Doug Cornelius .com

OZ BENAMRAM, Director of Knowledge Management of Morrison & Foerster LLP

TOM BALDWIN, Chief Knowledge Officer of Reed Smith LLP

DAVID JABBARI, Global Head of Know-How of Allen & Overy LLP

The session started off comparing Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and Knowledge Management 2.0. Oz started off looking at Web 2.0 technologies and mashing of information.

At Morrison & Foerster, they found associates went to Wikipedia first for information. The idea was to not necessarily rely on the information, but to give a starting point and background for the topic. Oz looked at Amazon and how it pushes other information around the things you are looking for.

Oz tried to define Web 2.0. It is de-centralized, the users generate the content. It is interconnected. You can access it with open standards. It is collaborative. Is is user-focused: a simple interface that you can personalize. The most important factor is that it is actionable: the information is timely and relevant.

The new face of law firm knowledge management has the goal of improving efficiency and the quality of service. They want to connect people to information, connect people to people and increase efficiency.

The challenge of today is not trying to get information. It is dealing with the overflow of information. There is too much. We need to add better context around the information to help decide if it is useful.

Moving on to Enterprise 2.0. The goal is to unite the repositories, giving the users one place to search. You need to give the users the ability to wrap metadata around the search results and filter on that metadata. You need the context to determine relevancy, experience and expertise. Oz gave a demo of his AnswerBase system: http://www.mofo.com/answerbase. This is Morrison Foerster’s enterprise search tool using Recommind’s Mindserver search engine. He set up a comparison of AnswerBase to Amazon in the ability to have a faceted search.

Oz also went on to show the ability of an entity extraction tool that helps auto-generate metadata on the documents. He cautioned that it is still experimental. [I found it interesting to compare this to Vivisomo's semantic clustering.]

Oz also showed his method for redoing the InterAction interface. It looks like he is capturing the information from InterAction and rendering it in a more friendly way.

He summarized with Knowledge Mangement 2.0, the that goal is the same, the challenges are intensified, the tools are improved but the user expectations are greater. Oz always has his videos and this time he used a video of Scotty (of the Starship Enterprise) from Star Trek IV trying to use a computer in the 1990′s. In Star Trek fashion, Scotty tries talking to the computer, then talking into the mouse and the finally using the “quaint” keyboard. See the clip on YouTube. Users are expecting things to get easier to do. What seems like cutting edge today will one day seem quaint and old-fashioned.

The panel moved on to the United Kingdom perspective of the new face of law firm knowledge management and David’s presentation.

The U.K. view of knowledge management links knowledge management closer to marketing than to IT. He points out that he has 71 practice support lawyers. Of course they still use technology: automated drafting systems, search and retrieval, dealrooms and extranets.

David broke down legal work into three categories: “standardized,” “procedural” and “bespoke.” “Standardized” are a delivery against specific requirement. Knowledge management here should focus on efficiency. “Procedural” is applying past deal experience to similar deals. Knowledge management is to turn expertise quickly into procedure. “Bespoke” is less based on prior knowledge, but the ability to promote superb expertise. Knowledge management’s role to highlight that knowledge.

He stated that at least 70% of his attorneys are covered by blogs and wikis. [I think he meant that there are blogs or wikis on topics that interest at least 70% of the firm's lawyers.]

He showed an example of pushing content out to client using RSS feeds. He showed Netalytics, a joint venture with ISDA. This generates revenue delivering commoditized legal information.

He showed an extranet for the Banking Legal Technology site. It is an extranet that big banks forced the law firms to publish their client alerts to a central location. He drew a comparison to Legal OnRamp [I have a post lined up for Legal OnRamp later this week.]

They are working on Autonomy for an enterprise search tool. He sees enterprise search tool is that we will need to deal with more and more information.

Up next was Tom, focusing on putting it in context. [Since Tom just started a new job, switching from Sheppard Mullin to Reed Smith, he was not running his song and dance of tools he previously implemented. He was not able to show any KM toys to the audience.]

Tom’s paradigm is wrapped around three spheres: what we know, who we know and what we need to know. He see technology helping by passively gathering data.

He pins the key to knowledge management on matter classification. He uses it as the glue to cover marketing, documents and other information architecture. One of his big projects is reconfiguring the matter classification schema. He is looking to bring in people to conduct after action reviews to gather information about matters. They would start the information gathering process after the hours for a matter have dropped off (indicating that the matter is finding down: closed, dead, settled, decided). [I agree with Tom. One of current initiatives is gathering more information about the matters we work on. You cannot impose many of requirements up front at the mattering opening process or else attorneys will just keep everything under general. And frankly, we often only have a limited idea of what the matter will entail when we open a new matter.]

He also thinks that attorneys are getting spammed internally. They are getting too many emails to deliver content. The email is out of context and interruptive. [As usual, I agree with Tom. I am looking to blogs, wikis and intranet delivery of more content in better context. I see very little internal administrative email that is so important it must make my blackberry buzz.]

He iterated, as other have, that lawyers will not go to training. We need to make easy to use and easy to understand tools.

Tom is getting 5 times as contact information from an automated system than through the manual process. They are harvesting information from email traffic. You can also leverage the the flow of emails to determine the strength of the connection. Oz said they he got four times the volume of contact information from monitoring email traffic. He pointed out that MoFo allowed people to opt out of the system.

The audience asked about KM 3.0. Oz thinks KM will integrate into the business information, workflow etc to more actively help in the decision-making process.

Rob Saccone from xmLaw. The company is focused on providing products and services built on the SharePoint platform to law firms. [Rob used to lead the development team at Goodwin Procter and lead the deployment of our first SharePoint intranet portal.]

There is a dollar value to not finding information. It easy to apply a number of lost hours and amplify it by the number of attorneys and their billing rate to create a huge value number to the amount of time it takes to find the information they need.

His approach is put a layer on top of your underlying systems. This gives a more consistent user interface and more consistent way of finding the information they need. For it to be effective it needs to be embedded in their regular way of working.

Rob quickly moved into a demo of his products.

The opening page is highly personalized. The user gets presented with statistics on hours, month to date, year to date, etc. Also on the home page: firm news, weather, and local news.

He strips “my contacts” from InterAction and presents the information on a SharePoint list view.

The “my clients” gives a list of relevant clients. The information on the “my clients” page is then changes as a different client is selected: client contacts, headlines and billing information. You can then drill down to a specific client pages with more detailed information, such as documents, specific billing information, contacts, etc.

The “my practice areas” pulls together news from the group, calendar, and practice group members., marketing, forms and precedents, resources, financial and administrative information. They are also deploying information graphically, especially the financial information. They are also using the graphic presentation for some key indicators from the document management system.

The “my documents” sections pulls documents from the document management system.

Rob also highlighted the SharePoint search capabilities. He also pointed out that with the FAST acquisition, the search capabilities are going to grow. Attorneys want “The Google” to find stuff.
He thinks SharePoint can deliver on that need. xmLaw adds on the ability to index other systems that SharePoint alone cannot index. In particular, the document management system.

In the demo, he presents a simple text box centered in the screen. [Looking just like the Google search screen] xmLaw adds a great filtering tool allowing you to refine the results by author, client, matter, etc. Faceted navigation of the search results. The search results are tied into other systems so you can link to author information, matter information, etc. Adding hooks into other systems adds a lot of value.

xmLaw has also managed to allow faceting from RealPractice document types. They are also looking to integrate into WestLaw, RealPractice and other systems.

Rob’s approach is integration. He thinks information should be pulled into a central location from the separate information systems.

A new product is an extranet solution. The key is to make it easier to publish documents to the extranet site. He is not poking a hole in the firewall to allow access. [I wholeheartedly agree with this approach. There should be an obvious and deliberate action to push a document to an extranet.]

JUDY KATANY, Managing Director of Huron Consulting Services – Moderator

IAN MILLER , Chief Information Officer of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP

LANCE REA, Director of Information Services at Davis & Gilbert LLP

MARSHA STEIN, Chief Information Officer of Ropes and Gray LLP

Jusy put out these propositions:

• 5% of a Law Firm’s budget is spent on IT.
• But only 20% of the technology is used.
• Technology is typically the fourth biggest expense at a law firm behind salaries, rent and insurance

Marsha does not care about the percentages. She wants to address the attorneys’ problems. Maybe the attorneys do not need all of the features. She thinks it is a problem of the software vendors bundling too many features into

Marsha’s highest priority project this year is knowledge management (YEAH!!) Knowledge management is on the top of priority list for most attorneys and practices.

Ian thinks knowledge management is the top item. Followed quickly by collaboration. As attorneys are spread out they need better asynchronous tools. Then he is looking at remote access. Attorneys are increasingly on the road and not working in the office.

Lance is focusing on remote access and disaster recovery.

The panel thought it was very important to be responsive. Even if you do not have an answer, at least let them know they are being listened to. Jokingly, Marsha said she made sure the management committee always had the latest blackberry.

You need to focus on the solutions, not just the bottom line. You need to use legal technology to distinguish yourself from other firms. You need to focus on ways to deliver solutions to the clients and to the attorneys.

A question from the audience raised concern about remote access opening access to the firm;s information. Marsha is not opening the systems to the outside. WestKM and the other systems respect access through Citrix. Clients have extranets, but not live information into the firm systems.

Ian took a similar position. They take the view that they are a partnership. You need some ethical walls. But if you stumble across something you shouldn’t see, then you close it. They found that they needed to restrict access to administrative documents and bankruptcy documents. Enterprise search made these much more findable. And found that those administrators were not using appropriate document security.

Lance’s firm is against extranets. (Strange position.)

Ian pooh-poohed the idea of digital dictation and automated fax delivery. He thinks they are dinosaurs. Dictation is fading away and faxes are fading away as a way to deliver. He would prefer that someone scan the document and email it.

How to gain access to key lawyers and the firm clients?

Marsha finds it hard. As an example she gave a presentation to the attorneys as a background for what their client did.

Ian raised a cardinal rule of not talking to a client without a partner around. He has found that e-discovery has become a common topic of conversation with general counsel at clients. He is also finding that clients are increasingly becoming vendors.

In talking about e-discovery, Ian often has to discuss the meaning of “gone.” Is it gone forever, mostly gone, hard to find gone, etc.

Marsha thinks IT should move beyond just keeping the trains running to taking a more strategic view of the technology. She is finding that clients want to know more about the ability of the firm to deliver information.

Ian does not make an appointment to talk about knowledge management. He uses the lure of something sexier, like the attorney’s blackberry. Then he turns the conversation.

Marsha is focusing on the productivity benefits of knowledge management.

How do you use technology committees?

Lance uses his technology committee as an advisory group. He did put a document management purchase decision to a vote of the committee. But then he disbanded it.

Ian keeps the committee fresh by adding and deleting people on a regular basis. They are not the geeks of the firm. He wants people to be representative of the attorney user group. He also pointed out that the committee was a factor in making his predecessor become his predecessor.

Marsha similarly has a broad range of members and has added associates and is trying to add staff. She uses them as advisers. They are also good at bringing problems to her attention and bringing information back from other venues.

It was great to hear the knowledge management flag being saluted by the Chief Information Officers.

I managed to find my way from the airport to Hilton for LegalTech. I found a WiFI connection ($15 per day) but a lack of places to plug in.

For the day I am planning to attend:
AT1: Legal Technology Best Practices
ETA2: xmLaw
KM2: Technology Integration – The New Face of KM
KM2: KM Roundtable -Practical Approaches

Here is the link for all of my postings from LegalTech 08.

I am off to LegalTech next week at the Hilton NewYork. I plan to live blog for most of the time. (But we will see what they have to offer for WiFi and power availability.)

These are the three sessions I will attending on Tuesday:

KM1: How Knowledge Management Has Grown Up

Knowledge Management arrived as a concept a number of years ago. But it has taken more time for viable commercial systems and approaches to deliver real value. This session explores:

* Why early KM efforts didn’t always live up to their promises.
* Why building the internal case for KM is sometimes more difficult than it should be.
* How commercial systems have evolved to provide real benefit.
* What differentiates a successful KM approach from those that have not done as well?
* What new approaches are emerging to provide the next round of innovation?

Speakers:
GEORGE MAY
Vice President and General Manager
West km
Thomson West
Eagan, Minnesota

MEREDITH WILLIAMS
Director of Knowledge Management
Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC
Memphis, Tennessee

KM2: Technology Integration – The New Face of KM

Early approaches to Knowledge Management tended to take one of two forms:

1. Individual, highly customized systems;
2. Commercial applications providing KM to the mass market.

Some organizations have moved to combine the two approaches in a technology integration that combines the best of both worlds. In this session, you will hear from leading law firms that have embarked on highly customized approaches that still integrate the best of what commercial systems have to offer.

OZ BENAMRAM
Director of Knowledge Management
Morrison & Foerster LLP
New York, New York

TOM BALDWIN
Chief Knowledge Officer
Reed Smith LLP
Los Angeles, California

DAVID JABBARI
Global Head of Know-How
Allen & Overy LLP
London, UK

KM3: KM Roundtable – Practical Approaches

Though Knowledge Management is not a new concept, many organizations struggle to find practical approaches that work for their specific needs. This panel features leading KM experts from large law firms committed to making KM a success. Find out about the particular approaches they’ve used to make their KM initiatives a success.

Speakers:
JOHN COWLING
Partner
Armstrong Teasdale LLP
St. Louis, Missouri

LISA KELLAR GIANAKOS
Senior Practice Consultant
Hunton & Williams
Washington, D.C.

MARY PANETTA
Director of Knowledge Management
Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP
Los Angeles, California

Tuesday Night I plan to attend the Law Technology News Awards Dinner. Goodwin Procter is picking up an award for Most Innovative Use of Technology by a Law Firm.

I am not sure about Wednesday. It looks like I qualify for lousy coffee and mediocre danish at the LegalTech bloggers meeting.

Wednesday Night is a cocktail reception hosted by ILTA for the Knowledge Management Peer Group. (I am now on the steering committee.)

Thursday Morning is quiet get together of some legal knowledge management peers.