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David Eriksson, Systems Development Lawyer, LLM and MSc

Digital law – a law firm perspective on information retrieval

19 november 2008

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Digital law – a law firm perspective on information retrieval-abstract• Information Technology has changed the way lawyers retrieve information. What has been significant in legal

IR in the past, what is significant at present and what can we expect in the future? • The corporate world lags many years behind the online consumer industry in terms of using and reusing digital

information creatively. However, things are starting to change.• How are law firms affected by trends such as digitalisation of legal information, commodisation, e-matter

management, integration of systems, convergence, globalisation and rise of mega firms, traceability of lawer’slegal research and behaviours, social networking, collaboration tools, enterprise search and information layers, categorisation, konceptualistation, a higher overall tempo and client demand?

• Large law firms have millions of documents and numerous databases that help to store the intellectual capital of the firms. How does information retrieval work within the firms most important information asset – the firmitself?

• What challenges and opportunities are involved for law firms when it comes to their own information and whatdemands do they place on public and private organisations that provide legal information?

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Agenda

• About Mannheimer Swartling• Climbing the value chain• ”Good enough” automisation• Legal IR then, now and future• The law firm as an information provider• Collaboration tools

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Law firm IR challenges

• External IR• Internal IR

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Our firm

Leading full-service firm in the Nordic region

• 420 lawyers (>660 employees).• Offices in:

– Sweden: Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Helsingborg– Germany: Frankfurt, Berlin– Belgium: Brussels– Russia: Moscow, St. Petersburg– China: Hong Kong, Shanghai– US: New York

• Independent, executing regional and international deals seamlessly, through our own offices and by working in integrated teams with lawyers in a unique network of other leading firms.

• Origins go back to 1877.• Consistently strengthening our position as leading in key areas of the Nordic

M&A market.• Advises, year after year, on significantly more transactions than any other Nordic

firm– 175 transaction mandates, with a total deal value >EUR 16 billion (2007).

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Practice areas and industry sector groups

Practice areas

• Banking and finance• Corporate Commercial • Corporate Taxation• Dispute Resolution • Employment and Pensions• Environment• EU and Competition• Funds and Investments• Insolvency• Insurance• Intellectual Property• IT, Telecoms and Technology• Maritime and Transport• Mergers and Acquisitions• Public Procurement• Real Estate• Securities

Industry sector groups

• Energy• Financial Institutions• Forest and Paper• Health Care an Life Sciences• Industrial• Infrastructure• IT, Telecommunications and

Technology• Media and Entertainment• Private Equity• Real Estate

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Awards

• Sweden´s best commercial law firmVeckans Affärer (Sweden’s best consultants), 2006 and 2008

• Clients’ favourite law firmLegally Yours (Klientbarometern), 2005, 2006 and 2007

• Law Firm of the Year: Northern EuropePLC Which Lawyer, 2007

• Law Firm of the Year, SwedenWho’s Who Legal Awards, 2006, 2007 and 2008

• Swedish Law Firm of the YearIFLR; International Financial Law Review, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008

• Ranked in seventh place amongst the world’s law firms in relation to international arbitrationGlobal Arbitration Review, 2007

• Most popular law firm among Swedish law studentsUniversum (Juristbarometern), 2005, 2006 and 2007

• Best in the business 2007, legal advisors categoryUniversum Awards, 2005, 2006 and 2007

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Information needs to climb the value chainV

alue

Unstructured

Semi structured

Structred

Met

hods

•Accessiblity•Openness•Sharing•Classification and categorisation tools•Conceptualisation•Social networking / KM / Web 2.0•Ontologies, folksonomies, dictionaries, taxonomies, linguistics•xml, semantic web•Enterprise search/Information access platforms

(No ranking order)

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”Good enough” automatic legal sorter and conceptualiserSearch words and Concepts

Doctrine / Law litterature

LegislationPrepatory work

Case law

Legal texts

”Good enough” sorted and conceptualised

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Legal IR – then, now and future

Time

•Personalisation

•Situation adaption

•Knowledge Sharing

•Accessibility

•Automation

•Tracebility and behaviouranalysis

•Higher in value chain

•Faster response time

•Information integration

•Availability

•Digitalisation

•Globalisation

•Information size

More of…

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Then

• It took longer to find information• More time find information• Expensive information per entity• The law developed slower• Less specialisation• No IT

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Now

• We need more how. Not just what.• Information overload• Information more available – but accessible?• Who am I, and in what situation am I in?• Learning from others…• Search a commodity• Lack of value added services in organisation of information• IT still quaint

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Future

• Automisation• Higher up in the value chain• Tracebility• Push instead of pull

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Things that need to change…

• All legal information producers, both authorities, private information providers and law firms must develop their IR techniques and systems

• Not just creating legislation, case law, prepartory work and lawbooks/texts for people but also for machines and IR systems

• Law firms need access to all case law/judgements• Information aggregators need access to all judgements in a well

structured format• Stop writing cases like it was the 19th century…

– Why not paragraphs like in EC case law?!• Ontologies, dictionaries, metadata, fuzzy logic• Law literature online• ”Temporary books”• Open systems / Integration (compare web services, web mash-ups)

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IT/IR systems as automatic legal researchers

• Risks?• Risks of the present state• Climbing the value chain. Develop our business.

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The law firm as an information provider

• Law firms as information providers– we are an information customer to ourself

• Information structure• Information retrieval• Best practice / Know what / Know how

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Know what, how and who in a business law firm

• What?– Knowledge about the law– Knowledge about the clients and their business– Knowledge through IR

– Law books and external legal databases, Internaldocument databases, external business information databases

• How?– Tacit and explicit Procedures and Workflows– Learning by doing, asking collegues

• Who?– Who is good at what– What contracts have X written who is good at Y type of

law?

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Know What

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Know Who

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Know How

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Law firm collaboration (IR) tools

• Knowledge banks• Document management systems• External information databases• Portals• Social software / Collaboration tools (eg wikis, blogs)• Enterprise search / Information access platforms

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The corporate world ten years behind…

• Compare law firms with the online advertising industry• Push instead of pull• Situation based IR• Personalisations, roll based• Basic search functions

– More like this– Did you mean?– People that downloaded this documents also

downloaded…• Amazon, Gmail, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter

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Portals, blogs and wikis

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Client extranets

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Dynamic Navigation: Clusters and Faceted Metadata

Refine By Source

Refine By Dynamic Taxonomies

Refine By Metadata orStatic Taxonomy

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Personalization: Alerts

Create Personal Alerts

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Spotlight High Value Content

“Spotlight” High Value Results

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Enterprise Mash-ups

HR System

Website Active Directory

HR System

CRM

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Tuning –Observe and Adapt

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Social Tagging: Rating

Users can rate search

results

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SOCIAL TAGGING: ANNOTATIONS

Users can enrich search results by annotating

existing results with their own thoughts and

commentary.

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External databases integrated with internal-Example Lexis Search Advantage with Interwoven Universal Search

• Search Advantage offers auto-profiling of documents.• "research preview"• It can be matched to a firm's taxonomy or a Lexis taxonomy.• For transactional documents, the document has a link to information on

people and companies• Enrichens internal information with external metadata

– compare internal connections to case law references in the Norstedts blue book of Acts

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We are experimenting with…

• Clause library wiki• Information wikis• News blogs• Workflow / Webified instructions / Guidance notes• Transactions Know how• Planning for enterprise search / Information access platform• Transactions database• Training material database• Pitch database• Project rooms

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Enterprise search soon in each organisation

AXAPTA INTRANÄTPORTALEN

KUNSKAPS-BANKEN

INTERWOVENWORKSITE

HOGIAPERSONAL KNOW WHOAXAPTA

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AFFÄRSSYSTEM JÄVSKONTROLLTIDREDOVISNING

REG ÄRENDEREG KLIENTER

REG KONTAKTER

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KNOW HOW OCH

SUPPORTINFO

PERSON/

KOMPTENS

KNOW HOW ARBETS-DOKUMENT

Klient & Ärenden Personuppgifter

Myndighetssidor

Zeteo/Norstedts

Betaltjänster

Affärsdata

PLCInfoTorg

Gratis web

Intresseorganisationer

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Thanks!