ILTA 2010--Email Management Panel

I am returning to ILTA Conference, this year held in Las Vegas, and appearing on two panels. In both we'll be addressing a subject that I've been working with a lot this year. In this post I'll address email management, a huge KM concern.

Attorneys increasingly live in Outlook (sorry Lotus Notesians) and use it not just for tasks and team communications but to transmit key documents to clients and opposing counsel. Where those documents did not originate in client/matter-centric document management systems, vital context about those documents, and the documents themselves, are potentially lost as a searcheable treasure trove in the firm's collective information pool. While I believe that there are better ways of doing many things done by email (such collaboration, knowledge-sharing, broadcasting), the email dragon for client work is here to stay, not slay, and there is no getting around that. Making the email repository--or at least the client file portion of it--matter-centric is therefore a vital KM task. Matter-centric email should also go a long way to addressing the refindability and accessibility of email to the working attorney, an issue that many of them consider a major "pain point."

It's not just KM. IT also struggles with the sheer volume and size of email; and, it drives records and risk management people crazy.

On Tuesday morning at 9 AM, Ironwood 2, I'll be moderating a panel titled "Dreams Can Come True: E-mail Management Success Stories." Slides are already available. The panelists come from varied technological and business backgrounds, but have three intriguing success stories. They have started to accomplish the goal of creating a matter-centric environment in strikingly different ways, with none of them going the "plain vanilla" route of implementing iManage's "WorkSite Email Management."

The presenters are:

• Ana Schuett, Practice Technology Support Manager - Hunton & Williams
• Chris Romano, CIO, Ward and Smith, P.A.
• Derek Schueren, Vice President of Business Development (Co-Founder)- Recommind

Hunton & Williams, a large firm, has leveraged Baker Robbins' FastFiler tool in conjunction with Autonomy's iManage document management system. Ward & Smith, a mid-sized firm, has implemented cloud-based email management through NetDocuments. And Recommind's Decisiv tool, which I believe can be implemented with or without a document management system like iManage, offers predictive filing and improved organization of email threads.

I hope you can join us!