Knowledge Management and Technology for Today’s Legal Professional L. Keith Lipman, Esquire Director, Advanced Technology Solutions

What is Knowledge Management? Organizational RE-USE of Materials or “The Good Stuff”

Briefs Motions Lead Cases Clauses Agreements

What did we do in the past? Brief Banks Clause Libraries Form Banks

Why did these efforts fail Technology Culture

What do most attorneys do today? Maintain a personal knowledge store Find document through searching their Document Management System Water Cooler Talk Blast s to “Everyone:”

Why can a KM effort succeed today? Culture ready for change New Technology

Cultural Elements Needed Desire to share Perceived value from sharing Incentives for sharing Financial backing for KM effort A feeling that the technology makes sharing easy and effective

Why is KM now important to legal organizations? Workforce has become dispersed –Departments located over multiple location The law continues to expand at an ever expanding rate Competition has increased or costs need to be reduced Clients are demanding faster and more access

Document Life Cycle

Technology Tools Enterprise Information Portal New Search Engines –True Context Searching –Ability to leverage systems for expertise

What is a portal? A web application that can be personalized individually or through a group A web application that has gadgets Gadgets provide information and/or functions Each of these gadgets usually provides an ability to personalize and select location Examples of Consumer Portals: –My Yahoo! –MSN

My Yahoo!

Enterprise Information Portal Two Major Sets of Features: Web superstructure to support personalization and gadgets on a personal and group level – a corporate version of the consumer portal A set of functions that allow for the creation of a taxonomy and the filling of that taxonomy from a variety of internal and external information sources.

Gadgets

Taxonomy (Directory) A set of folders that arranged in a hierarchy. –Similar to a directory on your computer with folders and subfolders. Associated with each folder is a set of saved searches. West Key Number System Lexis Search Advisor

Directory

Possible Data Sources Web Sites Lexis and other paid content providers Docs Open iManage Exchange Notes

Enterprise Systems in most Law Firms? Time and Billing Word Processing Document Management /Groupware Enterprise Fax Web, Lexis, and other content Litigation Support Physical Files

Important Information for Knowledge Management People Budgets Documents What happened in other matters

Out-of-the-Box Functionality Phase One Modify Out-of-the-box Taxonomy and build administrative taxonomy Fill the taxonomy – Crawl internal and external data sources. Practice Pages One Search Provide Gadgets for – (Outlook and Notes) –Recent Edits in document management –Accounting (Elite and CMS) –Lexis and WestLaw Research –Employee Directory and other web content gadgets

Implementation Team Internal –CIO, Technology Partner, and Managing Partner –Network Administrators –Trainers –Web Developers –Librarians –Paralegals and Attorneys External –Strategic Consulting –Network Engineers –Knowledge Engineers –Web Developers

Implementation Process Assessment Phase –Define Business Objectives and stages of implementation for total portal project. –Statement of Work Design Phase –Taxonomy creation and data source definition –Technical configuration –Identification of content maintainers and managers Installation Training Phase One Time Frame 3 months

Phase Two -- Portal Building or The Next One to Three Years

Four Views of a Portal My Tools My Practice My Clients and Matters Our Firm

My Tools Document Management –Recent edits and search Application Launching Research Tools Gadget Time Entry and reporting Web Content with little permanent value Tasks and events – Creation and Viewing GlueWare – send and retrieve documents from collaboration systems and publish documents

Document Life Cycle

My Practice Displays a part of the taxonomy –Firm to build additional taxonomies besides Lexis Content from daily or weekly publications (BNA, CCH, etc.) CLE and other departmental events Links to web sites for research and other information

My Client and Matter Accounting information –Budget, costs, and time billed News – Wire service, press release, SEC filings “The File” -- Publication Documents for Collaboration Events and Tasks People (Billing Attorney, Responsible Attorney, Service Delivery Team, Expert Witnesses, Client Contacts, Witnesses) Discussion threads

Our Firm Links to Employee Handbook, Firm Policies, Marketing information Web forms for opening new matters Announcements and Events Client and Matter number look-ups

Visualization

Powering your Portal Need enterprise systems that are preferably web-enabled or web- based. If not web based, you will be writing a web front end to the system. Systems that display information through the use of XML and XSL are best

New Enterprise Systems Document Collaboration (infoLink, E- Room) Publication System (Xpedio, infoLink, imaging systems) Events and Tasks management per matter (infoLink) Customer Relationship Management (Interaction and IRIS)

Search Engine Technology Semio and Autonomy Dolphin Search Tacit