Legal knowledge management has traditionally focused first on the needs of practicing lawyers, for obvious reasons, with tools, resources and staff devoted to such topics as improving sample / precedent retrieval and use, organizing the firm's legal experience, and improving access to information about people inside the firm.
Law firms and other legal organizations are like other purposeful collections of people and activity, of course, and the non-legal administrative staff have information and knowledge needs that skilled knowledge management practitioners can assist, by virtue of their understanding of the business of law, their understanding of collaborative technology, comparative comprehension of the possible technology solutions.
I'm looking for additional speakers to discuss at the 2013 ILTA conference (August 18-22 in Las Vegas, NV) how they've leveraged knowledge management approaches to assist groups (other than practicing lawyers) within their legal organizations. Contact me if you're interested or have any questions.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Ark Conference: The Role of Technology in KM
These are my notes on an interesting presentation about an intensive investment in technology (specifically, SharePoint) and its impact on a firm.
Leona Blanco
Leona Blanco lays out a picture of what her firm Colin Biggers & Paisley was like in 2004.
They had 21 partners, 150 people, and 11 different numbering systems. They had no intranet or extranet, and no document management system.
Now in 2013 there are 2 numbering system, one style guide, and a standard cost agreement. They adopted SharePoint 2007 for intranet, extranet, and document management system. Their extranet "My CBP" was rolled out in early 2010. (Clifford Chance has since adopted SharePoint 2010 and has thousands of employees and documents).
In Australia, the Legal Profession Act requires alerting a client when a budget is threatening to be exceeded. CPB provides "Mercury Alerts," email notices of issues like these, internal information reports. Mercury Alerts have evolved to be the source of choice for administrative information, with many many customized reports.
Omni is the CPB data warehouse that feeds data to SharePoint, Mercury Alerts, and the like. No one knows about Omni.
They've rolled out SharePoint collaboration sites for specific practices that combine documents, discussion boards, articles, feeds, and the like. Client sites (actually a SharePoint site collection) also have matter-specific SharePoint sites. An "About the Client" section allows for client team members (usually the lead partner) to contribute information about key client contacts, billing information, staffing considerations, and industry background.
Each matter has a SharePoint site. There are now over 100,000 matter sites and 2 terabytes of data in CPB intranet.
SharePoint allows for alerts from any document or site.
They do a lot of litigation and are importing an historic litigation sample database. They are developing litigation forms that will auto-populate documents from matter-level information in the database (under development).
The system allows for customized matter metadata.
Implementing Technology
It has to work right. You have to have a trial run, focus groups and pilot groups. Make it cool to be a volunteer. Include a troublemaker, because if you win them over,
Some partners may not use the tools, which may be OK if it only impacts them.
Blathering at people in technical-speak is the quickest way to alienate them. Translate into plain English. IT is no longer optional.
Chris Latta
A law firm's greatest asset is its knowledge. It is subject to leakage through attrition and through people losing track of it.
The rate of production of knowledge is increasing.
If you're supporting a lot of people with a lot of data, you have to leverage technology. Increased capacity of technological production.
We're never going back to a point where efficiency is not important. Law firms have to actively plan to make their current work practices obsolete.
Commoditized work has different economies of scale.
Disruptive systems don't support the current ways of doing business and may not be deployed within the walls of ones law firm.
Access to justice is a significant problems. In England a million civil cases go unheard. In Australia legal service funds are being cut. We can automate dispute resolution.
If we don't disrupt our own markets, someone else will.
The KM system must have more knowledge than the firm. Contact Relationship Management is much more important in bigger firms.
CBP has a dedicated software development team.
Leona Blanco
Leona Blanco lays out a picture of what her firm Colin Biggers & Paisley was like in 2004.
They had 21 partners, 150 people, and 11 different numbering systems. They had no intranet or extranet, and no document management system.
Now in 2013 there are 2 numbering system, one style guide, and a standard cost agreement. They adopted SharePoint 2007 for intranet, extranet, and document management system. Their extranet "My CBP" was rolled out in early 2010. (Clifford Chance has since adopted SharePoint 2010 and has thousands of employees and documents).
In Australia, the Legal Profession Act requires alerting a client when a budget is threatening to be exceeded. CPB provides "Mercury Alerts," email notices of issues like these, internal information reports. Mercury Alerts have evolved to be the source of choice for administrative information, with many many customized reports.
Omni is the CPB data warehouse that feeds data to SharePoint, Mercury Alerts, and the like. No one knows about Omni.
They've rolled out SharePoint collaboration sites for specific practices that combine documents, discussion boards, articles, feeds, and the like. Client sites (actually a SharePoint site collection) also have matter-specific SharePoint sites. An "About the Client" section allows for client team members (usually the lead partner) to contribute information about key client contacts, billing information, staffing considerations, and industry background.
Each matter has a SharePoint site. There are now over 100,000 matter sites and 2 terabytes of data in CPB intranet.
SharePoint allows for alerts from any document or site.
They do a lot of litigation and are importing an historic litigation sample database. They are developing litigation forms that will auto-populate documents from matter-level information in the database (under development).
The system allows for customized matter metadata.
Implementing Technology
It has to work right. You have to have a trial run, focus groups and pilot groups. Make it cool to be a volunteer. Include a troublemaker, because if you win them over,
Some partners may not use the tools, which may be OK if it only impacts them.
Blathering at people in technical-speak is the quickest way to alienate them. Translate into plain English. IT is no longer optional.
Chris Latta
A law firm's greatest asset is its knowledge. It is subject to leakage through attrition and through people losing track of it.
The rate of production of knowledge is increasing.
If you're supporting a lot of people with a lot of data, you have to leverage technology. Increased capacity of technological production.
We're never going back to a point where efficiency is not important. Law firms have to actively plan to make their current work practices obsolete.
Commoditized work has different economies of scale.
Disruptive systems don't support the current ways of doing business and may not be deployed within the walls of ones law firm.
Access to justice is a significant problems. In England a million civil cases go unheard. In Australia legal service funds are being cut. We can automate dispute resolution.
If we don't disrupt our own markets, someone else will.
The KM system must have more knowledge than the firm. Contact Relationship Management is much more important in bigger firms.
CBP has a dedicated software development team.
Ark Conference Report: Responding To Current Market Conditions With Successful KM Strategy
Speakers:
Karen Hanigan, KM Director, Clayton Utz
Mira Renko, Head of Expertise, Ashurst
David Williams, Lange Consulting & Software
Facilitator: Judith Ellis, Enterprise Knowledge Pty Ltd
This is my second post on the ARK conference. This was an interesting session, a little short on specifics, but full of information about the changes in the legal industry and some of the challenges facing legal knowledge management in Australia.
Karen Hanigan
Clayton Utz is a big firm; clients want faster, better, cheaper, and competition has never been fiercer. Lawyer's Weekly has picked this up. A survey of top-tier firms identified fees, merger mania, and depression (among staff) as significant issues. We're in a state of uncertainty.
When she started in KM "the world was your oyster." There is some fatigue around what KM demands. We had a big field of concepts to master like staff retention, mentoring, and change management. She feels that KM has to narrow its focus. Her choice has been to focus on business development. There is a strong synergy between KM and BD. She's doing a lot of profiling. She's set up meetings every two weeks with the BD team.
KM can help by simplifying. She uses what everyone else is doing. Hear what others are doing and sharing amongst professional is key.
Client presentations can demonstrate KM value but could potentially take away from the value of knowledge management to the staff.
She's providing technical legal training to the firm in part as a way of raising the profile of KM, to demonstrate how skilled her staff is. These require KM attorneys to become good presenters (I have certainly found a more frequent and perhaps greater need for presentation or training skills in this type of a role than I did as a practicing litigator).
KM also helps provide CLE training to client lawyers. She'll help lawyers by reviewing dry runs.
Need for KM is getting greater with information overload and the emphasis on lean practice, but there is "KM fatigue" around the need.
Mira Renko
We have to consider the pressures put upon law firms by clients and by clients on general counsel. Some clients are demanding some free services like certain types of clauses or brief consultation with a research librarians.
KM is addressing pricing pressure by teaching and coaching matter teams about how to manage the matters more efficiently and effectively.
Her firm has stepped into the global law firm environment.
Some areas of profitable work have decreased (like Mergers & Acquisition). Do you redeploy lawyers to new areas or make them redundant? KM can help with training lawyers in new areas of increased profitability and opportunity.
Clients may look for access to a shared space on big matters. This is not difficult to provide. Some clients are requiring firms to use their portal. KM can help lawyers manage that change. KM needs to be nimble and manage client demands.
Business development managers may not understand what KM can fairly readily and cheaply provide to clients.
PSLs in the UK do a lot of client-facing work, presenting seminars to clients and writing what goes to clients.
David Williams
Other industry have already addressed the kinds of pricing pressures now facing the legal industry. How you show that you add value for money?
Cloud solutions are becoming secure (with the right controls) and are easy to get up and running. Client and partner organization access is fairly straightforward and can be time-delimited.
Is there a case for cost recovery for KM services?
Karen Hanigan, KM Director, Clayton Utz
Mira Renko, Head of Expertise, Ashurst
David Williams, Lange Consulting & Software
Facilitator: Judith Ellis, Enterprise Knowledge Pty Ltd
This is my second post on the ARK conference. This was an interesting session, a little short on specifics, but full of information about the changes in the legal industry and some of the challenges facing legal knowledge management in Australia.
Karen Hanigan
Clayton Utz is a big firm; clients want faster, better, cheaper, and competition has never been fiercer. Lawyer's Weekly has picked this up. A survey of top-tier firms identified fees, merger mania, and depression (among staff) as significant issues. We're in a state of uncertainty.
When she started in KM "the world was your oyster." There is some fatigue around what KM demands. We had a big field of concepts to master like staff retention, mentoring, and change management. She feels that KM has to narrow its focus. Her choice has been to focus on business development. There is a strong synergy between KM and BD. She's doing a lot of profiling. She's set up meetings every two weeks with the BD team.
KM can help by simplifying. She uses what everyone else is doing. Hear what others are doing and sharing amongst professional is key.
Client presentations can demonstrate KM value but could potentially take away from the value of knowledge management to the staff.
She's providing technical legal training to the firm in part as a way of raising the profile of KM, to demonstrate how skilled her staff is. These require KM attorneys to become good presenters (I have certainly found a more frequent and perhaps greater need for presentation or training skills in this type of a role than I did as a practicing litigator).
KM also helps provide CLE training to client lawyers. She'll help lawyers by reviewing dry runs.
Need for KM is getting greater with information overload and the emphasis on lean practice, but there is "KM fatigue" around the need.
Mira Renko
We have to consider the pressures put upon law firms by clients and by clients on general counsel. Some clients are demanding some free services like certain types of clauses or brief consultation with a research librarians.
KM is addressing pricing pressure by teaching and coaching matter teams about how to manage the matters more efficiently and effectively.
Her firm has stepped into the global law firm environment.
Some areas of profitable work have decreased (like Mergers & Acquisition). Do you redeploy lawyers to new areas or make them redundant? KM can help with training lawyers in new areas of increased profitability and opportunity.
Clients may look for access to a shared space on big matters. This is not difficult to provide. Some clients are requiring firms to use their portal. KM can help lawyers manage that change. KM needs to be nimble and manage client demands.
Business development managers may not understand what KM can fairly readily and cheaply provide to clients.
PSLs in the UK do a lot of client-facing work, presenting seminars to clients and writing what goes to clients.
David Williams
Other industry have already addressed the kinds of pricing pressures now facing the legal industry. How you show that you add value for money?
Cloud solutions are becoming secure (with the right controls) and are easy to get up and running. Client and partner organization access is fairly straightforward and can be time-delimited.
Is there a case for cost recovery for KM services?
First Session at Ark Conference, “Using KM to build a robust and efficient firm”
Speaker: Mira Renko, Head of Expertise, Ashurst
Formal Description:
·
Building
the right teams to address various client requirements
·
Effectively
locating various knowledge resources
·
Managing
the talent and experience of lawyers within the firm
·
Effectively
mentoring and training new and experienced lawyers
This was a session with a strong professional development and training bent--Chris Boyd's work at Wilson Sonsini as head of both comes to mind. I have a strong emphasis on training in my own work and appreciated Mira's laying out details on an advanced program that has accomplished extensive development of soft skills and collaboration amongst firm lawyers.
Introduction
Knowledge management used to support a law firm's plan can drive law firm success and make lawyers lives better.
The "expertise team" has traditional precedent managers as well as expertise / "Professional Development & Training" people. There are around four staff on the expertise team in Australia.
In 2012, Ashurst (A UK-based firm) merged with an Australian firm and now has 24 offices as well as affiliations with Indonesian and India firms. Core businesses are in corporate finance, and infrastructure, inter allia. They do a lot of cross-border deals and so need local expertise in a lot of countries.
Their motto--"Excellence with rapport and more."
Quotes B. Gupta, "In an economy where the only certainty is uncertainty, the only sure source of lasting competitive advantage is knowledge."
Developing Knowledge Resources
Traditional KM is focused on documents. She quotes the Wikipedia definition of knowledge management.
Robust KM requires talented lawyers. This makes law firms vulnerable because they can leave. Expertise-led training programs and the like are key. Understanding clients is another part of knowledge management. Her firm talked to bank clients in advance of bank legislation to develop documents that covered the new legislation, which they were then able to leverage to develop new clients.
Formal and informal training are equally important. Good tools for lawyers are a given in a sophisticated firm. Documents have to be written in plain language, be consistent across offices, and be up to date.
Practice support lawyers embedded in practice groups initiate sharing and collaboration.
IT systems are also necessary and are a "given." Most law firm systems are reasonably good and it is often a matter of leveraging them as necessary.
KM has to support the fundamental business of the firm and be aligned with the firm's long-term goals. The strategic goals of the firms should guide the KM group's strategic plan. Resources may be allocated to cover new offices; most profitable or growth areas; and areas of greatest risk for the firm. Understanding clients is also key.
Pinning KM plan to firm plan helps with support for KM, if KM is seen as part of implementing the firm plan. It shows your engagement with the firm plan and helps your initiatives gain traction.
In developing KM plan, ask questions like, "Who are the experts?" "What is key knowledge employees need to provide an excellent client services?" "What is the knowledge & information that your firms needs to access quickly and effectively?"
Making Knowledge Resources Accessible
A great set of precedent documents is crucial, although it may not be as exciting. These save lawyers time and contain highly developed expertise, reducing the risk to the firm. They are absolutely essential to an efficient firm.
Current awareness has to be robust and developed in an accessible format (they are rolling out new formats). The KM team works closely with the library in delivering current awareness. They provide value-add by writing case notes about new developments.
At Ashurst precedent documents are typically "sanitized" with client information removed.
The expertise team sits within the practice area, and are halfway between a "tool" and a "delivery tool." They act as a conduit and a resource depending on the need.
Knowledge delivery channels have to be easy to access. They deliver them via intranet, wiki, or document management systems.
Some practice areas love wikis because they are collaborative and easy to update.
Others prefer direct access to the document management system (DMS) libraries of precedent documents.
Practice area pages link through to the document management system.
The knowledge team has recently spent a lot of time on mobile access. Lawyers like to have updates delivered on the go. They've delivered tax and other legislative updates as eBooks, which are easy to read on commutes and can be annotated. CCH, Lexis, and Thomson / Reuters are also available via tablets. The library staff has trained lawyers on how to access these databases, create research folders, and download the folders to their PCs.
The KM team has also been advising lawyers on which apps to use.
"Using nimble tools to make everyday lawyers more effective."
Building the Right Team
Part of building the right team is getting the right people. The KM team is not directly involved in recruiting but it does assist in skills assessment and in identifying what skills are needed to move forward. A robust law firms makes the most effective use of its experts. Properly leveraging experts requires that they are sitting in the right teams, aren't doing work that could be just as easily done by others, and are recognized throughout the firm.
They created a "Learning Passport" program where associates at different levels had to be trained in the "absolute basics," covering some black-letter law and some soft skills. It's a physical passport, with stamps for courses they have to take. There are five levels of lawyers (one level might be "lawyers 1-3"). Soft skills include delegation, team building, supervision, time entry, matter management, and excellence in writing and oral presentation. A partner program (not a passport) works in small groups focuses on leadership, business development, and supervision. KM partners with the learning & development group and relies on outside providers.
Managing Talent
Engaging and motivating lawyers is really important in leveraging expertise and advancing internal personal networks. Associates learn by presenting at boot camps and training sessions, and build the foundations for working cross-office with peers.
They audit and analyze all the practice group training that takes place. Smaller offices may not get the benefits of trainings that take place in larger offices. One practice area for instance was doing an induction session in only one office, but at the expertise team's suggestion, extended it by video conferences to other offices.
Ashurst uses technology to its limit; all Continuing Legal Education classes are run across all offices (nationally).
Using intranets and wikis they try to ensure that learning is available on demand. They have "self-administered legal training" (SALT) on some subjects. They have a learning management system and have recorded face-to-face trainings.
Training & Mentoring Experienced Lawyers
Learning soft skills is still necessary to complete and polish off lawyers' educations. They've developed extensive "buddy" checklists. The KM team is charged with ensuring that lessons learned from matter debriefings are incorporated into precedents and ways of doing business going forward. They've developed guides for conducting matter debriefs.
In Touch With Clients
Learning about and from clients is really important for competitive advantage. They wrote an "advice-writing guide", supplemented with training, that shows lawyers how to write what I would call "client alerts." Clients didn't like reams of paper. Banks might like things in PowerPoint presentations. Lawyers may feel challenged artistically but graphs, charts, and pictures can greatly improve client advice.
Live-Blogging from Ark Conference
I'll be trying to put up posts today from the Ark Conference on Legal Knowledge Management. As always, these are my notes from the sessions, and, as I've learned from a recent Myers-Briggs analysis done at my firm as part of manager training, I'm good at getting the sense of a discussion rather than the he-said / she-said part.
Unfortunately my cool & effective Zagg keyboard / iPad setup is not going to be working today--it turns out that little cord you need to charge up the dang thing is a critical weak link, I replaced it last month and then left it on the plane after a very long flight from San Francisco to Sydney on Monday morning.
Unfortunately my cool & effective Zagg keyboard / iPad setup is not going to be working today--it turns out that little cord you need to charge up the dang thing is a critical weak link, I replaced it last month and then left it on the plane after a very long flight from San Francisco to Sydney on Monday morning.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Hobbie Goes To Australia--Ark Conference on Advancing Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession
I'm very appreciative for the opportunity to meet people in the Australian legal KM community face-to-face. I've met a few people at ILTA conferences, and have been generally impressed with the state of legal KM technology and adoption, as presented by those people in various sessions.
The two topics I'll be addressing are KM's support for pricing efforts, and creating a culture of collaboration within the enterprise.
The conference overview:
Knowledge management helps law firms to discover and unite organisational knowledge, leading to improved efficiency and consistency. It also facilitates robust professional development, enabling client service delivery of the highest quality and standard. In the face of changing business models and growing competition, law firms must ensure true efficiency and evolution in their service delivery to become a leader, not just a survivor.
While the benefits of a knowledge centre have been realised by competitive law firms, many law firms still find it a challenge to convince lawyers and senior managers to support a culture of internal knowledge sharing. Knowledge management professional in law firms face the common challenges of lack of time, traditional and change resistant organisational culture, and the difficulty of implementing new technologies effectively.
This one-day collaborative forum will provide you with an opportunity to learn about the people, process, technology and culture aspects through practical case studies that are essential for successful knowledge management within law firms. You’ll have the chance to interact with the speakers and other attendees to really gain a better understanding on how to cultivate a knowledge sharing culture in your organisation.
The full descriptions of the sessions I'm formally participating in follow.
1.International practitioner case study: KM’s role in supporting pricing
and budgeting
This is a solo presentation.
Learn how KM can add value to pricing and budgeting efforts within law
firms through application of KM skills to pricing information. KM skills
and approaches that can be applied to budget work include information
management, database development, matter experience work, time/billing/
budget taxonomy work, change management, and more.
Specific processes that KM can assist with include budget library
development, phase/task code development, data mining, budgeting and
pricing, and budget monitoring.
2. Panel Discussion: Social media and internal communication to drive
innovation in law firms
- Promoting online collaborative tools to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration
- Removing information silos across departmental boundaries and allowing users to easily share and collaborate
- Create an engaging community and encouraging new and innovative ideas
Panelists
- Josephine Murfey, Knowledge Manager, Hall & Wilcox Lawyers (see her Interview on Yammer deployment)
- Shirley Hamel, Director of Knowledge & Business Services, Maddocks
- me, Litigation Knowledge Manager, Goodwin Procter LLP
- Felicity Badcock, Head of Knowledge Management, King & Wood Mallesons
- Facilitator: Judith Ellis, Managing Director, Enterprise Knowledge Pty Ltd (who has more records management LinkedIn endorsements than I've ever seen before!)
I'll be speaking specifically about creating a collaborative culture within litigation matter teams.
Litigation pricing analytics have been an area of significant effort lately, and I look forward to sharing insights and making more connections on the other side of the world from my home town of Boston, Massachusetts.
I'm going to be in Sidney that week, going to regular touristy places like ferry boats and opera houses and less regular serious-amateur-musician places like chamber orchestra rehearsals and hopefully some string quartet sessions. Feel free to contact me if you would like to connect at, before, or after the conference.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Considerations In Folder Structures
I'm working on developing default folder "core" structures for matter-centric collaboration in iManage (otherwise known as "MCC"). The basic idea with such workspaces is to make it easier to file documents into the right matter, increase compliance with document tagging (for instance, identification of a document as a pleading instead of a letter in the DMS) and, for some firms, file email. In an MCC environment, each client-matter number has a corresponding workspace, and all documents are stored and browsed to within workspaces. In contrast to the situation in non-MCC environments, document libraries as such as invisible to users, and it is not difficult to find a folder for a specific client-matter.
I see the goals of MCC as increasing the amount of information that is in a matter-number-tagged and controlled environment (as compared to an email silo or shared drive), and also rectifying the tendency of document type tags to be dominated in practice by the "Miscellaneous" category. Document type is one of the key pieces of metadata for finding documents in a document management system, and also potentially is a guide to records management treatment.
This post provides links to some of the key MCC resources, and also outlines key considerations for development of sets of folders, without revealing specific folder recommendations.
Update-Hildebrandt Baker Robbins is no longer supporting their e2.0 site, accordingly I link instead to the Slideshare deck for the 2010 MCC Awards. Another useful resource from Prosperoware is "Rethinking Matter Centricity," which is in part an introduction to the purpose of their Milan software tool.
An ILTA slide deck addresses "How To Start With MCC", which notes that MCC is tied to matter opening, how attorneys and staff work with documents, records management, and (of course), knowledge management. Another extensive MCC resource is the International Legal Technology Association's somewhat dated "matter centricity" page.
MCC Principles
Simplicity
As with other taxonomy projects, I believe that MCC adoption and success benefits greatly from simplicity (see "KM and the Simple Stick"). In practice, I think this means that no more than 5-10 substantive folders, and starting out with as little as two, one for email and one for documents. The MCC Design Awards and other industry trends indicate that approaches calling for dozens of folders for various matter types have failed to be fully implemented.
Simplicity primarily relates to the number and granularity of folder types. While lawyers may like to have their electronic documents organized in dozens of different categories and sub-categories (befitting their categorical brains), they and their staff are rarely able in practice to leverage such an extensive list. Unless a top-down, consistent approach is consistently enforced, a small number of folders is better.
Ease of Use
One key mistake that I believe was made in early MCC tries was to have extensive use of multiple levels of folders. This is problematic in that the primary mode of filing in MCC is through drag-and-drop, which is much harder to do with multiple folder levels.
Another important aspect of ease of use is quick access to recently accessed workspaces. The vast majority of the time, the workspace / folder you need to save a given document into is one you've touched recently. Workspaces and folders within them therefore need to be readily distinguishable, and made available in ways other than through browsing and searching all of the workspaces.
A third aspect of ease of use is allowing users to customize. You can't let them change the most visible aspects of workspace and folder structure, but one should allow for appropriate degrees of customization. For instance, users should probably be able to add as many folders at the "top level" of their personal workspaces as they like, but not be able to so easily modify the "top level" of a client-matter workspace.
Utility
A good MCC design will acknowledge the primary scenarios in which people use folders. This means you have to account for people looking for documents and information as well as people's work in filing documents and email.
People looking for information have different needs than people filing documents. For one thing, they will want quick access to search. Many award-winning designs have provided folders that generate matter-specific searches, of documents, email, and documents + email. Also, they may not be familiar with the substance of the matter, suggesting that some consistency in the folders used can lead to greater utility for information searchers.
It is essentially impossible for a central team to accurately predict the precise information management needs of widely distributed matter teams working on different types of cases. Accordingly, the design should allow matter teams to create and control folders, at least, below the "root" level.
A Place For Everything
A user should be able to quickly (within a few seconds) identify the correct folder for 80-90% of the common documents generated in the course of legal work.
Miscellaneous
Most of the winning designs do not have a miscellaneous category.
Types of Workspaces
A good MCC design accounts for, first, client-matter workspaces; second, personal workspaces; third, legal administrative groups like practice areas, departments, and firm committees; and fourth, non-legal administrative workspaces (for groups like marketing and HR).
You can develop lists of needed workspaces through examining and analyzing two primary sources, the current set of documents and the client-matter or nonbillable client-matter number equivalents used to save them, and the current organizational structure of your firm.
Closing Thoughts
As with tax and constitutional law, the principles of MCC have the potential to conflict. Balancing the predominant principles with your firm's culture and way of working will be the keys to a successful MCC rollout.
I see the goals of MCC as increasing the amount of information that is in a matter-number-tagged and controlled environment (as compared to an email silo or shared drive), and also rectifying the tendency of document type tags to be dominated in practice by the "Miscellaneous" category. Document type is one of the key pieces of metadata for finding documents in a document management system, and also potentially is a guide to records management treatment.
This post provides links to some of the key MCC resources, and also outlines key considerations for development of sets of folders, without revealing specific folder recommendations.
Update-Hildebrandt Baker Robbins is no longer supporting their e2.0 site, accordingly I link instead to the Slideshare deck for the 2010 MCC Awards. Another useful resource from Prosperoware is "Rethinking Matter Centricity," which is in part an introduction to the purpose of their Milan software tool.
An ILTA slide deck addresses "How To Start With MCC", which notes that MCC is tied to matter opening, how attorneys and staff work with documents, records management, and (of course), knowledge management. Another extensive MCC resource is the International Legal Technology Association's somewhat dated "matter centricity" page.
MCC Principles
Simplicity
As with other taxonomy projects, I believe that MCC adoption and success benefits greatly from simplicity (see "KM and the Simple Stick"). In practice, I think this means that no more than 5-10 substantive folders, and starting out with as little as two, one for email and one for documents. The MCC Design Awards and other industry trends indicate that approaches calling for dozens of folders for various matter types have failed to be fully implemented.
Simplicity primarily relates to the number and granularity of folder types. While lawyers may like to have their electronic documents organized in dozens of different categories and sub-categories (befitting their categorical brains), they and their staff are rarely able in practice to leverage such an extensive list. Unless a top-down, consistent approach is consistently enforced, a small number of folders is better.
Ease of Use
One key mistake that I believe was made in early MCC tries was to have extensive use of multiple levels of folders. This is problematic in that the primary mode of filing in MCC is through drag-and-drop, which is much harder to do with multiple folder levels.
Another important aspect of ease of use is quick access to recently accessed workspaces. The vast majority of the time, the workspace / folder you need to save a given document into is one you've touched recently. Workspaces and folders within them therefore need to be readily distinguishable, and made available in ways other than through browsing and searching all of the workspaces.
A third aspect of ease of use is allowing users to customize. You can't let them change the most visible aspects of workspace and folder structure, but one should allow for appropriate degrees of customization. For instance, users should probably be able to add as many folders at the "top level" of their personal workspaces as they like, but not be able to so easily modify the "top level" of a client-matter workspace.
Utility
A good MCC design will acknowledge the primary scenarios in which people use folders. This means you have to account for people looking for documents and information as well as people's work in filing documents and email.
People looking for information have different needs than people filing documents. For one thing, they will want quick access to search. Many award-winning designs have provided folders that generate matter-specific searches, of documents, email, and documents + email. Also, they may not be familiar with the substance of the matter, suggesting that some consistency in the folders used can lead to greater utility for information searchers.
It is essentially impossible for a central team to accurately predict the precise information management needs of widely distributed matter teams working on different types of cases. Accordingly, the design should allow matter teams to create and control folders, at least, below the "root" level.
A Place For Everything
A user should be able to quickly (within a few seconds) identify the correct folder for 80-90% of the common documents generated in the course of legal work.
Miscellaneous
Most of the winning designs do not have a miscellaneous category.
Types of Workspaces
A good MCC design accounts for, first, client-matter workspaces; second, personal workspaces; third, legal administrative groups like practice areas, departments, and firm committees; and fourth, non-legal administrative workspaces (for groups like marketing and HR).
You can develop lists of needed workspaces through examining and analyzing two primary sources, the current set of documents and the client-matter or nonbillable client-matter number equivalents used to save them, and the current organizational structure of your firm.
Closing Thoughts
As with tax and constitutional law, the principles of MCC have the potential to conflict. Balancing the predominant principles with your firm's culture and way of working will be the keys to a successful MCC rollout.
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