ILTA KM Blog Launched!

I have not been particularly rigorous about posting on Caselines of late.  Part of that is some effort that I and others have been spending on gearing up for a new venture, the ILTA KM Blog.  I'll be continuing to spend much of my blogging energies over there.

The ILTA KM blog will include posts by me and Patrick DiDomenico; we'll be managing it together.  It will also include periodic posts from the ILTA KM Steering Committee, and from the ILTA PG membership, a diverse and smart group of people.  I hope you will check it out and follow what's happening.

Google Scholar Follow-Up

Lawyers I work with who have heard of Google Scholar find it a valuable tool because it provides quick, easy, and free access to caselaw that they work with every day. Cautions about the inability of Google to truly verify the validity of a case should not, of course, be ignored for those conducting legal research.

I previously posted about the recency of Google caselaw specifically with respect to updates from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial court. (To summarize; it knew of citations but didn't have full text of decisions issued as recently as three weeks before, and had full text of decisions from about eight weeks back).

Today I went back and reviewed the status of recent caselaw in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court archive as compared to Google's set of Massachusetts state caselaw on Google Scholar.

Google has the full text of the Kilburn case issued February 24, 2010, but not the pro se appeal of George Nassar issued February 26, 2010. The most recent case on Google is the White v. Commonwealth case from March 1 (now slightly more than two weeks ago) (n.b. future readers of this post, the "Nassar" case is a link into the Westlaw repository of SJC slip opinions, my non-Google source of SJC decisions, may break in the future).

To summarize, their coverage of recent caselaw is somewhat spotty for decisions issued within the last month, but the "delay" has been reduced significantly to, in one case, half a month or 16 days from date of issue. Google Scholar is not now somehow aware of citations in advance of having the full, formal opinion.

Google's New Caselaw Search

Google's massive size and repeatedly demonstrated ability to move into and dominate new areas of information and search suggest that any effort by it even to dip its toe into the ocean of the law should be taken seriously.

As such, as has been amply noted by many others, and as officially announced in its blog, Google's new case search should be examined as a free source of many years of federal and state appellate caselaw. To access it, go to Google Scholar, and select the "Legal Opinions and Journals" button, or just search, caselaw is now included.

Below I quickly address the new tool's coverage of recent cases; its relevancy ranking; potential use of the case hyperlinks; and pin cites.

Scope of Search

As pointed out by Carole Levitt of "Internet for Lawyers," Google has buried some information about the scope of the search on its Google Scholar Help page:

"Currently, Google Scholar allows you to search and read opinions for US state appellate and supreme court cases since 1950, US federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts since 1923 and US Supreme Court cases since 1791 (please check back periodically for updates to coverage information). In addition, it includes citations for cases cited by indexed opinions or journal articles which allows you to find influential cases (usually older or international) which are not yet online or publicly available."

I'm a Massachusetts lawyer, so of course today I assessed its recent coverage in an area I know something about, Massachusetts case law. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court archive allows free access to recent opinions: Google Scholar contains the Commonwealth v. Avila case issued September 15, 2009 (roughly two months ago) but not the Commonwealth v. Odgren case (available temporarily free from Westlaw here) issued October 15, 2009 or the Massachusetts Appeals Court case Sheriff of Suffolk County v. AFSCME COUNCIL 93, LOCAL 419 (temporarily here) issued October 1, 2009. Oddly Google Scholar knows about the Odgren case as a citation--perhaps more functionality will be unveiled about this aspect of the tool in future months. Similar treatment is found for the even more recent SJC slip opinions, that is, Google Scholar knows about the citation but not the case.

Relevancy and Case Significance

The commentators have noted that Google is not simply turning its regular algorithm loose on the text of legal opinions. Rather, the relevancy ranking clearly shows that some serious thought and attention has been paid to how the legal system works. My search for in personam jurisdiction produced results similarly impressive to those I had seen with Precydent. I would guess that Google tracks the number of citations in other courts to a given case and factors that into its algorithm.

Case Hyperlinks

I noticed that each case has a unique not-horribly-long URL. For instance, the URL for Cement-Lock LLC v. Gas Technology Institute, 523 F. Supp. 2d 827 (N.D. Ill. 2007) is:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15113571434740791015

The broad coverage and solidity of Google technology suggests that such hyperlinks may be an excellent tool in the kit of those who write in about legal issues in HTML-enabled text, such as legal bloggers and lawyers working with internal blogs and wikis. No login is needed to access the case (thanks Ernie the Attorney for pointing that out).

Pin Cites

I've previously noted in my review of PreCydent that pin cites are really important for legal research and writing. Google Scholar cases indicate where the page breaks are in the original text.

Article Published in KMPro Journal

My article "Enterprise 2.0 at Goodwin Procter" has been published by KMPro Journal, of the Knowledge Management Professional Society (no subscription required).

http://www.kmpro.org/journal/KMPro_Vol_6_No_1.pdf

In the article I contrast some traditional knowledge management practices and the greater degree of communication and engagement possible with Enterprise 2.0 tools; address some of the many uses to which wikis and blogs have been put at Goodwin Procter; and discuss some lessons learned.

It was a really enlightening experience to put down my thoughts about Enterprise 2.0 and the progress made in adoption of these tools at Goodwin. My thanks to Deb Wallace and Mary Lee Kennedy for their helpful edits and guidance, and to Doug Cornelius for starting me and the firm down the Enterprise 2.0 path.

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.

Blogging at LegalTech--A Different Environment

Last year I remember a distinct lack of blogging resources. There were no power strips, and connectivity was also a problem. Last year's blogging breakfast was a highlight, however, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow's as well.

This year is quite different. As promised, there were *ahem* free passes, blogger tables, and powerstrips. Wifi must be purchased, but there are a few plugin connections available (at least in my session).

There are also more of us. Just at my table was Securities Docket guru Bruce Carton, LawyerKM, and Mary Abraham.

So, my thanks to LegalTech, Monica Bay (allegedly behind this warm welcome,) and Jill Windwer, VP of Digital Products at law.com.