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.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Upcoming Conference on "Leveraging Virtual Teams & Social Tools for Business Advantage: Blogs, Wikis, Twitter"
The Boston KM Forum is putting on a longer, more involved set of discussions around the business advantages of Web and Enterprise 2.0 tools, a subject near and dear to my heart, at Bentley College next Tuesday, March 31st. I'll be there.
The speakers and talk titles are:
The speakers and talk titles are:
- Soaring with Virtual Teams: How Working At-A-Distance and Across Boundaries Can Outperform Face-to-Face, Jessica Lipnack - CEO of NetAge and co-author of Virtual Teams; see her free webinar on the same subject.
(I've enjoyed Jessica's presentations at Enterprise 2.0 Boston and elsewhere, with her trademark of "stand up and tell us who you are!") - IBM’s Grounds-Up Social Software Transformation, recently married Suzanne Minassian (twitter)- Lotus Connections Product Manager, IBM
(Lotus Connections is one of the leading Enterprise 2.0 products (or sets of products) and I look forward to hearing some more stories of its implementation.) - Vital Catalyst: Social Media is Holding and Growing Audiences,
Ken George, New Media Manager, and author of The Converstation, WBUR
(I don't know Ken but WBUR has a quite sophisticated web presence and set of podcasts.) - Give to Get: Real-World Dividends from Social Networking, Sadalit Van Buren, Knowledge Management Associates
(Sadalit is the author of A Matter Of Degree and is a real expert in making the most of Sharepoint's Enterprise 2.0 features.)
Monday, March 23, 2009
"Emergence" at the Boston KM Forum
Last Thursday I attended a Boston KM Forum talk titled "Emergence—Get with it or fade away" by veteran social networker and knowledge worker Dan Keldsen (http://twitter.com/dankeldsen, blog at http://www.BizTechTalk.com). Dan is a good speaker as well as the only person I know of whose Twitter profile picture is skewed sideways.
He was also kind enough to share his interesting slides on Slideshare. Jack Vinson has also posted on the event, in a fashion that compliments what I do here.
What is Emergence?
Emergence is not a great term because people don’t necessarily know what it means. A better term might be “viral success.” The main focus of his talk was about social media applications that have enabled such success, and how you can either take advantage of those systems directly yourself, and perhaps even structure your next effort to try to make it "viral."
He mentioned at the outset Andrew McAfee's seminal article on Enterprise 2.0 titled "The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration." and its SLATES acronym of key features that allow knowledge workers to organize their work in the way that fits them best, i.e., that support and enable emergent behavior.
He recommends “Emergence” by Steven Johnson (reviewers on Amazon were not so kind, I have to point out).
One feature of "emergent" practice is, how easy is it people like customers, employees, and partners to understand what you’re doing and “spread the word.” Are you providing a path for community feedback?
Quantitative Analysis of Emergence
Dan explained the simple underpinnings of "viral loops" or other behavior that will multiply and spread over social networks. He drew on a presentation by "Arch Viral," http://www.slideshare.net/Startonomics/arch-viral-creating-social-apps-for-social-platforms-presentation .
First a user issues an invitation to participate to "friends" (in Facebook parlance) or others to whom that user is known. Some percentage of those friends accept (the "install flow"), and some percentage of those friends go on to issue additional invitations (as part of the "engagement flow"). If the average number of friends invited times the average percentage of acceptance with initial or later add-on activities is greater than 1, then you have a viral application.
(For the math-challenged, here's an example; if a new user asks 5 friends to join, and an average of 22% of them accept, then the "viral factor" is 1.1, and the application is viral. If only 18% accepted, the "viral factor would be less than 1, and the application would not be viral).
Multiple invites and “bites at the apple” will increase the rate of viral adoption. Small changes can have a big effect (like the wings of a butterfly).
This part of the presentation struck me as the most directly useful to my knowledge work. Correlating Facebook applications to the spread of Enterprise 2.0 is not at all intuitive.
But inside the enterprise, relatively small barriers to adoption of social adoption can potentially destroy the viral spread of potentially useful applications. It behooves us then to make the barriers that new groups and employees have to hurdle to get to the tools as low and as unbureaucratic as possible, and to find ways to get "second bites at the apple" that mimic the
continuous engagement and reward that the more successful social applications provide.
My other main takeaway was Jack Vinson's comment that one should be able to discover or uncover the networks and effects that could let power of emergence affect the enterprise.
Emergent Social Networks
In Dan’s last transition he was able to tap into a rich vibrant network because of his work with LinkedIn, his blog, etc. People could Google his name and find out a *lot* about him. He also leveraged his extensive LinkedIn connections in his last trip to Denmark.
Dan is another musician, albeit from the rock & roll side of the tracks. He showed Blip.fm as another social web application with excellent user feedbacks that enhance emergence. For instance, you get “props” for promoting things that people like. In turn you can give out “props" and you eventually get “badges” that show rank. You can also “reblip” someone's "blip" and if they do the same to you, you get more credit.
Slideshare is another emergent social tool that shows how many times each presentation has been viewed. Dan’s slideshare on “Maps, Concepts, Process” has been seen 9,423 times (actually 9,485 as of this writing!) His presentation “Who’s The Boss, MOSS?” has been seen 5,917 times after an initial audience of "only" 100.
How to Enhance Emergence and Make it "Go Viral"
Blip taps into people's interest in game-like interactions with personal rankings, and also the social need to give and get respect. Other applications might tap into the competitive instincts by showing daily, weekly, or "all-time" rankings.
Slideshare similarly gives its users feedback about how many times their presentations have been viewed, with feedback allowed at the contributor or presentation levels.
The more detail you provide in your online interactions, the more likely you will be able to connect with people of like mind and similar interests.
Why tap into emergent platforms?
You may find something rich that you wouldn’t have found otherwise, along with new ways to learn information that you can share. Having more connections expands the potential of what you can accomplish.
Normally professional organizations would serve some of the functions that LinkedIn is now. These organizations represent professional contact networks and may be in trouble unless they adapt.
Participant-driven platforms are another communication revolution. What kind of meaningful mechanisms will make them more useful and avoid us getting swamped?
Summary
He was also kind enough to share his interesting slides on Slideshare. Jack Vinson has also posted on the event, in a fashion that compliments what I do here.
What is Emergence?
Emergence is not a great term because people don’t necessarily know what it means. A better term might be “viral success.” The main focus of his talk was about social media applications that have enabled such success, and how you can either take advantage of those systems directly yourself, and perhaps even structure your next effort to try to make it "viral."
He mentioned at the outset Andrew McAfee's seminal article on Enterprise 2.0 titled "The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration." and its SLATES acronym of key features that allow knowledge workers to organize their work in the way that fits them best, i.e., that support and enable emergent behavior.
He recommends “Emergence” by Steven Johnson (reviewers on Amazon were not so kind, I have to point out).
One feature of "emergent" practice is, how easy is it people like customers, employees, and partners to understand what you’re doing and “spread the word.” Are you providing a path for community feedback?
Quantitative Analysis of Emergence
Dan explained the simple underpinnings of "viral loops" or other behavior that will multiply and spread over social networks. He drew on a presentation by "Arch Viral," http://www.slideshare.net/Startonomics/arch-viral-creating-social-apps-for-social-platforms-presentation .
First a user issues an invitation to participate to "friends" (in Facebook parlance) or others to whom that user is known. Some percentage of those friends accept (the "install flow"), and some percentage of those friends go on to issue additional invitations (as part of the "engagement flow"). If the average number of friends invited times the average percentage of acceptance with initial or later add-on activities is greater than 1, then you have a viral application.
(For the math-challenged, here's an example; if a new user asks 5 friends to join, and an average of 22% of them accept, then the "viral factor" is 1.1, and the application is viral. If only 18% accepted, the "viral factor would be less than 1, and the application would not be viral).
Multiple invites and “bites at the apple” will increase the rate of viral adoption. Small changes can have a big effect (like the wings of a butterfly).
This part of the presentation struck me as the most directly useful to my knowledge work. Correlating Facebook applications to the spread of Enterprise 2.0 is not at all intuitive.
But inside the enterprise, relatively small barriers to adoption of social adoption can potentially destroy the viral spread of potentially useful applications. It behooves us then to make the barriers that new groups and employees have to hurdle to get to the tools as low and as unbureaucratic as possible, and to find ways to get "second bites at the apple" that mimic the
continuous engagement and reward that the more successful social applications provide.
My other main takeaway was Jack Vinson's comment that one should be able to discover or uncover the networks and effects that could let power of emergence affect the enterprise.
Emergent Social Networks
In Dan’s last transition he was able to tap into a rich vibrant network because of his work with LinkedIn, his blog, etc. People could Google his name and find out a *lot* about him. He also leveraged his extensive LinkedIn connections in his last trip to Denmark.
Dan is another musician, albeit from the rock & roll side of the tracks. He showed Blip.fm as another social web application with excellent user feedbacks that enhance emergence. For instance, you get “props” for promoting things that people like. In turn you can give out “props" and you eventually get “badges” that show rank. You can also “reblip” someone's "blip" and if they do the same to you, you get more credit.
Slideshare is another emergent social tool that shows how many times each presentation has been viewed. Dan’s slideshare on “Maps, Concepts, Process” has been seen 9,423 times (actually 9,485 as of this writing!) His presentation “Who’s The Boss, MOSS?” has been seen 5,917 times after an initial audience of "only" 100.
How to Enhance Emergence and Make it "Go Viral"
Blip taps into people's interest in game-like interactions with personal rankings, and also the social need to give and get respect. Other applications might tap into the competitive instincts by showing daily, weekly, or "all-time" rankings.
Slideshare similarly gives its users feedback about how many times their presentations have been viewed, with feedback allowed at the contributor or presentation levels.
The more detail you provide in your online interactions, the more likely you will be able to connect with people of like mind and similar interests.
Why tap into emergent platforms?
You may find something rich that you wouldn’t have found otherwise, along with new ways to learn information that you can share. Having more connections expands the potential of what you can accomplish.
Normally professional organizations would serve some of the functions that LinkedIn is now. These organizations represent professional contact networks and may be in trouble unless they adapt.
Participant-driven platforms are another communication revolution. What kind of meaningful mechanisms will make them more useful and avoid us getting swamped?
Summary
- Enable easy sharing of posts, information, or whatever else your application addresses (Twitter, Facebook, "Add This" application)
- Set up reward systems that will draw on competitive instincts and show progress (any online game, Blip.fm)
- Count hits, downloads, views, and such to show people how much of interest others have taken in a piece of news or application (Youtube, Amazon)
- Enable a friend or follower system that will let people connect to each other, give them some idea of who else is around, and share their interests (Facebook, Youtube, etc.)
- Tags to let people identify for you, rather than coming up with your own terms (Facebook, Delicious, #twitter)
The best social information applications combine all of these characteristics.
As Jack says, let people "Find, Share and Compare."
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Decentralized and Personalized KM
Following a recent post in which KM practitioner Larry Hawes was contemplating valuing KM by its cost (not a good idea since its value added can be so much more dramatically greater), Christopher Schmaltz made the following comment:
We are moving away from a centralised KM to a more decentralised, self-service, personal KM. Employees decide what information they want to subscribe to. They decide who they would like to follow in their network, which interest groups they would like to subscribe to.
This wonderfully concise statement sums up part of my vision for KM at my law firm, in particular, the neccessity to make the information presented that most likely to be relevant and actionable to users.
A partner logs in. She is presented with the matters she's worked on recently, her top clients, and today's news and alerts about new litigation filed related to those clients. She also has previously selected receipt of alerts about significant changes in stock price or quarterly filings for those clients. Her one calendar shows her upcoming litigation deadlines, online CLE, and internal meetings for her practice areas. She can link directly to a place for her to review those associates who have worked with her most recently, and shows her how she's doing in terms of work in progress, accounts receivable, and her own billings for the calendar year versus targets.
As someone interested in financial industry regulation, she has chosen to receive an alert when a piece of work product receives a "Regulation FD" tag, or when someone's profile receives such a tag.
It's about pulling together the information that we already know relates to each person, plus the additional information or alerts that they have chosen to receive.
We are moving away from a centralised KM to a more decentralised, self-service, personal KM. Employees decide what information they want to subscribe to. They decide who they would like to follow in their network, which interest groups they would like to subscribe to.
This wonderfully concise statement sums up part of my vision for KM at my law firm, in particular, the neccessity to make the information presented that most likely to be relevant and actionable to users.
A partner logs in. She is presented with the matters she's worked on recently, her top clients, and today's news and alerts about new litigation filed related to those clients. She also has previously selected receipt of alerts about significant changes in stock price or quarterly filings for those clients. Her one calendar shows her upcoming litigation deadlines, online CLE, and internal meetings for her practice areas. She can link directly to a place for her to review those associates who have worked with her most recently, and shows her how she's doing in terms of work in progress, accounts receivable, and her own billings for the calendar year versus targets.
As someone interested in financial industry regulation, she has chosen to receive an alert when a piece of work product receives a "Regulation FD" tag, or when someone's profile receives such a tag.
It's about pulling together the information that we already know relates to each person, plus the additional information or alerts that they have chosen to receive.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
LegalTech Report: Online Networks and the Twitter Backchannel
Moderator:
Robert Ambrogi, Journalist
Panelists:
John Lipsey, Vice President, Corporate Counsel Services, LexisNexis
Vanessa DiMauro, CEO & President, Leader Networks
Eugene M. Weitz, Corporate Counsel, Alcatel-Lucent
Olivier Antoine, Counsel, Crowell & Moring
My overall impression is that, not surprisingly, lawyers and firms are way behind the rest of the business world in terms of knowledge, comfort, and implementation of the new forms of social networking, as through LinkedIn, Legal OnRamp, or other similar platforms.
I had a vivid conversation after the session with Niki Black, a social-web-savvy food-loving attorney from Rochester NY. As was also apparent from her Twitter stream, she relayed to me she was unpleasantly surprised at the limited understanding and resistance to social networking displayed at the session. She may have had this reaction in part due to audience questions such as “What about conflicts”? and “What about attorney-client privilege?”
Other posts on this panel come from LawyerKM, Kelly Talcott, John Lipsey (podcast included),
I've collected my notes on this interesting panel organized by speaker; below that is a brief discussion of the "back channel" that arose on Twitter.
Bob Ambrogi
If you just looked at this conference, the hottest topic in technology looks like e-discovery. But outside of LegalTech, social media is an important topic. Even companies without a formal policy have employees using social media.
Of companies that have adopted it, 2/3 see improved customer satisfaction, and 2 in 5 can associate increase in sales with adoption of social media.
Only 2% of lawyers think that social media is a valuable tool for client development. Bob thinks this low percentage is due to a misunderstanding, as social media can include client recommendations, alumni relationships, publishing, and more.
Vanessa DiMauro (wikipedia LinkedIn)
Vanessa comes from the Enterprise 2.0 / academic & corporate space rather than the legal side.
She asked, what does social networking mean in the business context?
There have been many new tools emerge—it’s been the “Wild West.” We have had an opportunity to measure it effectively, and can start to move away from the tools towards the values that it can deliver.
There are different rules of engagement on social media sites.
Social and professional networks appear similar, but have very different purposes. With social networks you might want to share pictures or connect with former classmates. With professional networks the goals are to “evangelize your thought leadership” or perhaps make collective decisions. With both you want to make meaningful connections. With both you care about what kind of club you’re joining (remember the Marx brothers-- "I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member.").
Yet some of the same social rules we already live by apply equally in the online world. If we know someone personally we may be more comfortable reaching out to them. Space out interactions. Give three times per “ask.” Don’t wait to reach out to your LinkedIn connections until you need them.
Vanessa thinks there are opportunities to find the best of breed from other industries, that have already addressed social media. There is a road map and set of best practices around the most effective use of social media adaptable to the legal industry.
John Lipsey
He is developing “Connected” for Martindale Hubbell (I’m calling it MH Connected but that is not its brand name), a social networking site to be released later this quarter.
His core stakeholders are corporate counsel. How do we get beyond the “tip of the pyramid”? How can we tailor social media to their existing needs?
Key elements of social and professional networking include group and individual discussions (blogs and wikis) and relationship connection / identification. (I would add status updates).
What are the opportunities to provide more value to lawyers in social media? What do lawyers want? He thinks authentication and validation are really important. It may not matter so much that someone on Facebook is who they say they are. But it really does matter where attorney advice or referrals may be at stake.
For instance, you can’t be anonymous on MH Connected because that would destroy the trust model.
Every network in the world is looking for a critical mass. MH Connected is trying to identify relationships using their existing information such as working for same firm, being on a published opinion, or graduating law school together. MH Connected is trying to make it easier to get people together by suggesting people they may know (LinkedIn and Facebook already do this, through formal groups based on education or employment, and by allowing creation of groups by users interested in a particular topic or united in some other way).
Can social networking help in-house counsel manage “preferred provider” programs?
You can’t build this out for the early adopters. It has to help lawyers in everyday practice, including authentication, trust and so forth. What are the technologies that will engage your practitioners?
Conflict or attorney-client privilege risk can be addressed through thinking, what kind of group am I addressing? What is the audience?
John has a decent grasp of social networking principles, and some interesting ideas for what may connect lawyers in particular. It remains to be seen if the previously ossified Martindale Hubbell will truly be able to become a useful and valuable destination for lawyers.
Olivier Antoine
Social networking brings key information for inside and outside counsel. The new value being generated is the new type of information, such as who is connected to who, who has recently looked at your profile, and so forth.
Law firms are conservative environments and are very slow to adopt new ways of doing things, as is required to some extent for social networking.
Understanding who knows who can be important for the substance of the work he does (he defends companies accused of price-fixing, which entails understanding all of the information being shared between parties about prices).
Olivier recently noticed that a number of firm lawyers had linked to a lawyers at a firm being acquired just a few weeks before the deal was announced. Social networks make it easier to share information; the type of risk and precautionary steps are may be the same, but the magnitude of the risk greater.
Social media adoption is unavoidable. It has to be addressed.
Eugene Weitz
He compartmentalizes his business and personal connections. In either case, what is the value compared with the amount of time required?
Alcatel Lucent is a “global law division” of over 200 people, all over the world. As part of their knowledge management program, they are trying to figure out better ways to communicate.
In-house counsel have to stay current on the law and have to know the business. Martindale Hubbell and LinkedIn offer ways to communicate with the outside world. He’s also with a NJ counsel organization that is all about in-house lawyers talking to each other.
They choose to have discussions only with certain people. He doesn’t want a direct sales pitch from outside counsel, but he does want discussion and information sharing.
He works in the field of IT. He wants to know what the market is in outsourcing or other trends. If social media can help inside counsel understand law, benchmarking, and communicate, it will have a place.
Eugene expects that there will be substantive legal content on MH Connected in the same way that there is content on law firm web sites. The difference is that it will be collected and shared in one space.
I was surprised there was no mention of Legal OnRamp, which purports to provide similar functionality in terms of sharing online content. Doug Cornelius, who has previously posted twice on that platform, came through on Twitter however.
Live Discussion
John thinks that the value proposition might vary greatly between in-house and outside counsel. Eugene identified what in-house counsel want. Outside counsel want to attract people to them and build business through demonstrating expertise.
Bob said that beginners should look at LinkedIn simply as an online directory of professionals. You need to be in many different places to be visible as part of a high profile.
We’re getting to the point where the social media tools can be matched to the particular business or strategic goal.
Twitter Discussion
Mary Abraham has posted on how interesting the "back channel" of Twitter discussion became. At one point she relayed live a tweeted question from Doug (who was in Boston). I agree with her that it provided a whole new perspective, hitherto unavailable, of an audience's reaction to a session. It's a step up from blogging in terms of immediacy, but a step down in terms of thoughtful analysis.
You can see most of the posts on this session by searching Twitter for #LTNY and networking.
Obviously these are not my posts, but I thought it would provide readers some insight into the audience reaction to see some of the spicy comments on Twitter that arose during the session.
Robert Ambrogi, Journalist
Panelists:
John Lipsey, Vice President, Corporate Counsel Services, LexisNexis
Vanessa DiMauro, CEO & President, Leader Networks
Eugene M. Weitz, Corporate Counsel, Alcatel-Lucent
Olivier Antoine, Counsel, Crowell & Moring
My overall impression is that, not surprisingly, lawyers and firms are way behind the rest of the business world in terms of knowledge, comfort, and implementation of the new forms of social networking, as through LinkedIn, Legal OnRamp, or other similar platforms.
I had a vivid conversation after the session with Niki Black, a social-web-savvy food-loving attorney from Rochester NY. As was also apparent from her Twitter stream, she relayed to me she was unpleasantly surprised at the limited understanding and resistance to social networking displayed at the session. She may have had this reaction in part due to audience questions such as “What about conflicts”? and “What about attorney-client privilege?”
Other posts on this panel come from LawyerKM, Kelly Talcott, John Lipsey (podcast included),
I've collected my notes on this interesting panel organized by speaker; below that is a brief discussion of the "back channel" that arose on Twitter.
Bob Ambrogi
If you just looked at this conference, the hottest topic in technology looks like e-discovery. But outside of LegalTech, social media is an important topic. Even companies without a formal policy have employees using social media.
Of companies that have adopted it, 2/3 see improved customer satisfaction, and 2 in 5 can associate increase in sales with adoption of social media.
Only 2% of lawyers think that social media is a valuable tool for client development. Bob thinks this low percentage is due to a misunderstanding, as social media can include client recommendations, alumni relationships, publishing, and more.
Vanessa DiMauro (wikipedia LinkedIn)
Vanessa comes from the Enterprise 2.0 / academic & corporate space rather than the legal side.
She asked, what does social networking mean in the business context?
There have been many new tools emerge—it’s been the “Wild West.” We have had an opportunity to measure it effectively, and can start to move away from the tools towards the values that it can deliver.
There are different rules of engagement on social media sites.
Social and professional networks appear similar, but have very different purposes. With social networks you might want to share pictures or connect with former classmates. With professional networks the goals are to “evangelize your thought leadership” or perhaps make collective decisions. With both you want to make meaningful connections. With both you care about what kind of club you’re joining (remember the Marx brothers-- "I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member.").
Yet some of the same social rules we already live by apply equally in the online world. If we know someone personally we may be more comfortable reaching out to them. Space out interactions. Give three times per “ask.” Don’t wait to reach out to your LinkedIn connections until you need them.
Vanessa thinks there are opportunities to find the best of breed from other industries, that have already addressed social media. There is a road map and set of best practices around the most effective use of social media adaptable to the legal industry.
John Lipsey
He is developing “Connected” for Martindale Hubbell (I’m calling it MH Connected but that is not its brand name), a social networking site to be released later this quarter.
His core stakeholders are corporate counsel. How do we get beyond the “tip of the pyramid”? How can we tailor social media to their existing needs?
Key elements of social and professional networking include group and individual discussions (blogs and wikis) and relationship connection / identification. (I would add status updates).
What are the opportunities to provide more value to lawyers in social media? What do lawyers want? He thinks authentication and validation are really important. It may not matter so much that someone on Facebook is who they say they are. But it really does matter where attorney advice or referrals may be at stake.
For instance, you can’t be anonymous on MH Connected because that would destroy the trust model.
Every network in the world is looking for a critical mass. MH Connected is trying to identify relationships using their existing information such as working for same firm, being on a published opinion, or graduating law school together. MH Connected is trying to make it easier to get people together by suggesting people they may know (LinkedIn and Facebook already do this, through formal groups based on education or employment, and by allowing creation of groups by users interested in a particular topic or united in some other way).
Can social networking help in-house counsel manage “preferred provider” programs?
You can’t build this out for the early adopters. It has to help lawyers in everyday practice, including authentication, trust and so forth. What are the technologies that will engage your practitioners?
Conflict or attorney-client privilege risk can be addressed through thinking, what kind of group am I addressing? What is the audience?
John has a decent grasp of social networking principles, and some interesting ideas for what may connect lawyers in particular. It remains to be seen if the previously ossified Martindale Hubbell will truly be able to become a useful and valuable destination for lawyers.
Olivier Antoine
Social networking brings key information for inside and outside counsel. The new value being generated is the new type of information, such as who is connected to who, who has recently looked at your profile, and so forth.
Law firms are conservative environments and are very slow to adopt new ways of doing things, as is required to some extent for social networking.
Understanding who knows who can be important for the substance of the work he does (he defends companies accused of price-fixing, which entails understanding all of the information being shared between parties about prices).
Olivier recently noticed that a number of firm lawyers had linked to a lawyers at a firm being acquired just a few weeks before the deal was announced. Social networks make it easier to share information; the type of risk and precautionary steps are may be the same, but the magnitude of the risk greater.
Social media adoption is unavoidable. It has to be addressed.
Eugene Weitz
He compartmentalizes his business and personal connections. In either case, what is the value compared with the amount of time required?
Alcatel Lucent is a “global law division” of over 200 people, all over the world. As part of their knowledge management program, they are trying to figure out better ways to communicate.
In-house counsel have to stay current on the law and have to know the business. Martindale Hubbell and LinkedIn offer ways to communicate with the outside world. He’s also with a NJ counsel organization that is all about in-house lawyers talking to each other.
They choose to have discussions only with certain people. He doesn’t want a direct sales pitch from outside counsel, but he does want discussion and information sharing.
He works in the field of IT. He wants to know what the market is in outsourcing or other trends. If social media can help inside counsel understand law, benchmarking, and communicate, it will have a place.
Eugene expects that there will be substantive legal content on MH Connected in the same way that there is content on law firm web sites. The difference is that it will be collected and shared in one space.
I was surprised there was no mention of Legal OnRamp, which purports to provide similar functionality in terms of sharing online content. Doug Cornelius, who has previously posted twice on that platform, came through on Twitter however.
Live Discussion
John thinks that the value proposition might vary greatly between in-house and outside counsel. Eugene identified what in-house counsel want. Outside counsel want to attract people to them and build business through demonstrating expertise.
Bob said that beginners should look at LinkedIn simply as an online directory of professionals. You need to be in many different places to be visible as part of a high profile.
We’re getting to the point where the social media tools can be matched to the particular business or strategic goal.
Twitter Discussion
Mary Abraham has posted on how interesting the "back channel" of Twitter discussion became. At one point she relayed live a tweeted question from Doug (who was in Boston). I agree with her that it provided a whole new perspective, hitherto unavailable, of an audience's reaction to a session. It's a step up from blogging in terms of immediacy, but a step down in terms of thoughtful analysis.
You can see most of the posts on this session by searching Twitter for #LTNY and networking.
Obviously these are not my posts, but I thought it would provide readers some insight into the audience reaction to see some of the spicy comments on Twitter that arose during the session.
- GabeAcevedo #LTNY online networking panel. This is not what I expected. Must either leave/kill self soon as possible.
- nicolecaccamo: And that "safe" networking would exclude us non-lawyers presumably - missing out on a lot of value/connections #LTNY
- CherylMcKinnon: #ltny John Lipsey - authentication and validation needed for safe professional networking
- brucecarton: Uh oh, bloggers getting restless. RT @GabeAcevedo #LTNY networking panel. Martindale mentioned now 10 times in martindale sponsored panel.
- dougcornelius: @VMaryAbraham #LTNY Social networking is about community. You want to hang with your friends. Are your friends in that site? Connected?
- dougcornelius: @kdtalcott "Best Practices in Online Networking"? But Legal OnRamp is already doing what MH Connected wants to do #ltny
- CherylMcKinnon: #ltny John Lipsey - authentication and validation needed for safe professional networking [This post was "retweeted" or rebroadcast within a few seconds by two others]
- kevinokeefe: Session re online networking & social media has had 25% of audience leave. Turned exciting topic into something boring. #LTNY
Monday, February 2, 2009
LegalTech: KM from a Client Services Perspective
- The importance of client service in retaining clients and growing the practice
- Growth of KM approaches from internally focused needs to effectively playing a role in serving client
Meredith Williams, Director of Knowledge Management, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz
Todd Mattson, Director of Practice Systems & Services, Covington & Burling LLPAttendance has been thinning out somewhat since the heavily-attended morning session.
Todd Mattson
Practice Systems groups comprised of library, paralegals, and litigation support teams. He sought to define KM with reference to improving firm performance.Example #1--Policy Advice for Large Pharma Company
There were many different types of documents, many different firm offices involved, and many different client participants. The client was driving need for organization.They developed an extranet that lets everyone track projects, documents and deliverables. The view looks like a basic browsable folder tree, although some of the items are projects rather than documents.
Example #2--Coalition Representation & ManagementThese coalitions are comprised of 8-22 U.S. and international companies (say, a trade or manufacturing group). They need both substantive and procedural documentation.
Example #3--Digital Case File SitesMost of these are digital repositories for pleadings and other case materials. They expanded to include patent background data.
Lessons Learned
They focus on the matter and the practical needs/wants of the clients. They don't charge for the actual web site, but the work is done for a particular matter and so is billable.Meredith Williams
What are the internal activities that drive client acquisition?
How do KM activities affect the bottom line?
How do we promote and market these activities inside and outside the firm?
Focus moved from better information sharing to efficiency and then to marketing and business development. KM is very much integrated with the marketing team.
What can we build that the client will see and appreciate? What KM can we sell as a commodity?
West KM is integrated into their enterprise search (Microsoft's?).
For a practice group, ask what will help them service the client better? Work product and feeds of external resources such as docket/case alerts. They have a direct integration with Courtlink, based on say type of law.
They have a personalized "My Site" that graphically displays the attorney's lists of matters and most recently modified documents.
Baker has industry and client service teams. Industry teams can start to identify opportunities in new types of work. They pull in large amounts of information from West Monitor. West Monitor serves up business news and analysis organized around particular industries.
They have client and matter intranet sites. Some client sites can be shared with the client. Client sites show financial information, documents, and emails. Matter sites show .pdf copies of actual bills (not difficult to do, great reward).
"Advanced" client sites bring in information from West Monitor. Dashboards show news items, stock price information, and so forth. Some have blogs. (The client does not see the blogs). She had a big success with a client who moved business to the firm after seeing the externally facing client site. Client productions and interrogatory responses are going to be searcheable.
The KM group offers clients CLE on West KM and Westlaw.
She's integrated KM with the "four pillars" of the firm's business plan. Meets with practice and industry teams every quarter. Asks them what their needs are, KM figures out "how" and delivers.
Keys to Success
- Serve as many groups as possible
- Communicate with administration about successes
- Brand everything that you can
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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