Doug Cornelius .com

Law.com’s Legal Technology section has an article by Nancy Manzo: Data Sharing to Promote Your Law Firm’s Experience.

I put together a Google Maps mashup to highlight some of my real estate practice experience: Transaction Map. It is more about showing geographic diversity than a depth of skill. I had proposed a similar Google Maps mashup for all of the firm’s real estate experience to the marketing group.

I looked at the Hubbard One Experience Management Solution mentioned in the article several months ago. I was very impressed with what it could do.

Take a look at the Jones Day experience search. It gives you a great look at some of the firm’s experience. The only problem is that the results are very exact. If you run a detailed search with lots of criteria, you often get no results. It should return a longer list based on relevancy.

The key to an experience management system, as with any knowledge management system, is getting meaningful, up-to-date content. You need a flow of post-action information from the lawyers to populate the experience management system.

Lawyers are not very good at dealing with post-action reviews. Law firms typically demand a lot of information at the onset of a matter. But typically, there is no requirement across the firm for getting information at the end of the matter.

We have been slowly pushing a closed transaction notification process across the business law department. The real estate group instituted a policy of sending a closed deal email to the group. A team of KM administrators harvest that information into our matter information database. There are currently over 1700 closed matter descriptions in the system.

This would be a great feed for an experience search like Jones Day or even to combine with a Google map mashup.

Update: A follow up thought on providing information for a litigation practice or a securities practice.

The Massachusetts Bar Association’s Committee on Professional Ethics has issued an advisory ruling that having a lawyer’s email address available on the firm’s website can be a problem.

Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly published this story about MBA Ethics Opinion No. 2007-1, Lawyers Weekly No. 24-001-07 (Subscription Required).

“In the absence of an effective disclaimer, a lawyer who receives unsolicited information from a prospective client through an e-mail link on a law firm web site must hold the information in confidence even if the lawyer declines representation. Whether the lawyer’s firm can represent a party adverse to the prospective client depends on whether the lawyer’s obligation to preserve the prospective client;s confidences will materially limit the firm’s ability to represent the adverse party.”

The opinion distinguishes between email sent to a lawyer through the firm’s website and an email sent by other means. Ordinarily, the lawyer has no opportunity to control the flow of information to their email inbox and a prospective client should have no expectation regarding confidentiality or the establishment of an attorney-client relationship. The opinion points out that the law firm can control the flow of information originated from its website and condition the use of email links by appropriate disclaimers. In addition, since the law firm website makes the expertise of lawyers available, the client has the ability to identify an appropriate lawyer to communicate with.

I have always been annoyed at websites that do not expose the lawyer’s email address, but instead requires you to fill out a form that passes the information on to the person. I always preferred websites with a readily available email address.

It looks like firms in Massachusetts will have to start using an email message form on the website with an appropriate disclosure that “any information communicated before the firm agrees to represent the prospective client will not be treated as confidential” and that the “receipt of information from a prospective client will not prevent the firm from representing someone else in the matter.”