ILTA Session: Missing The Point, And Finding It Again

The following are my notes on an excellent, and, as promised, provocative session with John Alber, drawing lessons from outside the legal industry and attempting to apply them to legal KM and IT.

John started in law business in 1979, he became a partner at Bryan Cave.  He left to run a transportation business and sold it right before the dot.com crash.

His session is intentionally provocative, intended as a "sharp stick in the eye."  He wants to challenge how we do our work and what we call it.

He took a law school class on phenomenology. The idea was to investigate a term and deconstruct it.  (They spent two weeks on the word "charm.") He's deconstructing knowledge management.

Phenomenological approach asks what the terms says about our choices. With the phrase "knowledge management," people will leave us alone, but that's OK, because we don't like to be bothered by other people about what we do.  We're very good at what we do even though it's very hard to explain.

We can manage any kind of knowledge, except maybe if it has to do with numbers, because we don't like numbers, and that might be financial management.

KM's name declares its intention.  KM and other technology functions are usually:

• Internally focused (introverted)
• Insulated from everyday business of the firm
• Attenuated connection to revenue
• Expensive in terms of capital and operations
• No clear path to return cost of capital
• Few if any metrics connected to the business of the firm 

What does search engine usage mean to the business of the firm?

Firms don't usually talk about IT or KM at the top level.  They do articulate its value.

What Does This Matter?

KM headcount is revenue sensitive, even more sensitive than revenue.

KM is a "felt" need rather than a profit-driven need.  Lawyers say they need to have it.

If KM drove profitability the same way R&D does.  When revenue drops, people often increase investment in R&D, as they are looking for new ways to make money.

We're not doing something right if KM headcount goes down with revenue.

Jeff Rovner referred to Jim Johnson's statement that business development investment drops off first in a downturn.  In most law firms business development does not develop business (he's not referring to his own firm's BD).

It's hard to think outside of our group, to look at what others are doing.

What We Could Call Ourselves

MYLB "Making You Look Brilliant"
MLLB "Making Lawyers Look Brilliant""

Imagine that KM doesn't just manage knowledge. Imagine KM is a business unit that increases knowledge. It helps us understand what we do best and how we can best help our clients.  It helps us make better decisions.  KM can be profoundly connected to profitability.

Recommends "Does IT Matter" by Nicholas G. Carr.  IT can only productivity when it's combined with broader changes in business practice, competition, and regulatory control.  In isolation, it is inert.

Accenture 

Accenture arose out the accounting practice of Arthur Andersen.  AA tried to develop computer competence in 1951.  It was asked to study GE's manual payroll process and help automate it at Appliance Park in Kentucky.  AA Consulting, the IT function of Anderson, grew to be larger than the underlying business. It split from AA in 2000.  Some of the risky behavior that the auditing partners began to do (that led to AA's downfall) was driven by the differences between profits for partners.  The original AA was liquidated in 2002 as a consequence of the Enron scandal, and AA Consulting became Accenture.  They now employ 250,000 consultants.

Accenture does what we do.  They work with very busy professionals who bill by the hour.  They deliver technology, although their first delivery of technology was directed outwards.  They train.  Accenture manages knowledge in lots of areas.

Accenture was very innovative at the core.  Legal IT/KM by contrast is risk-averse. Accenture has taken risks in order to innovate.

There's a book on training at Accenture called "Return on Learning."

Accenture claimed a 353% annual return on investment in learning.

At the time of its IPO, Accenture was spending $700 million/year on training.  They were asked to cut the budget in half, still deliver great training, and measure profitability (e.g., "run it like a business.")

They had to measure "employee value" and were asked to measure and maximize it.

They had to create a governance and sponsorship structure to let learning organization respond to the business.  They also developed relationships with key decision makers, making sure learning was on their agenda.

"Getting management buy-in"' is a shallow level of connection to the business.  The Accenture "V-Model for Learning and Knowledge Management" is a much deeper connection.  Hundreds of people throughout the organization are involved in each training.

Another recommended paper is "Six Decisions IT Should Never Make."  Ross & Weill from HBR.

Applying Accenture Lessons

Training on running on Word is different than training on running a deal.  The latter includes skills like:

--Effective collaboration on drafting
--How to organize and share your work
--How to memorialze lessons and work product

Getting the Accenture Level of Engagement

KM can be directed squarely at profitability and its results can be measured.  They had a set of best practices set up for doing matter work and could compare matters that used those with ones that didn't.  Traditionally managed AFAs did not, on average, break even, those using the best practices were quite profitable.

How can law firms help clients attack the total client legal spend.  Total spend includes risk management, fees to main firms, eDiscovery costs, transaction costs, settlement costs, etc.

Ask each quarter "what are we trying to do this quarter?" Ask if they will help KM figure out how KM can help with that, in other words, "Help us figure out how best to drive you to that goal.".  What matters is the questions you ask and of whom you ask.

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:

• Felicity Badcock, King & Wood Mallesons
• Risa Schwartz
• Sally Gonzalez, CIO, SNR Denton

This session by an all-star set of knowledge management leaders addressed client perspectives on internal initiatives and highlighted some successful KM initiaves in law firms and law departments.  What follows are my notes from their session at ILTA conference today.

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)

The theory is that the more a firm understands about the work that it's done the more it can use the information to improve service on the next matter.

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.

ILTA Session: Dashboards and Warehouses

These are my notes from the fifth session in the KM track, "Data Warehouses, Dashboards and Data Integration:  Delivering Actionable Business Intelligence."  It was pretty tech-heavy, as dashboards rely on clean data and data warehouses were also addressed.  Hashtag was #kmpg5.

Session link: 

Formal Description:

The ability to deliver actionable data to decision makers in anticipation of upcoming business cycles is the key to success in a highly competitive marketplace. Case studies will be presented with a focus on data warehousing and data integration to deliver business intelligence using easy-to-consume dashboards. We will hear from CIOs, KM practitioners and application developers who are leading the charge in delivering and using real-time data to facilitate strategic decision-making.

Speakers:

Steve Lewis - Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson LLP Douglas Horton - Handshake Software Tracy Elmblad - Bingham McCutchen Gina Lynch - Bingham McCutchen

Gina Lynch

Gina Lynch is the Global Director of Knowledge Services at Bingham, my former firm (1997-2002).  She is a wry and effective presenter.

Bingham has had rapid growth from 2000 to the present and has merged with many firms.

The new intranet was intended to create a new powerful communications platform, harmonize the Bingham community, and increase productivity and efficiency.  They had to promise that the new intranet would save the firm time and money.  

KM and KS were good facilitators for the project.  They are good at listening and distill customer needs from a conversation.  "They tell us what they want, we know what they need."'  

Finance is really important for dashboards.  You need to take them to lunch and buy them big expensive presents.  

The project needed to come out as a firm project, not a KM or IT project.  Key stakeholders needed to be in the loop about providing their information.

Their home page comes up with "news of the day," human interest or updates, followed by firm news.  The front screen emphasizes search.

Partners want long and short-term financial data.  What was it like 3, 6, 12 months ago? They want WIP, AR, hours, revenue, realization, and receipts.  They also wanted easy access to Elite data.  

Accounting wants to provide partners easy access to Elite data, billing reminders, and self-service FAQs. 

The dashboard has stoplights and bar charts.  Clicking on an image pulls up details.  Green-yellow-red for good-danger-bad.  It has billable hours, WIP and A/R, and Receipts, Billing & Realization.

What does a new partner need?

New partners need a detailed view of information about client.  

The client "entry" view shows amount of receipts and realization with big bars for different departments for multiple clients.  They can adjust the time period.  A client lookup searches by name and number, or you can filter by group, practice area, and industry.

Client detail view shows general information, time value, engagement, and the rate agreements.  

Department Pages  

Focus groups said they wanted easy access to applications, password management, and engagement letter on department pages.  

People don't really tell the truth in focus groups.  

According to the searches, they want to know "what I am going to eat, when do I get paid, when can I retire." 

Their individual view shows personal information such as hire date, timekeeper number, insurance, payroll schedule, holiday amount, retirement balance.

Partners really wanted cash flow schedule and payroll stubs.  

They learned that intranets need to be skinny.  Their approach is to identify the small bits of information that people really use (provide functionality instead of information?).  

Steve Lewis

Fried Frank's intranet focus started with addressing findability and uniformity, then switched to focus on associates, then partners, matter, and practice management.

Associates cared about where they were in relation to their peers, and also about finding sample work product.  Fried Frank chose Lexis Search Advantage.  

Their new intranet focused at the highest level on Recruitment, Revenue, and Recognition.  

The quality of the work is assumed.  You don't get in front of big clients unless you can do the quality of the work.  We won't survive unless we can do our work much, much more efficiently.  The chairman of Fried Frank feels that the new intranet is a very serious part of that effort.  

The chairman or the managing partner presented the intranet to everyone in the firm.  It was a very significant lawyer-facing project.

The home page had three sections, top stories, firm news, and calendar, designed by Right Hat.  Four columns for today and the next three days, with scrolling forward and back available.  

Tabs show "My View", "My Practice," "Clients" and "Firm."

My view shows subscriptions, watches, editorially provided content, alerts, and the like.

Fried Frank concentrated less on dashboards and more on a lot of information on the screen at one time, e.g., My Hours, My Clients, etc.  They have a "backlog summary" showing A/R for partners.

The client pages showed the partners what the firm wanted them to pursue.

Practice group pages show recent matters, media mentions, new hires, bylined articles, and the like.

Tracy Emblad

She's addressing development of the HR dashboard and the data warehouse.

They worked closely with Handshake, SharePoint could not have done what they wanted out of the box.  

They used Silverlight as well, which worked fine until iPads came along.  

She feels that every firm should have a data warehouse.  It's really important to get it into a place where it's easy to consume.  It's designed to make extraction and analysis simple.  A good warehouse turns data into a reliable firm asset.  It can also track data changes, which may not be possible in other systems.

It's one point of access and entry.  It can also be clean and trusted, and provides application-neutral data.  Some systems can only feed information in at night.  A warehouse can be queried at any time.  It's designed for high access speed. You don't have to be a database administrative to create query tools.  

Their warehouse has employee data like pictures, spouses, client/matter data, ethical wall information, etc., etc.

Getting data into a warehouse typically involves a business question or problem.  Data gets out by reports, dashboards, excel exports, etc.  

They've had measurable gains in productivity, efficiency, customer service, and compliance from their dashboards.

They watch metrics on who uses what.  Dashboards are overtaking news in popularity.

Douglas Horton

He's from Handshake.  Data integration entails pulling information from a variety of firm systems.  

We've come a long way with technology.   He talks about being called into a PI firm that had burned up an "Altos" computer by storing it in a broom closet.  

You address many of the same issues with mobile devices.  Usability is key.  Nobody is delivering dashboards by mobile (ed.--except Mallesons).  Touching is less precise than mouse clicks.  Small target areas can be a real problem.  

ILTA Demo: Potential Advances In Document Version Control and Editing

At first glance the Litera IDS product appears to be a significant improvement over now-standard legal industry methods of collaborating around drafting Word documents.  Essentially it differentiates between document owners and revisers in how documents are revised, and also does a better job at tracking who wants to add what. It has the potential to extend advanced Google-Docs style editing and track changes into a law firm DMS environment, with an extra layer of legal-style control and security.  I attended a demo today at the International Legal Technology Association and what follows is my notes on that demo.

Norm Thomas introduced the product.
 
Collaboration in their view is working on a document at the same time while keeping track of who contributed what.  Drafting documents through exchanging copies of documents through email doesn't work (I agree).
Document drafting through an extranet is limiting because everyone downloads a copy, and then loads it back up.   Editing a document in Litera IDS creates a database of changes, it doesn't actually change the document directly.  The edits are being collected.  People can be made aware of changes by others.  People can also hide other's revisions or limit editing on particular sections of documents.
You can attach workflow to editing, including deadlines. 

It allows everyone to work on the same document without modifying until the document owner goes through and accepts/reject in one fell swoop, creating a new version.  You can view all of the changes in a given paragraph, showing who made changes and when.  You can also view all the changes by a particular person.  The approach reduces revision clutter by "several orders of magnitude."

Donovan Alexander then did a demo of the product. 

The document owner can control who can review documents, and whether reviewers can further delegate editing. Red dots show locations of editing; when that section is opened, side-panels show who edited what when and the changes. Owners can review multiple people's proposed changes and accept or reject each.   It allows major and minor versions (1.0 , 2.0 or 1.1., 1.2.)

Outside counsel or client receives an email that requires local installation of IDS (I wonder if some law department systems are locked down to not allow application download).  Litera can host it, but most law firms will likely prefer to have their own servers. 

You'll be able to bring a document from a DMS into Litera.  When you're finished you can save it into a DMS either as a .ids file with full history or as a .docx file. 

Typically people invited to a particular document don't check it out, but finish their work and then check it back in. 

IDS provides a "Word-like editor" that is fully .rtf-compatible.  Some numbering styles may not work. Lawyers have found that the time savings are worth the reformatting sometimes required. 
Freshfields is doing a beta test. They see it as a potential competitive advantage. They are drafting an IT Strategy and the IT managers are using it to work on the strategy. They have not opened it up to attorneys.

[Ed.--lawyers work in very particular ways with documents, document formatting, and versioning, they should be exposed to it to see how it may benefit their work and what the pitfalls might be.]

ILTA Session, Alternative Forum Track: Process Mapping

Creating Process Maps:  An Interactive Workshop

These are my notes on an excellent session that eventually turned into a hands-on process mapping experiment.  I fixed some formatting issues later in the day.

Mary Abraham

What's happening today is the equivalent of having Coca-Cola show us their secret recipe.  Seyfarth Shaw is the leading firm in the country on legal project management and process mapping. 

Andrew Baker is Director of Legal Technology Innovations Office, Kim Craig is Director of Legal Project Management. Both discussed process mapping and the Seyfarth story before we got to work (I wish we had started the hands-on work sooner, but I already have some understanding of process mapping, and have heard the Seyfarth story on several previous occasions) .

Andrew Baker and Kim Craig

Process mapping is a technique where a business process or workflow is converted into a visual, step-by-step diagram.  It is used to better understand an existing process and as the basis for improving said process.

You end up with a linear sequence of who, what, when on the work.  When you're done you'll have the established process. 

Once you see a full process map, it can be jarring but transformational. Looping in KM resources such as checklists, samples, forms, and the like can be very effective because the information can be delivered at the time the attorneys need it in their work process.

Process maps are an important and effective training tool.  It gives you better context for the scope of a matter, e.g., what happens after a summary judgment brief is filed. 

Process maps also can greatly assist with pricing and project scoping. A process map can help with the client conversation around scope. 

Kim Craig has had attorney conversations where attorneys confess they don't like to talk about scope or how to do the work with the client because they didn't want to give the perception that they (the attorney) didn't know how to do the work.

Establishing clear scope can help with a client conversation when things go "off the rails." Project scope and process mapping is useful not just on fixed fees but on hourly billed work, because it helps with providing resources to the team and doing  work more effectively.

Seyfarth started doing project management partly because of clients such as DuPont and Motorola.  They started in 2006 with a green belt session.  It started out with a lot of jargon and heavy statistics. 

They moved over towards "lean" and eventually adapted traditional project management to legal.  They started actually mapping processes in 2006.  They worked extensively with attorneys.  It required discussion of matter strategy decisions, staffing, and the like. 

Seyfarth Lean Consulting is a spin-off entity that goes into law departments or clients and does project mapping and project management.

Seyfarth Lean  was slingshotted forward in 2008 with the market downturn. 

In 2010 they furthered development of interactive process maps by using "K2" as a robust workflow management tool. 

Seyfarth not has 175 process maps, with 12 fulll-time legal project managers. The attorneys are investing thousands of hours into the project.  Administrative assistants have also participated.  The primary question is "How do you do this work?" Paralegals, associates and secretaries would often tell partners "that isn't exactly how it happens."  Attorneys shared a lot of best practices. 

The tool they use is called "task map."  A given task has a lead role, billing code, hour estimation, checklist/KM resource, and staffing level, and unique task code.  In developing the map attorneys had a lot of debates about who could do a given task.  Issues like lack of training of a group of associates might come up. 

Process Mapping Exercise

Assume subject matter expertise.  The level depends on the complexity of the problem.  Talk up front about the purpose of the process. 

In the hands-on exercise all the people at one table mapped out a process of their choice (there were a few options given).

Start by writing discrete tasks on each note, using verbs.  Assign owners.  Be ready to split tasks, note decision points and parallel paths.

"Ornamentation," assigning people and time per task, is accomplished after identifying the tasks and their order.

My group included Chris Ende, April Brousseau, Deborah Panella, Peter Krakauer, Chris Edmonson, and (briefly) Randy Steere.   Because of the high level of budgeting experience in the group, we tried to map the process of building a budget.  We succeeded in getting started quickly, I think it helped that we agreed to brainstorm all of the tasks before worrying about order or roles or any such distraction such as "what's the first task."  With my handwriting, it probably didn't help that I was the scribe (I guess I am used to writing things down quickly!)  We then put them in order, Bryan Cave's Chris Edmonson was a great help in that.

In full process mapping, the next step would be identifying level of effort (hours) and the appropriate personnel.   After that the process mappers review for any sign of the "Eight Wastes" of Lean.

Do you have non-value-add steps in your process?  Refine it to be as efficient as possible.  Add checklists to make sure the right people are doing the work. 

Another step before implementing a full process is to conduct a "Force Field" analysis that looks at all the things that either hinder or help all the things that institutionalize that process.  Assign value to each.  That helps determine if the new process will "stick." 

After implementation of a process, Seyfarth uses data to control and improve processes. 

Expected Challenges

Every session with attorneys starts off with "you can't map what *I* do. My work is unique."  (It turns out that even very complex legal work can be mapped).

Another common objection is that "clients don't care about this stuff." (Clients actually are typically exposed to process mapping as it is fairly common in the corporate world).

"This may work for litigation, but it won't work for transactions" *and* "This may work for transactions, but it won't work for litigation."

Benefits from Mapping

They've seen great benefits with client relationships.

Mapping can also help people on the team (e.g., paralegals)  understand their role and the big picture.

Of course it also assists with accurate pricing and project control.

ILTA Session, Using Document Management Systems for Knowledge Management

Speakers: Richard Krzyminski Chris Boyd - Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, PC Eric Hunter - Bradford & Barthel, LLP April Brousseau - Stikeman Elliott LLP Formal Description: There is a wide spectrum of document management systems that can be used creatively to promote knowledge management initiatives.  We'll hear from firms using iManage, OpenText and Google Apps, and examine how they have leveraged the DMS in their efforts.

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.  

 

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).

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.

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.

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.