I recently came across Canadian Knowledge Manager and Librarian Ted Tjaden's post on Slaw about his presentation on Litigation Knowledge Management. at the Canadian Law and Technology Forum. Given his audience, he understandably painted with a broad brush.
I enjoyed Ted's take on the synergy (and contrast) between litigators' varying needs for internal information (such as a previous brief arguing for assertion of a federal court's personal jurisdiction over the defendant) and external information (Moore's treatise on civil procedure, including federal courts' treatment of personal jurisdiction). In my firm, KM supplies the former, the library supplies the latter; in each case, the information professional should have awareness of and access to the other type, in case it is a better fit with the attorneys' needs. Where the professional wears both hats, that synergy is easier to work.
I have previously addressed here what distinguishes litigation knowledge management from general law-firm or business law KM.
Ted's post reminds me that I am somewhat embarassed I haven't blogged yet about my presentations at the Chicago Ark conference. Ted himself has blogged about the conference. I'll publish my bit soon, I promise.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Ark Conference, Is KM converging with Litigation Support, Risk Management, and Client Services?
Moderator:
Craig Carpenter, VP Legal Solutions and GC, Recommind
Panel:
Brent E. Kidwell, Chief Knowledge Counsel, Jenner & Block LLP
Stacie Capshaw, Firmwide Records Manager, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Joshua Fireman, Vice-President Development and General Counsel, ii3
Here are a few key points from this panel of experienced KM and Records folks.
KM As Mediators and Glue
One type of “convergence” is the role KM can play in mediating or “glueing” together different administrative and legal groups. In many firms KM has had a role as the “lawyers who talk to IT,” or at least as people whose job it is to facilitate communications between lawyers and IT managers at law firms. By virtue of their expertise with improving knowledge and information handling, KM often has projects with many different administrative groups, and can lead the discussions between the different functional areas. I have certainly found that KM has a broad range of contacts and activities compared to other administrative departments at my firm, particularly as we start to leverage Enterprise 2.0 technologies like wikis and blogs.
KM can serve this role better once it has obtained the trust of other groups through successful programs.
Brent gave the example of office moves. KM can play a role because it can assist in the transition away from paper files.
KM and E-Mail
Email is the most pressing issue in records management, because of the immense volume and significance of the content. Stacie believes that email is a “necessary evil”, like dial tone, but that it also saps lawyers’ productivity. KM should address better email behavior. Joshua said that we need to break down all forms of communication, including email, into streams, and then figure out how can you syndicate the information. How would I like to use this information? How would I like to know about the relationships? The value and utility of email should drive how we are looking at it.
Strategic & Stealth KM
“Stealth KM” was another topic of discussion. Some panel members approached projects without needing to brand or label them as KM projects. One audience member chimed in and bluntly addressed the need to “have a strong partner in your corner when the chips are down” and argued instead for highly visible KM. Such a partner is not likely to be a user of KM tools; they will base their opinions on those of the mid-level and senior associates.
Another excellent strategic point made by another audience member is that KM should be strategically focused on those practice areas that are growing, rather than those where adoption may be easy.
Craig Carpenter, VP Legal Solutions and GC, Recommind
Panel:
Brent E. Kidwell, Chief Knowledge Counsel, Jenner & Block LLP
Stacie Capshaw, Firmwide Records Manager, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Joshua Fireman, Vice-President Development and General Counsel, ii3
Here are a few key points from this panel of experienced KM and Records folks.
KM As Mediators and Glue
One type of “convergence” is the role KM can play in mediating or “glueing” together different administrative and legal groups. In many firms KM has had a role as the “lawyers who talk to IT,” or at least as people whose job it is to facilitate communications between lawyers and IT managers at law firms. By virtue of their expertise with improving knowledge and information handling, KM often has projects with many different administrative groups, and can lead the discussions between the different functional areas. I have certainly found that KM has a broad range of contacts and activities compared to other administrative departments at my firm, particularly as we start to leverage Enterprise 2.0 technologies like wikis and blogs.
KM can serve this role better once it has obtained the trust of other groups through successful programs.
Brent gave the example of office moves. KM can play a role because it can assist in the transition away from paper files.
KM and E-Mail
Email is the most pressing issue in records management, because of the immense volume and significance of the content. Stacie believes that email is a “necessary evil”, like dial tone, but that it also saps lawyers’ productivity. KM should address better email behavior. Joshua said that we need to break down all forms of communication, including email, into streams, and then figure out how can you syndicate the information. How would I like to use this information? How would I like to know about the relationships? The value and utility of email should drive how we are looking at it.
Strategic & Stealth KM
“Stealth KM” was another topic of discussion. Some panel members approached projects without needing to brand or label them as KM projects. One audience member chimed in and bluntly addressed the need to “have a strong partner in your corner when the chips are down” and argued instead for highly visible KM. Such a partner is not likely to be a user of KM tools; they will base their opinions on those of the mid-level and senior associates.
Another excellent strategic point made by another audience member is that KM should be strategically focused on those practice areas that are growing, rather than those where adoption may be easy.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
KM and Modern Law Firm: Strategy and Operations for IT and KM
Presenters:
Peter K. Kaomea, Chief Information Officer, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Tom Baldwin, Chief Knowledge Officer, Reed Smith, LLP
Stuart Kay, Director, Global Information Systems Projects, Baker & McKenzie
This high-powered panel focused on the possible tensions and synergies that arise between IT and KM departments. My basic takeaway is that there are so many dramatic changes in the competitive environment and technology that KM and IT have to work together. While there may always be some sort of tension between the two, it is KM’s responsibility to engage with IT, and to learn something about it.
Stuart mentioned that in his current position, KM acts as the “public face” of IT, representing its abilities to lawyers and in effect “selling” new systems to the firm. KM can avoid tension with IT by demonstrating its value on a daily basis and talking to them a lot.
Peter suggested that some tension or conflict can be avoided simply by setting the framework in a way that cuts to the responsibilities at issue rather than ownership of a project or piece of information. Break out what aspects of “ownership” you care about. If you ask “who owns” an information security project, you are setting up a turf war. It is easier to ask who wants to be responsible for entering and updating particular pieces of information.
Tom Baldwin comes from an IT rather than a legal background. He believes that KM is very much IT-driven in the U.S.; by contrast, it is more driven by Practice Support Lawyers (i.e., people like me) in the U.K. and Australia where there are many more PSLs. He believes that law firms haven’t been able to treat technology strategically until quite recently, as “ripping and replacing” whole systems is no longer necessary and the basic infrastructure is more stable.
Where there is a successful KM project, there is often a heavy dose of IT. IT does not get kudos for making the “plumbing” work (“Hi, this is the managing partner. I’m so glad my phone is working today. Thank you very much.”) Yet (Stuart suggested) it is much harder to make a business case for a precedent database than an email or phone system, because it is harder to prove an indirect profitability driver than a to establish a direct negative impact.
Some of the more interesting side discussion was about identifying what lawyers want out of IT and KM. Ron’s basic answer—“Ask them.” Peter reported from his previous experience that U.S. Defense Department generals want IT and KM provide them with a way to be more competitive, for instance, by making their decision-making cycle quicker than the other side’s.
This was one panel I wish had had much more time to drill into their topics. They were just getting warmed up when the time was up.
Peter K. Kaomea, Chief Information Officer, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Tom Baldwin, Chief Knowledge Officer, Reed Smith, LLP
Stuart Kay, Director, Global Information Systems Projects, Baker & McKenzie
This high-powered panel focused on the possible tensions and synergies that arise between IT and KM departments. My basic takeaway is that there are so many dramatic changes in the competitive environment and technology that KM and IT have to work together. While there may always be some sort of tension between the two, it is KM’s responsibility to engage with IT, and to learn something about it.
Stuart mentioned that in his current position, KM acts as the “public face” of IT, representing its abilities to lawyers and in effect “selling” new systems to the firm. KM can avoid tension with IT by demonstrating its value on a daily basis and talking to them a lot.
Peter suggested that some tension or conflict can be avoided simply by setting the framework in a way that cuts to the responsibilities at issue rather than ownership of a project or piece of information. Break out what aspects of “ownership” you care about. If you ask “who owns” an information security project, you are setting up a turf war. It is easier to ask who wants to be responsible for entering and updating particular pieces of information.
Tom Baldwin comes from an IT rather than a legal background. He believes that KM is very much IT-driven in the U.S.; by contrast, it is more driven by Practice Support Lawyers (i.e., people like me) in the U.K. and Australia where there are many more PSLs. He believes that law firms haven’t been able to treat technology strategically until quite recently, as “ripping and replacing” whole systems is no longer necessary and the basic infrastructure is more stable.
Where there is a successful KM project, there is often a heavy dose of IT. IT does not get kudos for making the “plumbing” work (“Hi, this is the managing partner. I’m so glad my phone is working today. Thank you very much.”) Yet (Stuart suggested) it is much harder to make a business case for a precedent database than an email or phone system, because it is harder to prove an indirect profitability driver than a to establish a direct negative impact.
Some of the more interesting side discussion was about identifying what lawyers want out of IT and KM. Ron’s basic answer—“Ask them.” Peter reported from his previous experience that U.S. Defense Department generals want IT and KM provide them with a way to be more competitive, for instance, by making their decision-making cycle quicker than the other side’s.
This was one panel I wish had had much more time to drill into their topics. They were just getting warmed up when the time was up.
KM and The Modern Law Firm: Formal Law Firm KM Strategy
The next session at the Ark KM Conference saw Mark Young, Managing Partner, and John S. Gillies, Director of Practice Support, at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP address development of a KM strategy. I very much appreciated having the perspective of a managing partner on a firm’s KM initiative.
My firm recently went through a similar process. The Cassels Brock KM Strategy built on the firm’s Business Strategy, which conveniently was completed just about the time that John was hired. Cassels Brock has grown significantly through lateral hires in the last five years. As a result there is a relatively large set of younger partners. Their KM strategy focused on this group as they were believed more likely to embrace technological change.
I asked Mark how a strategy that required enhanced profitability justified KM investment, as more efficient work logically reduces the billable time associated with a particular task. He indicated that he often hears partners claim they could get more work in the door if they had more time; KM offered them more time, and hence more opportunity for more business. He also feels that KM provides an opportunity to demonstrate greater value to clients. Tom Baldwin of Reed Smith mentioned at this point that for some clients, predictability of fees is really important, and that the matter and document classification features of many KM approaches can help address that concern, and, again, bring in more business. If KM enables accurate cost prediction, it can also help firms move to a value-based, non-billable hour model. Linking back to KM Strategy, if a KM program can demonstrate enhanced value of work, and enhanced profitability, it will be less likely to be put on hold.
John outlined some specifics of the firm’s KM Strategy. The three primary prongs of their plan were an effective Document Management System (DMS); a way to manage precedents; and good DMS search.
They chose Interwoven for their DMS and adopted a unified “folder structure” as a way of fostering collaboration between practice groups. For their search, they used comments from focus groups and the strategic plan to develop a 100-feature set of requirements, with each of the requirements weighted ranking from 1-5. Despite the extensive quantitative work, the two competitors, Recommind and Interwoven Universal Search (IUS), came out with an identical ranking. They went with IUS because of its tighter integration with Interwoven. John mentioned that Recommind did a better job of expertise identification, but that this feature was less important to them as a one-office shop.
My firm recently went through a similar process. The Cassels Brock KM Strategy built on the firm’s Business Strategy, which conveniently was completed just about the time that John was hired. Cassels Brock has grown significantly through lateral hires in the last five years. As a result there is a relatively large set of younger partners. Their KM strategy focused on this group as they were believed more likely to embrace technological change.
I asked Mark how a strategy that required enhanced profitability justified KM investment, as more efficient work logically reduces the billable time associated with a particular task. He indicated that he often hears partners claim they could get more work in the door if they had more time; KM offered them more time, and hence more opportunity for more business. He also feels that KM provides an opportunity to demonstrate greater value to clients. Tom Baldwin of Reed Smith mentioned at this point that for some clients, predictability of fees is really important, and that the matter and document classification features of many KM approaches can help address that concern, and, again, bring in more business. If KM enables accurate cost prediction, it can also help firms move to a value-based, non-billable hour model. Linking back to KM Strategy, if a KM program can demonstrate enhanced value of work, and enhanced profitability, it will be less likely to be put on hold.
John outlined some specifics of the firm’s KM Strategy. The three primary prongs of their plan were an effective Document Management System (DMS); a way to manage precedents; and good DMS search.
They chose Interwoven for their DMS and adopted a unified “folder structure” as a way of fostering collaboration between practice groups. For their search, they used comments from focus groups and the strategic plan to develop a 100-feature set of requirements, with each of the requirements weighted ranking from 1-5. Despite the extensive quantitative work, the two competitors, Recommind and Interwoven Universal Search (IUS), came out with an identical ranking. They went with IUS because of its tighter integration with Interwoven. John mentioned that Recommind did a better job of expertise identification, but that this feature was less important to them as a one-office shop.
First Day of Ark Conference—Knowledge Management and the Modern Law Firm
This was the 9th Legal KM Forum put on by the ARK conference group. I hope it is not the last as I found it a good experience in three ways. For people fairly new to KM, it was a good place to get up to speed, to some degree, on techniques used by other firms to enhance collaboration, efficiency, and knowledge-sharing within the organization. For more experienced folk, it was a chance to discuss where KM might be going. It was also an opportunity to obtain an overview (albeit at warp speed*) of traditional knowledge management principles and practices as they continue to be implemented in the corporate world.
On Monday, Ron Staudt, Professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, led off with an interesting overview of his work history. Ron has been a leader in the “KM for Legal Aid” arena, coordinating legal aid internet portals for attorneys, volunteers in every state in the U.S. Following some work at Lexis-Nexis on the HotDocs document generation application, Ron has also helped develop a user-friendly document generation platform, “A2J Author,” that walks members of the public through an internet interview leading ultimately to the generation of a set of papers that can be filed in court. The basic principle of the legal aid work is to treat the 5,000-8,000 lawyers in the main legal service organizations as one firm, the idea being that they are inundated with prospective clients rather than competing for them, and to provide them with the level of IT support one might expect for a firm of that size.
I have a small amount of experience as a temporary legal aid lawyer at Greater Boston Legal Services, and am too familiar with the unmet needs addressed by legal aid organizations. I wish Ron’s continued work on these projects all the best. I also hope that these portals take advantage of social collaborative software to enable even better knowledge and experience sharing, especially between the legal aid lawyers, as they go about their work. I can readily imagine a social network site for legal aid lawyers that could leverage the tremendous intellectual and people power of these attorneys through forums, wikis, blogs, alerts, and document sharing.
Two conference themes Ron proposed were, one, in this time of economic turmoil, KM must be more strategic than ever, and two, KM is evolving to support more aspects of the firm than before, including client service, risk management, and practice support.
* Star Trek reference entirely intentional Josh.
On Monday, Ron Staudt, Professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, led off with an interesting overview of his work history. Ron has been a leader in the “KM for Legal Aid” arena, coordinating legal aid internet portals for attorneys, volunteers in every state in the U.S. Following some work at Lexis-Nexis on the HotDocs document generation application, Ron has also helped develop a user-friendly document generation platform, “A2J Author,” that walks members of the public through an internet interview leading ultimately to the generation of a set of papers that can be filed in court. The basic principle of the legal aid work is to treat the 5,000-8,000 lawyers in the main legal service organizations as one firm, the idea being that they are inundated with prospective clients rather than competing for them, and to provide them with the level of IT support one might expect for a firm of that size.
I have a small amount of experience as a temporary legal aid lawyer at Greater Boston Legal Services, and am too familiar with the unmet needs addressed by legal aid organizations. I wish Ron’s continued work on these projects all the best. I also hope that these portals take advantage of social collaborative software to enable even better knowledge and experience sharing, especially between the legal aid lawyers, as they go about their work. I can readily imagine a social network site for legal aid lawyers that could leverage the tremendous intellectual and people power of these attorneys through forums, wikis, blogs, alerts, and document sharing.
Two conference themes Ron proposed were, one, in this time of economic turmoil, KM must be more strategic than ever, and two, KM is evolving to support more aspects of the firm than before, including client service, risk management, and practice support.
* Star Trek reference entirely intentional Josh.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Presentation to ARK Group Law Firm KM Conference
On Monday, October 27, I will be presenting on Day One of the Chicago Ark Conference on "Knowledge Management in the Modern Law Firm," at the Gleacher Center of the University of Chicago.
I'll be addressing two related topics.
The first talk is a panel on litigation knowledge management. I'm appearing with two other litigation KM practitioners (a rare treat!), Mary Panetta of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and Amy Halvorson of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. We'll be discussing strategies for handling litigation precedent collections and also collecting information about a law firm's litigation experience.
The second talk, titled "Fostering and Nurturing the Research & Development Function at Your Firm" focuses on how to enhance adoption of good KM tools.
I hope to see some of you there!
I'll be addressing two related topics.
The first talk is a panel on litigation knowledge management. I'm appearing with two other litigation KM practitioners (a rare treat!), Mary Panetta of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and Amy Halvorson of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. We'll be discussing strategies for handling litigation precedent collections and also collecting information about a law firm's litigation experience.
The second talk, titled "Fostering and Nurturing the Research & Development Function at Your Firm" focuses on how to enhance adoption of good KM tools.
I hope to see some of you there!
Friday, August 29, 2008
Search Strategies & Law Firm "Information Gravitation"--August 27 at ILTA
Title, Session Link and Slides: Search as Strategy - Creating 'Information Gravitation' in the Firm
Description:
Enterprise search is all the rage but much of the talk is about search as an “application.” Can search be more than just another entry on the shopping list of applications firms buy? Can it serve as a foundation element in an overall information strategy? Some firms are beginning to talk about creating a kind of “information gravitation” both inside the firm and across the firewall to clients. With such gravitation in place, the right information flows to where it is needed, when it is needed and often without need for discrete searches. Learn the role such information gravitation play in overall information strategy, the impact such a goal has on choices of technology, security and privacy concerns, deployment timeframes and on levels of investment. If that is the vision, how do you enlist the whole firm in it?
Speaker(s):
Derek Schueren — Recommind
Felicity Badcock — Mallesons Stephen Jaques
My Take:
Derek of Recommind is one of the more visionary of the vendor representatives out there. And Mallesons is by reputation one of the more innovative firms Down Under, having won the Innovaction award for their PeopleFinder tool. I was looking forward to this session and it did not disappoint.
Derek started with a wonderful quote from Aristotle:
"Suppose that every tool we had could perform its task, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need…that shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro…and a plucker play a lyre of its own accord.”
(A plucker here is not a person undressing a chicken but presumably the plectrum or "guitar pick" of the ancient world).
Relevancy is the ability to retrieve material that satisfies the need of the user. (I usually think of relevancy in terms of how search result ranking and how well the results compare with the search terms, but this definition appropriately puts meeting business needs over some abstract fitness).
Derek discussed how Google treats relevancy as essentially a popularity contest. The most popular web pages have more incoming links and few outgoing links. This works pretty well on the web, but, because there is no comparable source of relevancy information inside the enterprise, consumers don't have the same experience with search inside the enterprise.
One potential advantage for enterprises, however, is that Google does not take into account who is doing the searching. Search tools might be able to show different types of results for partners, associates, or professional staff.
Derek compared web search and enterprise search.
Web
The Web contains a huge store of simple content. Internet content typically lacks much context beyond what is linked within its pages. All information available is completley public. Who authored the content is generally irrelevant.
Relevancy is based on key word match over layered with popularity score
Enterprise
Enterprises by comparison have small content stores but much complexity. The lack of link structures mean relevancy needs to be computed in a different way. But content in enterprises does relate to other information inside and outside of the information (think for example of matter numbers). The authorship of content really does matter to content validity or utility, (at least to someone like a senior litigation partner looking at a first year associate's research memo).
Enterprise search tools must respect security.
Metadata in the enterprise is much richer. You can provide more context for the document in the enterprise. You can filter down on information post-query, and relevancy can extend beyond the primary object to related content.
Integrating Search
Concept searching allows you to find documents that may not have all the key words, but that are correlated (related) to the search terms.
Content linking will be key. You might want to see a lot more than just contact information for a judge, such as pleadings for matters before the judge, people who have appeared before the judge, and so forth. The Document Management System (DMS) has great content but it doesn’t have everything. Matter information isn’t in the DMS. Enterprise search needs to blend content from diverse locations. Search is an information layer rather than just a box that provides results.
An example of search as information layer is providing information about citations. If you filter and add in the statutes cited, and also possibly some other data (such as case validity) from another source, you get a much richer user experience. (see these posts on Lexis' recent work on adding citation information to search results, and this Caselines post from last year on Recommind's work with West KM on that front.)
Collaborative Filtering
How does Amazon make it easy for me to find what I want?
Amazon knows what I’ve looked for and also what people like me have looked for and found in the past.
Content Linking
Content linking will really take advantage of the information available in the enterprise.
Felicity Badcock / Mallesons
Felicity, a former practicing lawyer like me, has been working in the legal technology for twelve years, including five at Clifford Chance in London.
She addressed information gravitation in three areas, email, enterprise tagging, and people-finding.
Email Gravitation?
At Mallesons, they try to predicting the needs of the user through Decisiv. This application will make a guess at where the person will want to file the email. The rate of prediction success is quite high.
The search will recommend searches based on the metadata in the email. Do you want to search for emails from the person who sent the email you’re on? Or to the company that received the email?
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking can help assess which content is worthwhile. You get the benefit of a large number of people who are also tagging and assessing relevancy.
Malleson’s “Scotty” system, in Beta, will generate tag clouds around content. It will have a firm-based taxonomy, but will also allow user-generated tags and ratings. (Tag clouds show the importance of the content related to the tag by the size of the tag word).
Visualization and People Information
Felicity described "visualization" as a quick way to display vast amounts of quantitative data such as business results. For instance, others have joined news mentions of disease outbreaks with Googlemaps in the disease finder, Health Map.
Malleson’s PeopleFinder (which, although Felicity modestly didn’t mention it, won the Innovaction award this year) pulls together data from a lot of sources.
It starts with a small box in the desktop bar that searches google, or Interaction, or what have you by letter codes like “c” or “g”. A Mallesons people result shows their current availability. The goal was to have fewer external calls go to voicemail. There are twelve different icons indicating the status, anything from "on extended leave" to "on the phone."
People are “available” if they are logged in to PC. Secretaries can use this to identify what to do with calls for an attorney. It saves tremendous amounts of time in not making or receiving calls when they can’t be dealt with. A “Communicator” status can be updated. A right-click can lead to a VOIP phone call, email, or IM. A full-screen view of a person record also shows their week's availability, as per their Outlook calendar. A right-click leads to a while range of options for communicating with the person, from dialing the phone, IM, or calendar appointment, to email. A click on a person's "floor" leads to a floor map highlighting the person's location on the floor.
A scaled-down version of the People-Finder was available through mobile devices. Mallesons is also contemplating making some aspects of PeopleFinder available to clients.
The next version will "push" information on a person's own home page or on their contact record, like the person's current matters, clients, documents, and so forth. This is delivering information, not in response to a user request, but in response to an anticipated need.
Information Gravitation
"Pushing" information in response to an anticipated (rather than expressly stated) need is one form of information gravitation. So is enabling navigation between types of information on a document search result, such as a link to a person or matter. Another form of information gravitation is accessing all the possible ways to contact someone from their contact record.
Ultimately "cloud" computing, where vast amounts of enterprise software and data are contained on giant server farms (as with Google or Amazon), may enable even more interlinking, pushed contents, and connections than is possible now. Aristotle's vision come to life?
Description:
Enterprise search is all the rage but much of the talk is about search as an “application.” Can search be more than just another entry on the shopping list of applications firms buy? Can it serve as a foundation element in an overall information strategy? Some firms are beginning to talk about creating a kind of “information gravitation” both inside the firm and across the firewall to clients. With such gravitation in place, the right information flows to where it is needed, when it is needed and often without need for discrete searches. Learn the role such information gravitation play in overall information strategy, the impact such a goal has on choices of technology, security and privacy concerns, deployment timeframes and on levels of investment. If that is the vision, how do you enlist the whole firm in it?
Speaker(s):
Derek Schueren — Recommind
Felicity Badcock — Mallesons Stephen Jaques
My Take:
Derek of Recommind is one of the more visionary of the vendor representatives out there. And Mallesons is by reputation one of the more innovative firms Down Under, having won the Innovaction award for their PeopleFinder tool. I was looking forward to this session and it did not disappoint.
Derek started with a wonderful quote from Aristotle:
"Suppose that every tool we had could perform its task, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need…that shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro…and a plucker play a lyre of its own accord.”
(A plucker here is not a person undressing a chicken but presumably the plectrum or "guitar pick" of the ancient world).
Relevancy is the ability to retrieve material that satisfies the need of the user. (I usually think of relevancy in terms of how search result ranking and how well the results compare with the search terms, but this definition appropriately puts meeting business needs over some abstract fitness).
Derek discussed how Google treats relevancy as essentially a popularity contest. The most popular web pages have more incoming links and few outgoing links. This works pretty well on the web, but, because there is no comparable source of relevancy information inside the enterprise, consumers don't have the same experience with search inside the enterprise.
One potential advantage for enterprises, however, is that Google does not take into account who is doing the searching. Search tools might be able to show different types of results for partners, associates, or professional staff.
Derek compared web search and enterprise search.
Web
The Web contains a huge store of simple content. Internet content typically lacks much context beyond what is linked within its pages. All information available is completley public. Who authored the content is generally irrelevant.
Relevancy is based on key word match over layered with popularity score
Enterprise
Enterprises by comparison have small content stores but much complexity. The lack of link structures mean relevancy needs to be computed in a different way. But content in enterprises does relate to other information inside and outside of the information (think for example of matter numbers). The authorship of content really does matter to content validity or utility, (at least to someone like a senior litigation partner looking at a first year associate's research memo).
Enterprise search tools must respect security.
Metadata in the enterprise is much richer. You can provide more context for the document in the enterprise. You can filter down on information post-query, and relevancy can extend beyond the primary object to related content.
Integrating Search
Concept searching allows you to find documents that may not have all the key words, but that are correlated (related) to the search terms.
Content linking will be key. You might want to see a lot more than just contact information for a judge, such as pleadings for matters before the judge, people who have appeared before the judge, and so forth. The Document Management System (DMS) has great content but it doesn’t have everything. Matter information isn’t in the DMS. Enterprise search needs to blend content from diverse locations. Search is an information layer rather than just a box that provides results.
An example of search as information layer is providing information about citations. If you filter and add in the statutes cited, and also possibly some other data (such as case validity) from another source, you get a much richer user experience. (see these posts on Lexis' recent work on adding citation information to search results, and this Caselines post from last year on Recommind's work with West KM on that front.)
Collaborative Filtering
How does Amazon make it easy for me to find what I want?
Amazon knows what I’ve looked for and also what people like me have looked for and found in the past.
Content Linking
Content linking will really take advantage of the information available in the enterprise.
Felicity Badcock / Mallesons
Felicity, a former practicing lawyer like me, has been working in the legal technology for twelve years, including five at Clifford Chance in London.
She addressed information gravitation in three areas, email, enterprise tagging, and people-finding.
Email Gravitation?
At Mallesons, they try to predicting the needs of the user through Decisiv. This application will make a guess at where the person will want to file the email. The rate of prediction success is quite high.
The search will recommend searches based on the metadata in the email. Do you want to search for emails from the person who sent the email you’re on? Or to the company that received the email?
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking can help assess which content is worthwhile. You get the benefit of a large number of people who are also tagging and assessing relevancy.
Malleson’s “Scotty” system, in Beta, will generate tag clouds around content. It will have a firm-based taxonomy, but will also allow user-generated tags and ratings. (Tag clouds show the importance of the content related to the tag by the size of the tag word).
Visualization and People Information
Felicity described "visualization" as a quick way to display vast amounts of quantitative data such as business results. For instance, others have joined news mentions of disease outbreaks with Googlemaps in the disease finder, Health Map.
Malleson’s PeopleFinder (which, although Felicity modestly didn’t mention it, won the Innovaction award this year) pulls together data from a lot of sources.
It starts with a small box in the desktop bar that searches google, or Interaction, or what have you by letter codes like “c” or “g”. A Mallesons people result shows their current availability. The goal was to have fewer external calls go to voicemail. There are twelve different icons indicating the status, anything from "on extended leave" to "on the phone."
People are “available” if they are logged in to PC. Secretaries can use this to identify what to do with calls for an attorney. It saves tremendous amounts of time in not making or receiving calls when they can’t be dealt with. A “Communicator” status can be updated. A right-click can lead to a VOIP phone call, email, or IM. A full-screen view of a person record also shows their week's availability, as per their Outlook calendar. A right-click leads to a while range of options for communicating with the person, from dialing the phone, IM, or calendar appointment, to email. A click on a person's "floor" leads to a floor map highlighting the person's location on the floor.
A scaled-down version of the People-Finder was available through mobile devices. Mallesons is also contemplating making some aspects of PeopleFinder available to clients.
The next version will "push" information on a person's own home page or on their contact record, like the person's current matters, clients, documents, and so forth. This is delivering information, not in response to a user request, but in response to an anticipated need.
Information Gravitation
"Pushing" information in response to an anticipated (rather than expressly stated) need is one form of information gravitation. So is enabling navigation between types of information on a document search result, such as a link to a person or matter. Another form of information gravitation is accessing all the possible ways to contact someone from their contact record.
Ultimately "cloud" computing, where vast amounts of enterprise software and data are contained on giant server farms (as with Google or Amazon), may enable even more interlinking, pushed contents, and connections than is possible now. Aristotle's vision come to life?
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