-billing, and more.
After some development the two had a day-long summit with extensive participation by senior leaders on both sides. The goals for the summit was to deepen the relationship, find some mutually beneficial outcomes, and become a higher performing virtual team. The firm developed bios for the law department staff. The conversation was very valuable. The summit gave each side a better understanding of the drivers in each enterprise. There are now formal client team coordinators for other clients.
The law firm's KM team had been formulating its strategy for providing KM support. The big connection was on the training front. KM had involved training, both substantively and in terms of training processes. KM participated in trainings by including model documents in them and by quarterbacking the communications (with the marketing department). The firm has also proposed managing CLE credits for the law department. They also found third-party trainings that law department staff might be interested in and also found and listed law department staff's speaking engagements. Increasing awareness of the law department staff's activities led to more potential contact points.
Future challenges include a client request for concise regular updates on matter status and very targeted, edited current awareness information, based on what client's issues are.
The partnership is a success because both knowledge initiatives were trying to be stronger. The training program has met the law department's needs for developing their own skills (a corporate initiative that has fed into the legal department's initiative). They have complex multifaceted training goals. And the law firm lawyers have been showcasing their expertise in the trainings and through the forms and samples, as well as keeping the firm on the increasingly shorter list of outside counsel.
Success factors were:
How can client-facing KM add value and get clients to work more closely with the firm?
KM is perceived as delivering value to internal clients. It can also be structured to deliver value directly to clients.
Our natural tendency may be to focus on the internal clients but there are opportunities with external clients.
It is hard to identify value--"one man's meat [tofu] is another man's poison." Qualitative measurements of value are more appropriate but entail repeated conversations. Ask if particular KM initiatives are delivering value.
What will value look like in the future? Is the recession a temporary dip or a transformational event?
Clients' demands have clearly changed as a result of the recession.
There are three tiers of client-facing opportunities. Every client expects firms to have models, samples, and extranets as commodity services. Above that some KM initiative have brand distinguishing initiatives (e.g., "Blue Flag"). Above that are "bespoke" KM tools such as expert systems that can identify answers or advice to clients through a dialogue (as those discussed at ILTA). Bespoke systems are the most challenging and the most rewarding.
You can't charge for commodity level of services.
Quoting the ACC Value Challenge, "corporate clients want and need value driven, high quality legal services that deliver solutions for a reasonable cost and develop lawyers as counselors (not just content-providers), advocates (not just process-doers) and professional partners." "The problem is not cost per se, but the fact that cost is disconnected from value."
GCs historically have not had good answers when asked for a definite number for annual legal spend. It is not always the lowest cost that a GC looks for, as a predictable cost is of high value to them as well.
What can KM do?
A specific client will have a specific view of what KM can do for them. One classic challenge is resistance from the relationship partner in getting information about what the client needs. Can you proactively get information about KM needs of client? KM managers would have to pitch the internal client. You need to be persistent. It's acceptable to start with small initiatives and build from there.
Case Study
A large company had a GC who had come from a large firm with a strong KM program. He wanted to build a stronger legal department that would allow the in-house team to do more of the legal work themselves. They developed a KM strategy for five business units in six weeks.
Initiatives included a portal, knowledge bank, matter management, expertise management, and enterprise search. They needed some place where the hundreds of in-house lawyers could share knowledge. They created a global knowledge management officer. The GKMO built a global network of "knowledge champions" in different business units. The law department had set of objectives that, after the GKMO came in, included concrete KM goals. KM was seen as a way to link outside counsel and the law department. They have built out four of the five systems (leaving matter management for future development). The company now has sophisticated internal knowledge management.
Their goal was to integrate law department and law firm systems seamlessly through a personalized portal. It's hard for clients to have a view of the law firm's work if they have to visit multiple portals each with their own passwords. They want to be able to search their internal and law-firm created content in their own portal. They also wanted a comprehensive training portfolio.
The value they were seeking was in making their lawyers more effective and efficient; managing their legal spend; improving their lawyers' skill levels; and expanding their knowledge repositories.
One law firm that had a large client team for that company was asked to provide a training program. The discussion started with substantive KM (forms, models and samples) but expanded into communication models, e-billing, and more.
After some development the two had a day-long summit with extensive participation by senior leaders on both sides. The goals for the summit was to deepen the relationship, find some mutually beneficial outcomes, and become a higher performing virtual team. The firm developed bios for the law department staff. The conversation was very valuable. The summit gave each side a better understanding of the drivers in each enterprise. There are now formal client team coordinators for other clients.
The law firm's KM team had been formulating its strategy for providing KM support. The big connection was on the training front. KM had involved training, both substantively and in terms of training processes. KM participated in trainings by including model documents in them and by quarterbacking the communications (with the marketing department). The firm has also proposed managing CLE credits for the law department. They also found third-party trainings that law department staff might be interested in and also found and listed law department staff's speaking engagements. Increasing awareness of the law department staff's activities led to more potential contact points.
Future challenges include a client request for concise regular updates on matter status and very targeted, edited current awareness information, based on what client's issues are.
The partnership is a success because both knowledge initiatives were trying to be stronger. The training program has met the law department's needs for developing their own skills (a corporate initiative that has fed into the legal department's initiative). They have complex multifaceted training goals. And the law firm lawyers have been showcasing their expertise in the trainings and through the forms and samples, as well as keeping the firm on the increasingly shorter list of outside counsel.
Success factors were:
- Client's specific need
- Firm skills and resources that met the need
- In the law firm, lawyers, IT, KM, Business Development, and Professional Development worked in partnership
- Client perception of value added
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Corresponding with Cornelius on Collaboration with Clients
In a post earlier this week Doug Cornelius (now over at Compliance Building) hit the extranet nail on the head by identifying the primary obstacles and benefits to extranet collaboration. His post sparked a flurry of activity with Luis Suarez of IBM making enticing comments about LotusLive (I have yet to check it out although I do note that now it is, in fact, live).
At ILTA 08 I heard of some firm-provided extranets through which clients obtained some access to up-to-date billing and fee information. Although it had to be done on a one-off basis, the clients who received that information valued it highly.
In addition to the instance of the large deal that requires very detailed item-level security access control, products liability litigation provides another extranet use case. There a whole set of cases revolves around a recurring group of experts, expert reports, plaintiff's attorneys, coordinating counsel, and local counsel. From the defense perspective, there is great value in aggregating information from many different people (such as local and coordinating counsel from law firms) who are repeatedly interacting with the same players and some of the same documents; you would think that could happen more easily on an extranet, though perhaps the logistical issues you note are a challenging barrier.
For their own marketing and KM needs, firms such as mine may already have collected information about the matters that clients also need and would like to have. If firms can aggregate and display (on an extranet) in a robust way rich sets of information about a lot of cases they handle for a major client, they are providing more value to the clients. That may initially be more of an information-gathering and reporting problem, but even this type of information could be made more useful through an interactive and collaborative online environment.
At ILTA 08 I heard of some firm-provided extranets through which clients obtained some access to up-to-date billing and fee information. Although it had to be done on a one-off basis, the clients who received that information valued it highly.
In addition to the instance of the large deal that requires very detailed item-level security access control, products liability litigation provides another extranet use case. There a whole set of cases revolves around a recurring group of experts, expert reports, plaintiff's attorneys, coordinating counsel, and local counsel. From the defense perspective, there is great value in aggregating information from many different people (such as local and coordinating counsel from law firms) who are repeatedly interacting with the same players and some of the same documents; you would think that could happen more easily on an extranet, though perhaps the logistical issues you note are a challenging barrier.
For their own marketing and KM needs, firms such as mine may already have collected information about the matters that clients also need and would like to have. If firms can aggregate and display (on an extranet) in a robust way rich sets of information about a lot of cases they handle for a major client, they are providing more value to the clients. That may initially be more of an information-gathering and reporting problem, but even this type of information could be made more useful through an interactive and collaborative online environment.
Monday, February 2, 2009
LegalTech report--KM from a Practicing Attorney Perspective
- High value KM approaches
- KM tool evolution
- How KM helps attorneys practice more effectively
Scott Rechtschaffen, Managing Shareholder, Littler Mendelson
Rachelle Rennagel, Chief Knowledge Officer, Sheppard Mullin
This session conflicted with most of the "What is Twitter and How Can I Use It" session. LawyerKM and Mary Abraham deserted me for there, so I'm staying on the bridge.
Rachelle Rennagel
Rachelle wanted to present some thoughts and techniques that she's used to further KM at Sheppard Mullin. She provided some excellent strategy and tactics but did not go into much detail about the pieces of her particular projects.
What can we do given the reality of the economy?
Rachelle also provides litigation support and supervises e-discovery.
As CKO she does not "know everything" but she supports lawyers and other operational gruops. She "helps speak the geek" for the lawyers and "speak the lawyer" for the geek.
She has four mantras:
- Make firm-wide knowledge more accessible
- Train, train, train
- Cultural sensitivity and generational leverage
- Serve the law firm client by increasing efficiency and profitability
Work within existing firm processes. Gradually erode less efficient processes.
Two primary KM opportunities are supporting alternative billing arrangements, and attorney prospecting/opportunity management. "This is the year of client development."
KM can supply the answer to the question, "How do we make sure that we are making money under alternative arrangements?"
In this economy it is getting easier to find people to contribute to formal knowledge-sharing programs.
Sheppard Mullin is using client dashboards to push data to lawyers about clients and prospective clients.
There remain aspects of their current software (e.g., Sharepoint) that they haven't fully leveraged.
She gets on partner meeting schedules and presents on a topic they care about; she meets with the executive committee. She also does one-on-one meetings with lawyers to get them to understand email risks.
Rachelle thinks this is also a good time to be addressing risk management technology like records management, email management, and litigation holds. Attorneys use email to store advice to clients and more.
She is working with their electronic librarian to create an internal RSS feed for their lawyers.
They are working on "ShMutter" (Shepard Mullin internal Twitter).
Workflow is an amazing effective process. How do we automate new hire or matter intake processes? Spending time keying in the same information multiple times in the HR process is not efficient. She also works on contract management.
Rachelle appears to be taking the approach, be useful and helpful where she can, regardless of how close or far that activity is to traditional knowledge management activities. More power to her for that.
Scott Rechtschaffen
From my perspective, for a U.S. firm of its size, Littler has an unusually large and succesful knowledge management team. This may be due in part to their focus on labor & employment work, in which "traditional" KM organization and knowledge-gathering efforts may be more succesful. Their team's success is also no doubt due to the energy and acuity of the team leader.
Scott said that Littler attorneys are "scattered" throughout many offices in many states. They have 9 dedicated KM attorneys, including an attorney elevated to the partnership through the KM track. He does not expect hires to be tech-savvy.
He works most closely on IT/Web Development, client relations/marketing, and professional development. Clients are increasingly wanting to see depth of content as a way of establishing expertise.
Their KM attorneys are:
- Trainers
- KM concierge
- KM evangalists
In the concierge role, if an attorney is too busy to find something, or don't know how, the KM group does. One attorney is assigned as gatekeeper. They tracks number of attorney inquiries (3,000 last year).
Small low-hanging fruit can advance the case that KM should be a part of the operations (management?) of a law firm.
One example is an arbitrator database and an international lawyer database. Who knows X arbitrator in St. Louis?
They are using customized software to manage class action discovery (interviews) and generate interview templates. DealBuilder is being used to generate case-specific information off of a standardized form.
Littler Mendelson has a large subscription-based client-facing KM project on a number of employment law toics; it includes action items. It works because clients know it's reliable, they aren't paying by the hour, and clients can brand it themselves. The KM group also publishes hard-copy and CD on international employment and labor law (and also guides to particular states). They put out about 15,000 pages of content all told. Their class action practice just published a book. It's a great tool for the practice. He would like to eventually move some of these to a wiki. They also do "ASAP" client alerts. There are four firm-sponsored blogs.
Littler Mendelson was an early contributor to Legal On-Ramp. KM attorneys act as mediators and engagers, alerting attorneys to particular on-line conversations relevant to their practice.
LM has an alumni site. It is interactive--they run MCLE programs for alumni through this site.
KM can help enable quick and accurate responses to client inquiries.
Attorneys want to find people with particular expertise. As firm grows it's harder to know who is the resident firm expert on particular topics.
Their matter page / team site (built on Sharepoint 2007) integrates RSS feeds. Partners wanted a box to identify the objective / strategy of the matter in a few sentences. It also shows the (sharepoint) task lists, a piece of functionality I've been investigating.
Their document management search integrates Recommind and West KM. The people / expertise search integrates DMS documents, bios, narrative time entries, and industry information from Elite.
They will be requiring that any event with 20+ attorneys to be listed on a firm-wide calendar.
Scott's grasp of metrics and results show that he has no difficulty in proving value to his partners and his firm.
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