Presenters:
Peter K. Kaomea, Chief Information Officer, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Tom Baldwin, Chief Knowledge Officer, Reed Smith, LLP
Stuart Kay, Director, Global Information Systems Projects, Baker & McKenzie
This high-powered panel focused on the possible tensions and synergies that arise between IT and KM departments. My basic takeaway is that there are so many dramatic changes in the competitive environment and technology that KM and IT have to work together. While there may always be some sort of tension between the two, it is KM’s responsibility to engage with IT, and to learn something about it.
Stuart mentioned that in his current position, KM acts as the “public face” of IT, representing its abilities to lawyers and in effect “selling” new systems to the firm. KM can avoid tension with IT by demonstrating its value on a daily basis and talking to them a lot.
Peter suggested that some tension or conflict can be avoided simply by setting the framework in a way that cuts to the responsibilities at issue rather than ownership of a project or piece of information. Break out what aspects of “ownership” you care about. If you ask “who owns” an information security project, you are setting up a turf war. It is easier to ask who wants to be responsible for entering and updating particular pieces of information.
Tom Baldwin comes from an IT rather than a legal background. He believes that KM is very much IT-driven in the U.S.; by contrast, it is more driven by Practice Support Lawyers (i.e., people like me) in the U.K. and Australia where there are many more PSLs. He believes that law firms haven’t been able to treat technology strategically until quite recently, as “ripping and replacing” whole systems is no longer necessary and the basic infrastructure is more stable.
Where there is a successful KM project, there is often a heavy dose of IT. IT does not get kudos for making the “plumbing” work (“Hi, this is the managing partner. I’m so glad my phone is working today. Thank you very much.”) Yet (Stuart suggested) it is much harder to make a business case for a precedent database than an email or phone system, because it is harder to prove an indirect profitability driver than a to establish a direct negative impact.
Some of the more interesting side discussion was about identifying what lawyers want out of IT and KM. Ron’s basic answer—“Ask them.” Peter reported from his previous experience that U.S. Defense Department generals want IT and KM provide them with a way to be more competitive, for instance, by making their decision-making cycle quicker than the other side’s.
This was one panel I wish had had much more time to drill into their topics. They were just getting warmed up when the time was up.
Showing posts with label IT strategy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IT strategy. Show all posts
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Enterprise 2.0 and face-to-face interaction
These days, knowledge management practitioners work on computer technologies day-in and day-out. I think it is fair to say that without the power of technologies, starting with email and moving on up to collaborative technologies like blogs, wikis, and Sharepoint lists, many of us might not have jobs.
These technologies are so powerful in part because they enable communication in multiple ways. At the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference, a presenter opined that communication technologies could be broken down by the number of communicants on each side of the transmission:
For instance, LucasFilm has moved its special effects, animation, and computer gaming groups under one roof at the Presidio in San Francisco—even these technologically savvy people say in Business Week that with their projects requiring high-level collaboration, “there's no substitute for face-to-face interaction for their team-oriented projects.” (“The Empire Strikes at Silos”, August 20, 2007).
Looking back over my fairly brief time in the field, I have found that face-to-face training and approach has been a critical part of most KM successes I have had. Once I build trust with attorneys through face-to-face interactions, I can be much more effective in transmitting skills and information to them.
Why is face-to-face so much more effective? There are lessons from the science and KM literatures, art, and the law.
One of the most recent scientific or business literature articles to address the uniqueness of face-to-face was an article in the August 2007 issue of “Scientific American Mind” (free preview, but registration required) which suggested that a different set of neurons is activated when we think we are face to face and responding to another person. Carol Kinsey Goman in the May/June 2007 KM Review (article not available on-line) also opined that a “in face-to-face meetings, our brains process a continual cascade of nonverbal cues that we use as the basis for building trust and professional intimacy—both of which are critical to high-level collaboration, negotiation, and communication.” (I especially like her phrase “professional intimacy”, which seems contradictory at first but comes to make sense as you think about it).
More broadly, there is a perception, backed by some studies, that people are best at learning through not just one but a broad range of methods. In addition to the obvious preferences for visual or audio, some people have to do it to learn it (“experiential learners”) while others prefer abstract or theoretical approaches. Working face-to-face may provide each of the different kinds of learners with the type of learning experience that they need; in fact, a good teacher may well consciously or unconsciously be able to adapt the approach to the audience, based on live feedback.
My experience as a long-time classical music performer provides another answer. While a high-level audiophile might disagree, there is no question in my mind that the immediacy and raw power of the sound a live performer makes, working his magic (or not) directly in front of you, cannot be matched by a recording, no matter the depth of the sound. That is true as well for any decent speaker as well.
Another lesson from my musical background is that drama and excitement arise merely from seeing the person sweat (and possibly fail) in the performance—whether a literal high wire act, or violinistic pyrotechnics, or anything that is live and difficult. The listener identifies with the performer and thrills as the performer vanquishes the difficult run in the concerto (or, more pessimistically, feels schadenfreude or sympathy should the fingers slip). There is usually no such gripping drama in any electronic medium—while we know that theoretically there is a possibility of failure through such communications, experience has taught us that by their nature these are carefully vetted and approved well before they are displayed to the world. An exception that proves the rule are the highly promoted product demos, such as Steve Jobs’ spectacular iPhone demo or Bill Gates’ Windows 98 implosion.
There is another lesson from art and theatre. By coming to the event, the audience has already demonstrated a communal commitment to the message or the event. They are no longer passive recipients of a message. In a very real sense, even if (like all internal company events) it is “free”, they have paid for the message, through investing their time and energy in attendance, and they are wanting something back.
My background in law is in litigation. In most cases, people or their representatives actually get a chance to stand up in court in front of a decision maker (such as a judge or arbitrator) who, by law and tradition, is neutral in the dispute. Making the plea in person, or perhaps even better yet, paying someone more eloquent than you to stand up in court, provides this opportunity. We also feel that we can better assess credibility in person, through our assessment of the veracity and likeability of the witness. The face-to-face “plea” satisfies the litigant that at least their voice has been heard. A comparatively anonymous written submission might not.
So what can the practitioner draw from the significance of face-to-face?
One point, ironically, is to keep an eye out for technologies that replicate some of the key aspects of face-to-face, like Cisco’s Telepresence (disclaimer: Cisco is a client of Goodwin Procter.) While I have not seen a demo, Telepresence comes closer to in-person communications by allowing much of the same type of interactions, such as non-verbal cues. The video is high-definition, and replicates the direction of a speaker’s voice; it is also at face level, not up on a TV-like screen. Another (more limited) F2F technology is the Lotus Webconferencing System that via a web connection shows a picture of all participants on an audio conference and indicates via a visual cue who is speaking and who is moderating. And trainings, even stored presentations, should include as many aspects of in-person communication as possible, whether that is video or audio.
A second point is to keep traveling. Integration across offices is a major challenge for all sorts of firms, and all of this makes plain that real integration requires cross-office travel by all sorts of people, in order to build the necessary “professional intimacy” at different operational levels. KM professionals should try to meet as many people as possible in their travels, not just those that they have appointments with, to broaden their personal network and effectiveness.
A third point, a professional development remark, is that KM practitioners should do everything they can to become more effective speakers. A small amount of study in effective speaking can provide a remarkable degree of improvement. The best communication teachers are those who make their living through the voice; actors, directors, and singers. I will always remember the effective coaching I received during a certain transitional period from Michael Allosso, a stage director in the Boston area. I know it helped me tremendously in several job interviews (admittedly a very specialized type of F2F), and I've also sent friends to him, also with good results.
Finally, as noted in the LucasFilm article and in a June 2007 post from my colleague Doug Cornelius, firms can enhance a culture of knowledge-sharing and collaboration by creating a flexible set of spaces within the workplace where people can meet face-to-face. While my current firm has wonderfully large and naturally-lit conference rooms, for more formal business interactions, I have noticed a deficiency (compared to previous firms I have worked) in informal spaces equivalent to coffee shops, eating places with banquettes, or markets. Some ideas for spaces like this would be: extend existing coffee / kitchen space by addition of tables & chairs, have more employee “lounge”-type areas, add a firm cafeteria as these Boston firms did. Even a firm apparel shop (selling branded clothing, mugs, and so forth) could be another such space.
These technologies are so powerful in part because they enable communication in multiple ways. At the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference, a presenter opined that communication technologies could be broken down by the number of communicants on each side of the transmission:
- One person to one person: telephone, IM, email.
- One person to many people: intranets, (email), blogs.
- Many people to one person/company: RSS, message boards, suggestion boxes.
- Many people to many people (web 2.0): video teleconference, face book, wikis, del.icio.us, blogs with actual comments.
(I wish I could identify who said this, but I wasn’t doing live blogging then.)
I think these technologies are amazing and would reject any suggestion that I am a Luddite, ready to toss my laptop. Yet much suggests that the most effective communications occurs face-to-face (a/k/a F2F, F/F) and not through any of these methods.For instance, LucasFilm has moved its special effects, animation, and computer gaming groups under one roof at the Presidio in San Francisco—even these technologically savvy people say in Business Week that with their projects requiring high-level collaboration, “there's no substitute for face-to-face interaction for their team-oriented projects.” (“The Empire Strikes at Silos”, August 20, 2007).
Looking back over my fairly brief time in the field, I have found that face-to-face training and approach has been a critical part of most KM successes I have had. Once I build trust with attorneys through face-to-face interactions, I can be much more effective in transmitting skills and information to them.
Why is face-to-face so much more effective? There are lessons from the science and KM literatures, art, and the law.
One of the most recent scientific or business literature articles to address the uniqueness of face-to-face was an article in the August 2007 issue of “Scientific American Mind” (free preview, but registration required) which suggested that a different set of neurons is activated when we think we are face to face and responding to another person. Carol Kinsey Goman in the May/June 2007 KM Review (article not available on-line) also opined that a “in face-to-face meetings, our brains process a continual cascade of nonverbal cues that we use as the basis for building trust and professional intimacy—both of which are critical to high-level collaboration, negotiation, and communication.” (I especially like her phrase “professional intimacy”, which seems contradictory at first but comes to make sense as you think about it).
More broadly, there is a perception, backed by some studies, that people are best at learning through not just one but a broad range of methods. In addition to the obvious preferences for visual or audio, some people have to do it to learn it (“experiential learners”) while others prefer abstract or theoretical approaches. Working face-to-face may provide each of the different kinds of learners with the type of learning experience that they need; in fact, a good teacher may well consciously or unconsciously be able to adapt the approach to the audience, based on live feedback.
My experience as a long-time classical music performer provides another answer. While a high-level audiophile might disagree, there is no question in my mind that the immediacy and raw power of the sound a live performer makes, working his magic (or not) directly in front of you, cannot be matched by a recording, no matter the depth of the sound. That is true as well for any decent speaker as well.
Another lesson from my musical background is that drama and excitement arise merely from seeing the person sweat (and possibly fail) in the performance—whether a literal high wire act, or violinistic pyrotechnics, or anything that is live and difficult. The listener identifies with the performer and thrills as the performer vanquishes the difficult run in the concerto (or, more pessimistically, feels schadenfreude or sympathy should the fingers slip). There is usually no such gripping drama in any electronic medium—while we know that theoretically there is a possibility of failure through such communications, experience has taught us that by their nature these are carefully vetted and approved well before they are displayed to the world. An exception that proves the rule are the highly promoted product demos, such as Steve Jobs’ spectacular iPhone demo or Bill Gates’ Windows 98 implosion.
There is another lesson from art and theatre. By coming to the event, the audience has already demonstrated a communal commitment to the message or the event. They are no longer passive recipients of a message. In a very real sense, even if (like all internal company events) it is “free”, they have paid for the message, through investing their time and energy in attendance, and they are wanting something back.
My background in law is in litigation. In most cases, people or their representatives actually get a chance to stand up in court in front of a decision maker (such as a judge or arbitrator) who, by law and tradition, is neutral in the dispute. Making the plea in person, or perhaps even better yet, paying someone more eloquent than you to stand up in court, provides this opportunity. We also feel that we can better assess credibility in person, through our assessment of the veracity and likeability of the witness. The face-to-face “plea” satisfies the litigant that at least their voice has been heard. A comparatively anonymous written submission might not.
So what can the practitioner draw from the significance of face-to-face?
One point, ironically, is to keep an eye out for technologies that replicate some of the key aspects of face-to-face, like Cisco’s Telepresence (disclaimer: Cisco is a client of Goodwin Procter.) While I have not seen a demo, Telepresence comes closer to in-person communications by allowing much of the same type of interactions, such as non-verbal cues. The video is high-definition, and replicates the direction of a speaker’s voice; it is also at face level, not up on a TV-like screen. Another (more limited) F2F technology is the Lotus Webconferencing System that via a web connection shows a picture of all participants on an audio conference and indicates via a visual cue who is speaking and who is moderating. And trainings, even stored presentations, should include as many aspects of in-person communication as possible, whether that is video or audio.
A second point is to keep traveling. Integration across offices is a major challenge for all sorts of firms, and all of this makes plain that real integration requires cross-office travel by all sorts of people, in order to build the necessary “professional intimacy” at different operational levels. KM professionals should try to meet as many people as possible in their travels, not just those that they have appointments with, to broaden their personal network and effectiveness.
A third point, a professional development remark, is that KM practitioners should do everything they can to become more effective speakers. A small amount of study in effective speaking can provide a remarkable degree of improvement. The best communication teachers are those who make their living through the voice; actors, directors, and singers. I will always remember the effective coaching I received during a certain transitional period from Michael Allosso, a stage director in the Boston area. I know it helped me tremendously in several job interviews (admittedly a very specialized type of F2F), and I've also sent friends to him, also with good results.
Finally, as noted in the LucasFilm article and in a June 2007 post from my colleague Doug Cornelius, firms can enhance a culture of knowledge-sharing and collaboration by creating a flexible set of spaces within the workplace where people can meet face-to-face. While my current firm has wonderfully large and naturally-lit conference rooms, for more formal business interactions, I have noticed a deficiency (compared to previous firms I have worked) in informal spaces equivalent to coffee shops, eating places with banquettes, or markets. Some ideas for spaces like this would be: extend existing coffee / kitchen space by addition of tables & chairs, have more employee “lounge”-type areas, add a firm cafeteria as these Boston firms did. Even a firm apparel shop (selling branded clothing, mugs, and so forth) could be another such space.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
ILTA Conference Report, Day 2, Session 3: Improving Operations Through Matter Life Cycle Management
Dan Safran, Project Leadership Associates, Inc.
PLAI is the largest group of legal-focused technology and business consultants in the U.S.
"Matter lifecycle" is a paradigm that helps us understand how lawyers work.
There are four aspects to the cycle:
Matter Creation (prospecting, opening files, receipt of client records);
Matter Management (the bulk of time: manage client, matter relationships);
Matter Closure (declare, catalog records, Q & A etc.); and,
Matter Archival (safe destruction on expiration, monitoring dates).
Each of these areas ties to and is driven by records management, document management, knowledge management, litigation responsiveness, and litigation prepardness.
Question for the session is, "How do we add value through technology?" Dan provided a hypothetical framework for identifying and implementing improvements to the matter lifecycle business processes. Unfortunately, his presentation was fairly short on specifics (I understand that a firm partner who was going to present on actual changes made was going to be the co-presenter, but had canceled.).
Dan claimed that the potential business benefits of matter management include:
To find pain points, figure out who owns different aspects of the matter lifecycle.
What do people hate doing? What wastes lawyer time? What makes lawyers work after hours?Which processes are only partially automated, which technologies are disliked by lawyers or staff, which technologies does the firm not have.
Next identify issues and propose solutions. For instance, every function should have an "owner,"; or, lawyers haven't received enough training in a certain type of activity. Start with statistics or metrics to show the problem, because you'll need to identify how to fix it and how much it will cost.
What kinds of projects are practical opportunities to improve matter lifecycle management?
Practice-by-practice: securities document support, litigation docket, litigation support alignment, client / matter practice dashboards.
Enterprise-wide: matter centricity, DMS, Records Management, email, litigation preparedness.
Both: docket or schedule management; enterprise search; case management.
Lawyers are living in email. Firms need to control email and the documents lawyers work on. Large or medium firms should build resources that are focused on and support practice groups.
IT people can add a lot of value by evaluating business strategy and understanding business processes in the firm. Benchmark time, cost, value, quality, or risk, measure at the beginning, and then measure at the back end to see the improvement. Get a lot of feedback.
I asked for some examples of changes to the intake process. Dan said that big firms might want to set financial limits, practice areas, or target certain types of clients to improve profitability. An efficiency sell might draw on a metric for how fast a matter is opened. There also may be risk mitigation opportunities in the matter opening process (a business or credit check).
Sell efficiency generally through framing as a quality of life issue. You can also sell efficiency through discussion of reducing the nonbillable portion of the work, as by leveraging the administrative staff better.
PLAI is the largest group of legal-focused technology and business consultants in the U.S.
"Matter lifecycle" is a paradigm that helps us understand how lawyers work.
There are four aspects to the cycle:
Matter Creation (prospecting, opening files, receipt of client records);
Matter Management (the bulk of time: manage client, matter relationships);
Matter Closure (declare, catalog records, Q & A etc.); and,
Matter Archival (safe destruction on expiration, monitoring dates).
Each of these areas ties to and is driven by records management, document management, knowledge management, litigation responsiveness, and litigation prepardness.
Question for the session is, "How do we add value through technology?" Dan provided a hypothetical framework for identifying and implementing improvements to the matter lifecycle business processes. Unfortunately, his presentation was fairly short on specifics (I understand that a firm partner who was going to present on actual changes made was going to be the co-presenter, but had canceled.).
Dan claimed that the potential business benefits of matter management include:
- Improve profits;
- Acquire / retain clients;
- Reduce risk;
- Improve quality of life;
- Boost speed;
- Improve efficiency;
- Improve quality of life;
- Enhance legal skills; and,
- Reduce costs.
- Gather requirements;
- Look at pain points;
- Develop hypotheses; and,
- Test them.
To find pain points, figure out who owns different aspects of the matter lifecycle.
What do people hate doing? What wastes lawyer time? What makes lawyers work after hours?Which processes are only partially automated, which technologies are disliked by lawyers or staff, which technologies does the firm not have.
Next identify issues and propose solutions. For instance, every function should have an "owner,"; or, lawyers haven't received enough training in a certain type of activity. Start with statistics or metrics to show the problem, because you'll need to identify how to fix it and how much it will cost.
What kinds of projects are practical opportunities to improve matter lifecycle management?
Practice-by-practice: securities document support, litigation docket, litigation support alignment, client / matter practice dashboards.
Enterprise-wide: matter centricity, DMS, Records Management, email, litigation preparedness.
Both: docket or schedule management; enterprise search; case management.
Lawyers are living in email. Firms need to control email and the documents lawyers work on. Large or medium firms should build resources that are focused on and support practice groups.
IT people can add a lot of value by evaluating business strategy and understanding business processes in the firm. Benchmark time, cost, value, quality, or risk, measure at the beginning, and then measure at the back end to see the improvement. Get a lot of feedback.
I asked for some examples of changes to the intake process. Dan said that big firms might want to set financial limits, practice areas, or target certain types of clients to improve profitability. An efficiency sell might draw on a metric for how fast a matter is opened. There also may be risk mitigation opportunities in the matter opening process (a business or credit check).
Sell efficiency generally through framing as a quality of life issue. You can also sell efficiency through discussion of reducing the nonbillable portion of the work, as by leveraging the administrative staff better.
ILTA Day 2, Session 1 (August 21, 2007): Economics of Law Firms
Speakers were Bruce McEwan, a very well-known law firm economist and author of Adam Smith, Esq., and John Alber, KM Partner for the forward-looking firm Bryan Cave.
This session started with CISCO GC Mark Chandler's statement on failures of current economic model:
"The present system is leading to unhappy lawyers and unhappy clients."
Current Market conditions:
This service was presented as an example of client-driven change. It is driven by AmLaw100 firms Orrick, Pillsbury, and Baker & McKenzie (and corporations like Cisco or Sun) and is designed to provide answers to fairly generic questions. It is a work-in-progress, and has social networking features. If you log on, it is presence-enabled, so the user can see if anyone who is a friend is online.
Law Firm Responses To Economic Conditions
· Technology;
· Some growth in fixed fee engagements, risk sharing arrangements;
· Creative technology responses including increased use of business analytics tools to refine pricing, staffing models.
IT people can help lawyers start to understand economics of the practice.
"Trade Zone";
This application is a decision tree addressing international trade issues. While it cost cost $200K /year to run and keep up-to-date, Bryan Cave obtained all of the clients' business, about $1.5 million a year.
Bryan Cave also implemented a Redwood-designed "Attorney Dashboard."
This business analytics package lets a partner plan or budget an engagement by selecting available lawyers, and by automatically calculating rates and leverage, shows profit margins depending on the selection of who does the work. The Attorney Dashboard takes every dollar of expense and compensation and allocates to every fee earner to generate a gross margin.
For instance, an "unleveraged" deal where are a partner did 30 hours of work and the associate 70 can be directly compared with a leveraged deal where are the partner works 10 hours and the associate 90. The margin doubles when the work is leveraged.
Many lawyers assume that if the partner does most of the work, they'll make more money. But the reverse is true.
The Dashboard has apparently functioned as an effective training tool as well as a line business tool. John Alber reported that Bryan Cave's rollout of the Attorney Dashboard has had a measurable increase in leverage, and hence firm profits, among partners who have used it.
If attorneys understand the economics of practicing law, they will have a better access to fixed fee arrangements.
This session started with CISCO GC Mark Chandler's statement on failures of current economic model:
"The present system is leading to unhappy lawyers and unhappy clients."
Current Market conditions:
- Average margin is high 30s;
- Clients are thinning the ranks of firms they choose to hire;
- Creation of very small panels;
- RFPs and tenders are becoming routine;
- Due to extraordinary price and budget pressure, clients are driving change;
- Clients are starting to band together on issues like associate compensation (for instance, Credit Suisse will not pay bills from 1st year associates); and,
- Big clients are starting to reduce the number of firms they work with from 100 to 50 or 20.
Bruce believes that the economics of the business may completely change soon. For instance, two Australian law firms recently announced that they are going public (Slater & Gordon went public May 21, 2007; see also Bruce's own interview with its managing partner, Andrew Grech. ).
LegalOnRamp.comThis service was presented as an example of client-driven change. It is driven by AmLaw100 firms Orrick, Pillsbury, and Baker & McKenzie (and corporations like Cisco or Sun) and is designed to provide answers to fairly generic questions. It is a work-in-progress, and has social networking features. If you log on, it is presence-enabled, so the user can see if anyone who is a friend is online.
Law Firm Responses To Economic Conditions
· Technology;
· Some growth in fixed fee engagements, risk sharing arrangements;
· Creative technology responses including increased use of business analytics tools to refine pricing, staffing models.
IT people can help lawyers start to understand economics of the practice.
"Trade Zone";
This application is a decision tree addressing international trade issues. While it cost cost $200K /year to run and keep up-to-date, Bryan Cave obtained all of the clients' business, about $1.5 million a year.
Bryan Cave also implemented a Redwood-designed "Attorney Dashboard."
This business analytics package lets a partner plan or budget an engagement by selecting available lawyers, and by automatically calculating rates and leverage, shows profit margins depending on the selection of who does the work. The Attorney Dashboard takes every dollar of expense and compensation and allocates to every fee earner to generate a gross margin.
For instance, an "unleveraged" deal where are a partner did 30 hours of work and the associate 70 can be directly compared with a leveraged deal where are the partner works 10 hours and the associate 90. The margin doubles when the work is leveraged.
Many lawyers assume that if the partner does most of the work, they'll make more money. But the reverse is true.
The Dashboard has apparently functioned as an effective training tool as well as a line business tool. John Alber reported that Bryan Cave's rollout of the Attorney Dashboard has had a measurable increase in leverage, and hence firm profits, among partners who have used it.
If attorneys understand the economics of practicing law, they will have a better access to fixed fee arrangements.
Monday, August 20, 2007
ILTA Conference Report, KM 4--Developing the right IT and KM Governance Structure for your firm
David Hambourger, CIO, Seyfarth Shaw. He is responsible for "everything that plugs in". At Seyfarth, Practice Services and Information Technology are split, but both report to the CIO. Practice Services focuses on four practice areas. IT supports administrative functions such as Professional Development, marketing, finance, library, and records. Seyfarth has 3 knowledge management, a manager and 2 analysts, both lawyers. IT was looked at as a back office function and KM was percieved as front office. They see the KM people as better able to relate to the lawyers.
Deborah Panella, Director of Library and Knowledge Services, Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP, formerly from Paul Weiss. Cravath's IT director oversees a Director of Libary & Knowledge Services, with 1 (temporary) KM specialist and 13 Librarians plus 6 support staff. There is also a KM Analyst on the IT Applications Side. They are redoing their portal, incorporating RSS feeds, and much more. As IT began to focus on practice support, a need to bridge IT and the practices became apparent. The library team had been involved in KM but had not had a leadership role before.
Janis Croft, Knowledge Services Manager, Nixon Peabody LLP; responsible for portal and intranet content; at NP, Information Services oversees Knowledge Services, and IT oversees Application Development (10 developers). 35 lawyers and paralegals are responsible for KM through the practice groups or teams. Their first portal deployed in 1999. Organizational structure is steady.
Ron Friedmann, Prism Legal Consulting
Ron believes that the longevity of a KM program correlates with the number of practioners. There are competing views about whether KM should have its own IT resources.
Whether there was a formal KM program varied tremendously among the attendees.
Deborah Panella, Director of Library and Knowledge Services, Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP, formerly from Paul Weiss. Cravath's IT director oversees a Director of Libary & Knowledge Services, with 1 (temporary) KM specialist and 13 Librarians plus 6 support staff. There is also a KM Analyst on the IT Applications Side. They are redoing their portal, incorporating RSS feeds, and much more. As IT began to focus on practice support, a need to bridge IT and the practices became apparent. The library team had been involved in KM but had not had a leadership role before.
Janis Croft, Knowledge Services Manager, Nixon Peabody LLP; responsible for portal and intranet content; at NP, Information Services oversees Knowledge Services, and IT oversees Application Development (10 developers). 35 lawyers and paralegals are responsible for KM through the practice groups or teams. Their first portal deployed in 1999. Organizational structure is steady.
Ron Friedmann, Prism Legal Consulting
Ron believes that the longevity of a KM program correlates with the number of practioners. There are competing views about whether KM should have its own IT resources.
Whether there was a formal KM program varied tremendously among the attendees.
Friday, August 17, 2007
ILTA Conference First Post--"KM 1:" The Alignment of Information Management, Knowledge Management and Records Management
I'm in Orlando at the International Legal Technology Association annual conference, by far the largest group of peers & near-peers that I've attended. Past KM conferences have had on the order of 50 to 125 or so attendees. This one has 1300 professional attendees and 1200 vendors to boot.
Topic: Alignment of IM, KM, and RM
Catherine Monte is the moderator. She is the Vice President of the ILTA KM Peer Group and the Chief Knowledge Office at Fox Rothschild in Philadephia.
I am a big fan of Sally Gonzalez and attended this session over the one about intro to Web 2.0 because she was a presenter. She's at Navigant Consulting. She showed a "drawn & quartered" slide showing information getting pulled in four different directions by discovery preparedness, compliance, operational effectiveness, and knowlege sharing. Where records management, KM, and IT information management are taken as separate initiatives, these requirements may lead to oppositional forces.
She also showed a flow chart for decision-making and business processes in the Records, KM, and Electronic Information areas. The key determinations are: a) is the info a business record?, b) does it have business value? and c) does it have KM value? and d) when should it be deleted or stored?
She exhorted us to find ways to organize information within organization that leave you operationally effective, compliance-ready, and have your knowledge managed.
The most difficult area is in records without business value. The key is to classify and store for shortest possible period.
An app called "Odyessey" classifies records without user intervention. They found that 25-40% of email has no business value.
John Szekeres, ("Seh-keh-resh")*, Director of KM-Business Systems at Cleary Gottlieb presented on his records management initiative. Cleary was locked out of its offices for 3 months after 9/11 and couldn't get to its paper records. So that wouldn't happen again, they developed Virtual File Room or "VFR." More & more information is going around in email attachment. Secretaries used to make a copy of all correspondence for chron file and another for the records department. Now people are less & less diligent about filing.
The VFR system requires attorney or paralegals to check a radio button to choose whether or not to put the email in VFR, and asks for client/matter number if it is going in; staff can separately categorize attachments. After the first week, they got calls such as "you ruined my life". Calls died down after a week or so however.** A watermark was added to each email to show others that email has been filed.
Retrieval of info out of VFR has been difficult. Interwoven tools have not been "as refined as they needed to be." Using Recommind to search all of Worksite repositories--each office has own, each matter owned by an office. (sure would be nice). KM helped "fashion the solution."
Records Dept. reviews each document sent to VFR to make sure they are properly titled, named, categorized. Now 400,000 documents behind. Reccomind has automatic categorization. Did bakeoff between reccomind and records people categorization--Reccomind categorization was very good, higher level of consistency than records people.
IT built VFR. KM & Records built VFR records structure. KM provided holistic perspective on all types of database.
Peter Krakaur is the CKO at Orrick; previously, he spent four years as a practicing attorney, then started his own internet company. He's been at Orrick for five years, and also writes on "pseudo-ethics" of internet use & technology. His KM program has three focuses: 1) work product 2) practice--what do we know about matters & clients, 3) people, who knows whom, including judges, appearances.
The panel spent most of its time addressing three questions.
Q3 How can KM help RM or IM?
--KM team can be collaborators, part of the group struggling to keep people aware of what's happening. KM can foster communication and collaboration by running changes by people in other groups.
--Opening up matters under "general" numbers destroy ability to track matters
--Don't assume your issue is just an IT, RM, or KM issue--could be more than one.
--e.g., backup of Worksite libraries not just IT, impacted KM, West KM "crawling" by KM started to impact performance / IT.
Two fronts to push:
1) Classification & operational action, business rules driven by new technologies, such as autocategorizing.
2) Search & navigation--enterprise search can deliver autocategorization also.
*John's name is spelled correctly, but I apparently mucked up the phonetics on this Hungarian name. Corrected version above.
**Additional follow-up per JS, 10/3/08
Topic: Alignment of IM, KM, and RM
Catherine Monte is the moderator. She is the Vice President of the ILTA KM Peer Group and the Chief Knowledge Office at Fox Rothschild in Philadephia.
I am a big fan of Sally Gonzalez and attended this session over the one about intro to Web 2.0 because she was a presenter. She's at Navigant Consulting. She showed a "drawn & quartered" slide showing information getting pulled in four different directions by discovery preparedness, compliance, operational effectiveness, and knowlege sharing. Where records management, KM, and IT information management are taken as separate initiatives, these requirements may lead to oppositional forces.
She also showed a flow chart for decision-making and business processes in the Records, KM, and Electronic Information areas. The key determinations are: a) is the info a business record?, b) does it have business value? and c) does it have KM value? and d) when should it be deleted or stored?
She exhorted us to find ways to organize information within organization that leave you operationally effective, compliance-ready, and have your knowledge managed.
The most difficult area is in records without business value. The key is to classify and store for shortest possible period.
An app called "Odyessey" classifies records without user intervention. They found that 25-40% of email has no business value.
John Szekeres, ("Seh-keh-resh")*, Director of KM-Business Systems at Cleary Gottlieb presented on his records management initiative. Cleary was locked out of its offices for 3 months after 9/11 and couldn't get to its paper records. So that wouldn't happen again, they developed Virtual File Room or "VFR." More & more information is going around in email attachment. Secretaries used to make a copy of all correspondence for chron file and another for the records department. Now people are less & less diligent about filing.
The VFR system requires attorney or paralegals to check a radio button to choose whether or not to put the email in VFR, and asks for client/matter number if it is going in; staff can separately categorize attachments. After the first week, they got calls such as "you ruined my life". Calls died down after a week or so however.** A watermark was added to each email to show others that email has been filed.
Retrieval of info out of VFR has been difficult. Interwoven tools have not been "as refined as they needed to be." Using Recommind to search all of Worksite repositories--each office has own, each matter owned by an office. (sure would be nice). KM helped "fashion the solution."
Records Dept. reviews each document sent to VFR to make sure they are properly titled, named, categorized. Now 400,000 documents behind. Reccomind has automatic categorization. Did bakeoff between reccomind and records people categorization--Reccomind categorization was very good, higher level of consistency than records people.
IT built VFR. KM & Records built VFR records structure. KM provided holistic perspective on all types of database.
Peter Krakaur is the CKO at Orrick; previously, he spent four years as a practicing attorney, then started his own internet company. He's been at Orrick for five years, and also writes on "pseudo-ethics" of internet use & technology. His KM program has three focuses: 1) work product 2) practice--what do we know about matters & clients, 3) people, who knows whom, including judges, appearances.
The panel spent most of its time addressing three questions.
1) What are the competing interests between KM, IT, and RM?
IT: prioritizes operational effectiveness. How can I back it up? How can I reduce the volume of email? How can I get Exchange to work? How can I implement a litigation hold consistently and effectively?
KM: Knowledge Management wants to retain as much information and documents as possible, definitely first and last versions, maybe more; KM wants to integrate records retention with KM classifications; KM wants sustainable useable system, or"How can you find it?" KM has shifted from document-level to attributing information to matters. KM may classify a document one way because of a high-level metadata need, while records is taking another way. Goal is to have same classification scheme in Worksite as in records system. Sally Gonzalez noted that KM may want to redact/sanitize records for classification. John Szekeres addressed how removal of a document from its deal or case context removes much of the value of records storage.
RM: wants to make sure files are organized, document retention policies are adhered to, documents get deleted at the right time in many different stores, whether DMS, hard copies, CD, or blackberry.
Do you make lawyers records managers?
Q2--What is happening at firms that is affecting the relationship between these groups?
- Growth/office changes
- Practice group changes--leadership may not recognize extent of business changes needed to external web site, mailing lists, records classifications;
- more documents coming into system, greater need for documents to be organized so that they can be find--records no longer an effective way of making documents findable.
- SG--challenge for IT is to control, identify flow of information across the organization---should IT have the responsibility / take on the burden to dialogue with business constituencies, facilitate discussions
- development of extranets, client-facing KM systems pose challenges--how do records processes get handled in the context of those sites--adapting internal process to external informaiton coming in.
- SG reports that some NY firms' clients are cooperating with investigations, waiving privilege, and being asked to produce all emails with client in 24 hours.
- Can firms set up information systems to comply with clients' records policies? Should this affect engagement letters? Can client determine what happens with its records in terms of a records retention policy?
- JS--European privacy directive--governs what information can and can't flow between offices. Are some things not supposed to come to US?
Q3 How can KM help RM or IM?
--KM team can be collaborators, part of the group struggling to keep people aware of what's happening. KM can foster communication and collaboration by running changes by people in other groups.
--Opening up matters under "general" numbers destroy ability to track matters
--Don't assume your issue is just an IT, RM, or KM issue--could be more than one.
--e.g., backup of Worksite libraries not just IT, impacted KM, West KM "crawling" by KM started to impact performance / IT.
Two fronts to push:
1) Classification & operational action, business rules driven by new technologies, such as autocategorizing.
2) Search & navigation--enterprise search can deliver autocategorization also.
*John's name is spelled correctly, but I apparently mucked up the phonetics on this Hungarian name. Corrected version above.
**Additional follow-up per JS, 10/3/08
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