Knowledge Management and Technology for Today’s Legal

Professional

L. Keith Lipman, EsquireDirector, Advanced Technology

Solutions

What is Knowledge Management?

OrganizationalRE-USE of Materials or

“The Good Stuff”

“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 E-mails 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

Events, Tasks,Event/Task Triggers, and Process

Authoring

Collaboration

KnowledgeStore

(Re-use andResearch

Publication

InfratstructureTime and Billing

Filter

Technology Tools

• Enterprise Information Portal• New Search Engines

– True Context Searching– Ability to leverage e-mail 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 • E-Mail/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 FunctionalityPhase 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

– E-mail (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 Buildingor

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• E-mail 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

Events, Tasks,Event/Task Triggers, and Process

Authoring

Collaboration

KnowledgeStore

(Re-use andResearch

Publication

InfratstructureTime and Billing

Filter

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

My Clients and Matters My Tools My Practice

Visualization and User Interface Layer - Enterprise Knowledge and Information Portals(EKIP)

AuthoringSystems

Collatboration(Internal and

Externalincluding e-mail

Systems

Publication(The File)

ExternalResearchand News

InternalKnowledge

Store

EnterpriseEvent and TaskManagement

Systems

Time and BillingSystems

Systems Layer

Our Firm

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