The Recapitulation Theory and The Lifecycle of Legal Knowledge Management

I attended a meeting of legal knowledge management professionals earlier this week.  By tradition, the speakers (except consultants) are anonymous.

The first topic was "Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny," a concept from biology also known as "Recapitulation Theory" that refers to the parallel between the embryonic development of organisms (specifically mammals) and evolution. 

The speaker has started knowledge management systems four times.   He addressed the bumpy "curve" of interest, excitement, and profile that naturally occurs when knowledge management programs progress.

First the law firm recognizes that they have a problem.  They see that they'll need to talk to people and develop something.  You slay the sacred cows, enlist the aid of people previously concerned with knowledge management, and then conceive of a grand plan.  After a lot of hard work, an "immortal" result is achieved, and people are astonished.  Most were unaware that the work was going on.

From here the slope of interest and ability to make remarkable changes is downward.  People suggest changes that may or may not be useful or easy to accomplish.  The amazing achievement becomes "background", expected, and credit or recognition slacks off. It's a hard slog to regain the level of immortality again.

Has the field of legal knowledge management followed the same curve?

For instance, enterprise search in legal was a moment of immortality, "god's gift to legal knowledge management."  The next hoped-for trick was the "best practice," which is not a simple add-on but an entirely different approach.  Does KM seeking to solve "everything" lead to KM risking becoming nothing?  Ideas like social media and document assembly may have a low probability of success and clearly require much more work and structure than the earlier successes.  KM staff are helping with project management, financial analysis, task-based process management, and so forth, but legal kmers not necessarily the best people to do that.

So how can legal KM practitioners get back to the moment of immortality?  Switch jobs?  Repeat the process at organizations that haven't navigated the curve?  It's up to us.

ILTA Keynote--Jason Jennings on Values of the Best Companies

The keynote session opened with a slick montage, a palindromic flow of phrases that was pessimistic going forward but optimistic (for legal technologists) going backwards.


Randy Mayes and then Meredith Williams and Maureen Babcock kicked off the formal sessions at ILTA.


The theme is "Strategic Unity"--aligning legal practice and technology, and bringing together lawyers and IT to meet the new challenges of this economy. Connectivity is the most valuable return from conference. We should return with "ideas, answers, and connections."

Jason Jennings was the keynote speaker. He described the "five traits shared by the world’s most successful people and businesses to embrace change, get everyone on the same page and make things happen." While his presentation had some consultant-speak, he also touched on aligning personal ethics and the business work we do in a way that ultimately was quite effective.


He asks three questions of most people he interviews:

1. Story of Your Firm
2. Your story (home town, family, etc.)
3. What is keeping you awake at night? What could keep your organization from succeeding?

Key problems consistently uncovered by his interviews with ILTA people are:

• Getting people on the same page
• Changing practices
• Downward Pricing pressure
• Getting faster
• Coping with sheer volume of data

His first book addressed, what makes a company fast? His second, what makes a company productive? His third, what makes companies grow year after year after year. They've also looked at CEOs and screened in total more than 120,000 companies.

World's best organizations include:

• Ikea
• Smucker's
• Office Depot
• Koch Industries
• Newcorp Steel

He said that these "best" (by the metrics) companies shared five key attributes.

• Everyone Shares a Common Noble Purpose
• Letting Go
• Everyone Knows Strategy
• Think & Act Like an Owner
• Led by Stewards

Noble Purpose

What it is

It is not a "mission statement" or "vision statement." It is big and bold like Microsoft's "put a computer with Microsoft operating system on every desk in the world."
It is inclusive. It is a *non-financial* reason for doing what you do. Steve Knight of Nike got mad at him for asking what it was like to be worth $5 billion when it was all about "competing, winning and being better than anybody else."

It fixes what's wrong, like Walmart's credo of "getting average people to buy the same things as rich people."

It gives meaning to people's lives.

Effects

Provides direction, fuels passion, drives momentum

2. Letting Go

Most organizations Cannot Let Go Of:

• Yesterday’s breadwinners
• Ego
• Same-old, same-old
• Conventional Wisdom

The best example he gave was Jack Welch and GE Capital’s decisions to continue to pour $2 billion into Montgomery Ward seeking to protect their initial investment of $100 million.

Effects:

Organizations that can let go are better able to deal with change. They are more focused than their rivals and find it easier to innovate.

3. Everyone Knows Strategy

At Smuckers, all vendors and new employees spend a few weeks learning strategy of the organization. There's a book outlining what it is every year that they willingly share with all of these stakeholders and (apparently) with their competitors.

Effects

If people don’t know the strategy, they don’t know why they are coming to work and won’t get emotionally attached. There is no accountability under a regime of secret strategies.

4. Think & Act Like an Owner

Jennings spent four days talking to people at Koch Industries, then a last day with Charles Koch. Koch claimed that his company was superior because everyone there (99.9%) felt and acted like an owner of the business.

People want to improve, get better, and get "scores." People will act more like owners if they know how what they do create economic value, and are rewarded based on the economic value they create. (There was an unfortunate lack of concrete examples of how one can get a company to act like a Koch Industries--an evidently extremely rare alignment of the perceived needs of the people who work there and the needs of the business).

5. Led by Stewards

The best leaders in business see their role as being good stewards.

Stewardship values service over short-term self-interest. Does not embrace power over others. It preserves natural and human resources. It is nurturing and supportive.

Stewards share information. Knowledge is not power—it’s execution. All information is shared with the employees.

Stewards are accessible. They keep their hands dirty and get out their with their customers or clients. Stewards don’t simply keep things the same, they make things better.

Jennings closed by asking, "Why do you *really* do what you do?"

He said that the reason in most of these organizations is to make sure that the same opportunities for personal and financial growth and fulfillment will exist for others later on in the same organization.

Reaction

I really appreciated Jennings' discussion of stewardship. It really touched a chord in me, and also reflects some of the values of the knowledge management movement. Saying and affirming that sharing information and knowledge is a good and valuable thing, part of leadership and stewardship, is powerful, and an important lesson for organizational leaders of all kinds.

It clearly also hit the right notes with the audience of members at ILTA, I suspect because his description of the necessity for service, stewardship, and support of others is completely in line with the values of that organization.

ILTA Publication: Working Smart is Cheaper and More Profitable

Late in June the International Legal Technology Association published its annual knowledge management "white paper," Knowledge Management: Bridging People, Information, and Processes . The issue was coordinated by Wilson Sonsini's Chris Boyd.

It contains two articles directly addressing knowledge management and alternative fee arrangements. My article, also published separately here , has the subject line title. I address how knowledge management people, tools, and approaches can support legal work in a business world in which an increasing percentage of even high-end legal work is undertaken on a fixed-fee basis. Peter Krakauer's complimentary article addresses how knowledge management can support a firm's efforts in addressing and adapting to alternative fee arrangements.

The overall tone of the white paper is hopeful. Both Peter and I, and the KM survey, suggest that knowledge management, with its focus on the need to make attorneys more efficient and effective, will be more prominent and of greater strategic value in a world in which a dollar saved is a dollar earned.

Client-Facing Knowledge Management

I'm continuing in a KM peer group meeting in a discussion on client-facing knowledge management. There was a good presentation about client facing KM including a very impressive instance of law department and law firm collaboration in KM, training, and beyond.

How can client-facing KM add value and get clients to work more closely with the firm?

KM is perceived as delivering value to internal clients. It can also be structured to deliver value directly to clients.

Our natural tendency may be to focus on the internal clients but there are opportunities with external clients.

It is hard to identify value--"one man's meat [tofu] is another man's poison." Qualitative measurements of value are more appropriate but entail repeated conversations. Ask if particular KM initiatives are delivering value.

What will value look like in the future? Is the recession a temporary dip or a transformational event?

Clients' demands have clearly changed as a result of the recession.

There are three tiers of client-facing opportunities. Every client expects firms to have models, samples, and extranets as commodity services. Above that some KM initiative have brand distinguishing initiatives (e.g., "Blue Flag"). Above that are "bespoke" KM tools such as expert systems that can identify answers or advice to clients through a dialogue (as those discussed at ILTA). Bespoke systems are the most challenging and the most rewarding.

You can't charge for commodity level of services.

Quoting the ACC Value Challenge, "corporate clients want and need value driven, high quality legal services that deliver solutions for a reasonable cost and develop lawyers as counselors (not just content-providers), advocates (not just process-doers) and professional partners." "The problem is not cost per se, but the fact that cost is disconnected from value."

GCs historically have not had good answers when asked for a definite number for annual legal spend. It is not always the lowest cost that a GC looks for, as a predictable cost is of high value to them as well.

What can KM do?

A specific client will have a specific view of what KM can do for them. One classic challenge is resistance from the relationship partner in getting information about what the client needs. Can you proactively get information about KM needs of client? KM managers would have to pitch the internal client. You need to be persistent. It's acceptable to start with small initiatives and build from there.

Case Study

A large company had a GC who had come from a large firm with a strong KM program. He wanted to build a stronger legal department that would allow the in-house team to do more of the legal work themselves. They developed a KM strategy for five business units in six weeks.

Initiatives included a portal, knowledge bank, matter management, expertise management, and enterprise search. They needed some place where the hundreds of in-house lawyers could share knowledge. They created a global knowledge management officer. The GKMO built a global network of "knowledge champions" in different business units. The law department had set of objectives that, after the GKMO came in, included concrete KM goals. KM was seen as a way to link outside counsel and the law department. They have built out four of the five systems (leaving matter management for future development). The company now has sophisticated internal knowledge management.

Their goal was to integrate law department and law firm systems seamlessly through a personalized portal. It's hard for clients to have a view of the law firm's work if they have to visit multiple portals each with their own passwords. They want to be able to search their internal and law-firm created content in their own portal. They also wanted a comprehensive training portfolio.

The value they were seeking was in making their lawyers more effective and efficient; managing their legal spend; improving their lawyers' skill levels; and expanding their knowledge repositories.

One law firm that had a large client team for that company was asked to provide a training program. The discussion started with substantive KM (forms, models and samples) but expanded into communication models, e-billing, and more.

After some development the two had a day-long summit with extensive participation by senior leaders on both sides. The goals for the summit was to deepen the relationship, find some mutually beneficial outcomes, and become a higher performing virtual team. The firm developed bios for the law department staff. The conversation was very valuable. The summit gave each side a better understanding of the drivers in each enterprise. There are now formal client team coordinators for other clients.

The law firm's KM team had been formulating its strategy for providing KM support. The big connection was on the training front. KM had involved training, both substantively and in terms of training processes. KM participated in trainings by including model documents in them and by quarterbacking the communications (with the marketing department). The firm has also proposed managing CLE credits for the law department. They also found third-party trainings that law department staff might be interested in and also found and listed law department staff's speaking engagements. Increasing awareness of the law department staff's activities led to more potential contact points.

Future challenges include a client request for concise regular updates on matter status and very targeted, edited current awareness information, based on what client's issues are.

The partnership is a success because both knowledge initiatives were trying to be stronger. The training program has met the law department's needs for developing their own skills (a corporate initiative that has fed into the legal department's initiative). They have complex multifaceted training goals. And the law firm lawyers have been showcasing their expertise in the trainings and through the forms and samples, as well as keeping the firm on the increasingly shorter list of outside counsel.

Success factors were:

• Client's specific need
• Firm skills and resources that met the need
• In the law firm, lawyers, IT, KM, Business Development, and Professional Development worked in partnership
• Client perception of value added

KM and ROI

I'm at an international knowledge management peer group meeting today, under the terms of which speakers and affiliations are not identified.

My subject line acronyms, standing of course for "knowledge management" and "return on investment," all too rarely appear together either in discussions or strategy. This was in some ways an introduction to ROI at a fairly basic level, but given the relatively woeful state of business analytics at most law firms, investigating ROI may be a real opportunity for KM programs.

People want to believe there is a way to comprehend any puzzling or momentous force. Convince them you are the key to comprehending it and you will gain great status.

Having a basic grasp of finance can give you a leg up in law firms over most people at the firm except perhaps the CFO or COO.

ROI was a misunderstood term of art. KM people took it mean "show us what you are likely to do and how it will help."

We are starting to see a trend of relating KM to profitability or even revenue generation.

As firms have begun to embrace professional managers, it's become much more important for KM managers to establish ROI.

ROI, defined as earnings per dollar of investment, compares solution cost to monetary benefits. Measuring ROI varies between industries. There will always be some black magic behind it. It does not take into account work-life balance. An ROI of 25% means that investment cost plus an additional 25% of the investment is returned.

ROI is calculated first by identifying the solution benefits, less the total costs (not just cash investments), x100 expressed as a percentage.

Utilization rate is the actual hours billed divided by target. So an associate who bills 900 hours with an 1800 hour target has 50% utilization rate.

Realization is collections divided by billings. So a matter in which $200,000 was billed but $100,000 collected would have 50% realization rate.

As KM managers are integrated more and more into the business discussions we need to have a better understanding of the language of business.

Process improvement helps cost savings when a better-articulated, well-documented, more accessible, and standardized best practices reduces the time required for a person to accomplish a goal or complete an activity.

For example, ask attorneys how much time they spend sorting / dealing with email.

It is not as simple as saying that an hour saved is an hour that would have been billed. Tie rather to a firm initiative such as business development investment time. Look for firm initiatives that set goals for new business acquisition, client outreach, cross-selling, and so forth.

Sales metrics; one large legal market vendor tracks sales activity down to the level of clicks in a demonstration. This is not inappropriate but rather is the type of business process necessary to survive in a global economy.

At one firm, five of six projects needed no ROI. On the sixth, the KM manager identified hours that could be used for something else with the new project and used that to successfully sell the project. Another firm will be requiring ROI analysis but has not identified how to do that.

Few firms have assessed ROI on business development.

Value can be defined in a lot of different ways.

The discipline that the "ROI game" imposes helps us better find the business objectives, articulate the goals and objectives of KM work, and communicate better to lawyers about it.

KM taking over the risk management at one firm led to cost savings in not hiring a general counsel. If practice area is servicing more clients in the same amount of time, then you've helped the business of the firm because the firm didn't have to hire more people.

"You will spend less time searching" or "you will spend less time doing X" gives the direction and lawyers intuitively understand that working more efficiently means more time for managing the business or delegating more. Firm leaders may not have spent the time identifying how people should be spending their time.

It drives smart people crazy when business processes are handled poorly. Setting a good example of doing something better proves your value.

One way to get some return on invesment is to do a survey about people's pain points and degree of contentment.

Another way to tie to think about ROI is saving moeny for the client.

One firm has a "precedents" library with metrics about popular precedents, popular users, and unpopular precedents. The parallel "research" library doesn't have comparable metrics. The KM manager's CIO from an accounting firm is asking for an ROI, although the project is required to be in place before metrics measurement can really be done (chicken-egg).

The "wild card" KM managers can play in ROI discussions is risk.

One financial measurement is risk and cost of being sued. Making substantive legal mistakes due to poor precedent or absence of search is a risk and potential cost of having a poor research collection.

KM managers can trace ROI by looking at usage of precedents, derivative works, number of searches, etc.

We can estimate software cost by figuring implementation and consulting may take about 1/3 of the annual cost. Focus on three year period as implementation costs drop off quickly.

Doing calculations can help you identify if your assumptions are incorrect. You won't actually get an ROI of 71% from implementing metrics assessment.

ROI analysis ties well into matter management and alternative fee arrangements.

A major benefit of ROI analysis is a more rigorous business approach.

One commentator said that our firms do not apply rigorous analysis to major business decisions. Most don't even do profitability analysis.

Decentralized and Personalized KM

Following a recent post in which KM practitioner Larry Hawes was contemplating valuing KM by its cost (not a good idea since its value added can be so much more dramatically greater), Christopher Schmaltz made the following comment:

We are moving away from a centralised KM to a more decentralised, self-service, personal KM. Employees decide what information they want to subscribe to. They decide who they would like to follow in their network, which interest groups they would like to subscribe to.

This wonderfully concise statement sums up part of my vision for KM at my law firm, in particular, the neccessity to make the information presented that most likely to be relevant and actionable to users.

A partner logs in. She is presented with the matters she's worked on recently, her top clients, and today's news and alerts about new litigation filed related to those clients. She also has previously selected receipt of alerts about significant changes in stock price or quarterly filings for those clients. Her one calendar shows her upcoming litigation deadlines, online CLE, and internal meetings for her practice areas. She can link directly to a place for her to review those associates who have worked with her most recently, and shows her how she's doing in terms of work in progress, accounts receivable, and her own billings for the calendar year versus targets.

As someone interested in financial industry regulation, she has chosen to receive an alert when a piece of work product receives a "Regulation FD" tag, or when someone's profile receives such a tag.

It's about pulling together the information that we already know relates to each person, plus the additional information or alerts that they have chosen to receive.

LegalTech report--KM from a Practicing Attorney Perspective

• High value KM approaches
• KM tool evolution
• How KM helps attorneys practice more effectively

Scott Rechtschaffen, Managing Shareholder, Littler Mendelson

Rachelle Rennagel, Chief Knowledge Officer, Sheppard Mullin

This session conflicted with most of the "What is Twitter and How Can I Use It" session. LawyerKM and Mary Abraham deserted me for there, so I'm staying on the bridge.

Rachelle Rennagel

Rachelle wanted to present some thoughts and techniques that she's used to further KM at Sheppard Mullin. She provided some excellent strategy and tactics but did not go into much detail about the pieces of her particular projects.

What can we do given the reality of the economy?

Rachelle also provides litigation support and supervises e-discovery.

As CKO she does not "know everything" but she supports lawyers and other operational gruops. She "helps speak the geek" for the lawyers and "speak the lawyer" for the geek.

She has four mantras:

• Make firm-wide knowledge more accessible
• Train, train, train
• Cultural sensitivity and generational leverage
• Serve the law firm client by increasing efficiency and profitability

Work within existing firm processes. Gradually erode less efficient processes.

Two primary KM opportunities are supporting alternative billing arrangements, and attorney prospecting/opportunity management. "This is the year of client development."

KM can supply the answer to the question, "How do we make sure that we are making money under alternative arrangements?"

In this economy it is getting easier to find people to contribute to formal knowledge-sharing programs.

Sheppard Mullin is using client dashboards to push data to lawyers about clients and prospective clients.

There remain aspects of their current software (e.g., Sharepoint) that they haven't fully leveraged.

She gets on partner meeting schedules and presents on a topic they care about; she meets with the executive committee. She also does one-on-one meetings with lawyers to get them to understand email risks.

Rachelle thinks this is also a good time to be addressing risk management technology like records management, email management, and litigation holds. Attorneys use email to store advice to clients and more.

She is working with their electronic librarian to create an internal RSS feed for their lawyers.

They are working on "ShMutter" (Shepard Mullin internal Twitter).

Workflow is an amazing effective process. How do we automate new hire or matter intake processes? Spending time keying in the same information multiple times in the HR process is not efficient. She also works on contract management.

Rachelle appears to be taking the approach, be useful and helpful where she can, regardless of how close or far that activity is to traditional knowledge management activities. More power to her for that.

Scott Rechtschaffen

From my perspective, for a U.S. firm of its size, Littler has an unusually large and succesful knowledge management team. This may be due in part to their focus on labor & employment work, in which "traditional" KM organization and knowledge-gathering efforts may be more succesful. Their team's success is also no doubt due to the energy and acuity of the team leader.

Scott said that Littler attorneys are "scattered" throughout many offices in many states. They have 9 dedicated KM attorneys, including an attorney elevated to the partnership through the KM track. He does not expect hires to be tech-savvy.

He works most closely on IT/Web Development, client relations/marketing, and professional development. Clients are increasingly wanting to see depth of content as a way of establishing expertise.

Their KM attorneys are:

• Trainers
• KM concierge
• KM evangalists

In the concierge role, if an attorney is too busy to find something, or don't know how, the KM group does. One attorney is assigned as gatekeeper. They tracks number of attorney inquiries (3,000 last year).

Small low-hanging fruit can advance the case that KM should be a part of the operations (management?) of a law firm.

One example is an arbitrator database and an international lawyer database. Who knows X arbitrator in St. Louis?

They are using customized software to manage class action discovery (interviews) and generate interview templates. DealBuilder is being used to generate case-specific information off of a standardized form.

Littler Mendelson has a large subscription-based client-facing KM project on a number of employment law toics; it includes action items. It works because clients know it's reliable, they aren't paying by the hour, and clients can brand it themselves. The KM group also publishes hard-copy and CD on international employment and labor law (and also guides to particular states). They put out about 15,000 pages of content all told. Their class action practice just published a book. It's a great tool for the practice. He would like to eventually move some of these to a wiki. They also do "ASAP" client alerts. There are four firm-sponsored blogs.

Littler Mendelson was an early contributor to Legal On-Ramp. KM attorneys act as mediators and engagers, alerting attorneys to particular on-line conversations relevant to their practice.

LM has an alumni site. It is interactive--they run MCLE programs for alumni through this site.

KM can help enable quick and accurate responses to client inquiries.

Attorneys want to find people with particular expertise. As firm grows it's harder to know who is the resident firm expert on particular topics.

Their matter page / team site (built on Sharepoint 2007) integrates RSS feeds. Partners wanted a box to identify the objective / strategy of the matter in a few sentences. It also shows the (sharepoint) task lists, a piece of functionality I've been investigating.

Their document management search integrates Recommind and West KM. The people / expertise search integrates DMS documents, bios, narrative time entries, and industry information from Elite.

They will be requiring that any event with 20+ attorneys to be listed on a firm-wide calendar.

Scott's grasp of metrics and results show that he has no difficulty in proving value to his partners and his firm.

Ark Conference, Is KM converging with Litigation Support, Risk Management, and Client Services?

Moderator:
Craig Carpenter, VP Legal Solutions and GC, Recommind

Panel:

Brent E. Kidwell, Chief Knowledge Counsel, Jenner & Block LLP
Stacie Capshaw, Firmwide Records Manager, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Joshua Fireman, Vice-President Development and General Counsel, ii3

Here are a few key points from this panel of experienced KM and Records folks.

KM As Mediators and Glue

One type of “convergence” is the role KM can play in mediating or “glueing” together different administrative and legal groups. In many firms KM has had a role as the “lawyers who talk to IT,” or at least as people whose job it is to facilitate communications between lawyers and IT managers at law firms. By virtue of their expertise with improving knowledge and information handling, KM often has projects with many different administrative groups, and can lead the discussions between the different functional areas. I have certainly found that KM has a broad range of contacts and activities compared to other administrative departments at my firm, particularly as we start to leverage Enterprise 2.0 technologies like wikis and blogs.

KM can serve this role better once it has obtained the trust of other groups through successful programs.

Brent gave the example of office moves. KM can play a role because it can assist in the transition away from paper files.

KM and E-Mail

Email is the most pressing issue in records management, because of the immense volume and significance of the content. Stacie believes that email is a “necessary evil”, like dial tone, but that it also saps lawyers’ productivity. KM should address better email behavior. Joshua said that we need to break down all forms of communication, including email, into streams, and then figure out how can you syndicate the information. How would I like to use this information? How would I like to know about the relationships? The value and utility of email should drive how we are looking at it.

Strategic & Stealth KM

“Stealth KM” was another topic of discussion. Some panel members approached projects without needing to brand or label them as KM projects. One audience member chimed in and bluntly addressed the need to “have a strong partner in your corner when the chips are down” and argued instead for highly visible KM. Such a partner is not likely to be a user of KM tools; they will base their opinions on those of the mid-level and senior associates.

Another excellent strategic point made by another audience member is that KM should be strategically focused on those practice areas that are growing, rather than those where adoption may be easy.

KM and Modern Law Firm: Strategy and Operations for IT and KM

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.

KM and The Modern Law Firm: Formal Law Firm KM Strategy

The next session at the Ark KM Conference saw Mark Young, Managing Partner, and John S. Gillies, Director of Practice Support, at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP address development of a KM strategy. I very much appreciated having the perspective of a managing partner on a firm’s KM initiative.

My firm recently went through a similar process. The Cassels Brock KM Strategy built on the firm’s Business Strategy, which conveniently was completed just about the time that John was hired. Cassels Brock has grown significantly through lateral hires in the last five years. As a result there is a relatively large set of younger partners. Their KM strategy focused on this group as they were believed more likely to embrace technological change.

I asked Mark how a strategy that required enhanced profitability justified KM investment, as more efficient work logically reduces the billable time associated with a particular task. He indicated that he often hears partners claim they could get more work in the door if they had more time; KM offered them more time, and hence more opportunity for more business. He also feels that KM provides an opportunity to demonstrate greater value to clients. Tom Baldwin of Reed Smith mentioned at this point that for some clients, predictability of fees is really important, and that the matter and document classification features of many KM approaches can help address that concern, and, again, bring in more business. If KM enables accurate cost prediction, it can also help firms move to a value-based, non-billable hour model. Linking back to KM Strategy, if a KM program can demonstrate enhanced value of work, and enhanced profitability, it will be less likely to be put on hold.

John outlined some specifics of the firm’s KM Strategy. The three primary prongs of their plan were an effective Document Management System (DMS); a way to manage precedents; and good DMS search.

They chose Interwoven for their DMS and adopted a unified “folder structure” as a way of fostering collaboration between practice groups. For their search, they used comments from focus groups and the strategic plan to develop a 100-feature set of requirements, with each of the requirements weighted ranking from 1-5. Despite the extensive quantitative work, the two competitors, Recommind and Interwoven Universal Search (IUS), came out with an identical ranking. They went with IUS because of its tighter integration with Interwoven. John mentioned that Recommind did a better job of expertise identification, but that this feature was less important to them as a one-office shop.