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by Dan Hauck, CEO,ThreadKM

Mobility is nothing new to the practice of law. Attorneys have travelled to courts, client meetings, depositions, and countless other places since long before the digital age. As workflows became more electronic, lawyers adapted by doing things like checking emails on a phone and editing documents on laptops.

Those early steps are wearing thin and expectations to work outside of the office are growing. Lawyers today demand a richer, more satisfying experience than what they have grown accustomed to so far. If your IT department is busy clamping down on private Dropbox usage and other “shadow IT” applications, you can bet it is because attorneys on the go are more comfortable using consumer apps than firm-approved options.

Higher Demands

Attorneys face extreme challenges. While “traditional” mobility scenarios like courtrooms and boardrooms still occur as often as ever before, preparing to go to these places can be overwhelming without the right tools. Here’s why:

• More documents and data. The materials lawyers need to bring along rarely fit into a briefcase any more. Not only would there be too much paper, many items never even make it to paper these days; videos and databases are two good examples. If your firm does not offer simple, searchable mobile access to information, your attorneys could end up walking into critical situations woefully unprepared. 

And, the key here is simple. A huge gulf separates that which is theoretically possible from what a partner will actually do in the real world.
• Changing client expectations. Gone are the days when clients would overlook an extra associate or two tagging along to shuffle through boxes searching for papers. Indeed, the very idea of carting box after box of expensively prepared binders into meetings can make some clients see red. These clients are comfortable working on the road in a paperless environment; seeing their highly paid counsel unable to do the same is frustrating at best.
• More specialized knowledge. If your firm is building a knowledge management database, it must be mobile-accessible. No one can be an expert on everything, but many firms have expertise that spans countless subjects. Knowledge management and collaboration tools can deliver vital information directly to attorneys in the field. Pulling up relevant insights from the firm’s knowledge base and getting real-time research updates during client meetings both impress and demonstrate your firm’s expertise.

Changing Workflow

When I started practicing, I heard attorneys talk about endless hours at the office. It was a badge of honor I would also earn. Given that all of our tools were at the office, it was the best place to get work done. But the story has changed. Workloads today are higher than ever, but most attorneys find they can be just as productive elsewhere, even preferring other locations to the office and its many distractions. Face-time is giving way to better indicators of productivity, like responsiveness, output, and hours billed.

So, much of the work is being done at the “home office.” Whether just an hour or so in the morning or several hours at night, lawyers are squeezing significant billable time out of their homes. This is not telecommuting. It is just working. The more time attorneys spend working at home, the better that mobile environment needs to be. If it takes lawyers more than a minute or two to log into a remote desktop, that is a bad sign. Many attorneys will decide to work directly out of email, generating a trail of chatter messages and attachments along the way.

Working across time zones also demands that lawyers be proficient working from home. Everyone understands that they may be inconvenienced at times for the sake of scheduling, but few are eager to go into the office for a 5:00 a.m. conference call. The call will be a bust, however, if an attorney cannot access key documents from home.

Re-Evaluating Mobile Solutions

As we jump into 2015, law firms need to take a hard look at the state of their mobile solutions. Start by asking whether your attorneys are just as capable working at their clients’ offices as they are working on-site. Are negative trade-offs driving attorneys to less secure solutions? Consider the following ideas for improving your mobility and KM strategies:

• Find apps with flat learning curves that empower users. When thinking about mobility tools, ease-of-use is paramount. If attorneys run into problems outside of the office, they probably will have neither the time nor patience to call deskside support. The app simply must work and be effective or it will be tossed aside.
• Consider device and screen size. An effective mobile strategy is adaptable to any device. Pulling up a remote desktop on a tablet, for example, can be a bad experience. Applications should be built to accommodate or respond to the size and inputs of the device. Equally important is a solid multi-monitor experience, since many attorneys like to plug their laptops into an external monitor at home. Test out each of these scenarios, and try using the same applications that attorneys use to see where the problems are.
• Use “shadow IT” to identify areas of improvement. Attorneys often use cloud storage, private email, and personal to-do trackers for client work. You may see it as a problem, but it is also a cry for help. Actions speak louder than words. So, never ignore what your users are doing. What they do is the best feedback you have on what they need.

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• Categories Client Transparency, KM Strategy, Personal Technology
• Author ginevrasaylor

By Susan G. Manch, Partner, SJLShannon LLC

I recently attended a program at the Professional Development Consortium led by Casey Flaherty, General Counsel of Kia Motors. He did not talk about cars; rather, he continued spreading his message that clients expect their outside counsel to be technically capable. For anyone who has not seen the video that introduces Flaherty’s joint venture with Suffolk University, the Suffolk-Flaherty Tech Audit, you should watch it (and squirm) now at www.legaltechaudit.com/#video.

The video really says it all: most associates and partners have woefully inadequate technical skills and outdated understanding of the programs available to make their processes more efficient and their work more accurate with fewer billable hours. Flaherty notes one simple editing task from his audit that anyone with average technical skill could do in an hour, but took typical associates five hours to complete. These were not sophisticated tasks or arcane software uses; they were commonplace tasks like using Styles and Cross Referencing in Word and Sort and Filter in Excel. As a buyer of services billed by the hour, Flaherty takes this personally and describes it as, “Outrageous sums for unnecessary busywork”.

When I was in-house leading the Learning & Development group at Bingham McCutchen (yes they are gone, but many of their innovations will not be forgotten), our resident tech training guru, Norman Aguon, brought the original Kia Motors audit to my attention in January 2013. At that time, had you reviewed our tech training across Bingham on all the usual software programs, you would have likely thought it broad and robust. The problem was that no one attended the training. With a large stable of tech clients, the firm recognized a need to be prepared for a possible tech audit request. So, the Learning & Development and IT Training teams collaborated to create a new approach that would appeal to busy lawyers (and paralegals and assistants) who desperately needed it. Three things were certain; the program had to be:

• short,
• focused on one or two related functions, and
• hands-on and interactive.

In other words, no more hour-long webinars alone at your desk staring at a screen while catching up on Facebook on your iPhone.

Dubbed “Tech Tuesdays,” the program presented 15 to 20 minutes of intensely focused, informal and interactive training. Granted, the real attraction may have the snacks or happy hour that followed each of these quick bursts of pithy, hands-on training.

Delivered monthly, session topics were based on ideas solicited from associates, representing their biggest challenges with Office, Adobe, SharePoint, and other programs. The IT Training and Learning & Development teams met weekly to discuss program feedback, ideas for new sessions, and how to best market the program.

Maybe it was the beer, but lawyers kept coming back. And, they told us they learned. Not only did we see lawyers’ technical confidence increase, we also saw our IT trainers’ understanding of our lawyers’ software needs expand. Our Learning & Development and IT Training teams’ effective collaboration yielded a productive outcome and pushed us all to be more creative in designing tech training that our lawyers would actually attend.

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• Categories KM Strategy, Training & Awareness
• Author ginevrasaylor

By Debbie A. Ting, Knowledge Management Resource Attorney, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP

As I wrote this blog post during the holiday season, I wondered what I would include on my KM wish list. Thinking along the lines of a “Santa” wish list, I imagined having no technology, time, money, resource, attorney-bias or other constraints that might otherwise limit me. Ignoring these constraints can help generate creative and innovative KM ideas that might then be implemented to support your law firm’s or in-house legal department’s KM initiatives.

A long-standing item on many KM practitioners’ wish lists – including my own – is attorneys who embrace enterprise social networking and collaboration tools as their primary means of communication and working together instead of email. Oz Benamram’s article, “Why most law firms’ internal collaboration systems are doomed to fail,” provides a good analysis of potential barriers preventing attorneys from adopting these tools. However, I believe many law firms and legal departments will succeed in moving attorneys to adopt enterprise social networking and collaboration systems (“ESNC”) for the following reasons.

1. Attorneys know the importance of mastering email overload. Every email represents a request for an attorney’s time, attention and response. The sheer volume of email can be overwhelming and takes valuable attorney time away from responding to client-related emails. Shifting internal communications to an ESNC would enable attorneys to better focus on client-related email and result in greater customer service to their clients. Information previously captured in email could be accessible on an ESNC as part of the relevant matter, practice, or other administrative site. Pop-up notifications could be sent instead of email, and a mobile app should be offered for easy access from smart phones and tablets.
2.  Attorneys are already in the habit of asking for information at work. While an attorney may be reluctant to post a model form on an ESNC, firm culture supports sending out “Pardon the Intrusion” emails asking for information about precedents, expertise and other information needed to do their work. These emails are often sent firm-wide further cluttering inboxes for those not the object of the email. Also, the responses are forever lost in the requestor’s mailbox. Using an ESNC allows attorneys to more appropriately target their requests by expertise and opt-into communications they want to receive, while allowing others to see the thread of all responses organized in one place.
3.  Attorneys are already in the habit of using social networks at home. Attorneys are comfortable crowd-sourcing information from their social networks (g. Facebook, Google+) for advice on things like, for instance, restaurants and doctors. Having early ESNC adopters who are partners and associates will encourage others that ESNC is accepted at work. Creating communities of interest (like pro bono practice) that encourage collaboration can also foster use.
4.  Legal Technology has matured. Legal technology has developed robust collaboration platforms to mirror social media platforms like LinkedIn to replace email and discussion forums using older technologies. These new platforms include detailed profiles that allow attorneys to connect with each other by providing key biographical, practice, location, and other information. The technology also better supports checking access rights to information stored on ESNC based on criteria, such as user, role, group, or ethical and confidential screens.
5.  KM Practitioners can act as champions for successful adoption. At this year’s ARK KM conference in New York City, Amy Fox shared her insight on how she successfully secured adoption of ESNC by Intel’s in-house legal department. The key takeaway from her presentation is that a KM practitioner who acts as an ESNC champion can successfully lead adoption by personally talking to attorneys about the benefits and encouraging use.

The KM wish of ESNC adoption can create a powerful KM tool by leveraging the collective legal wisdom to deliver superior legal services.

In an interview with Henry Blodget at Business Insider’s Ignition 2014, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explains that continuously generating and implementing new ideas, like those on a KM wish list, can ignite “bold bets” that encourage experimentation that is vital to a company’s longevity:

 “What really matters is, companies that don’t continue to experiment, companies that don’t embrace failure, they eventually get in a desperate position where the only thing they can do is a Hail Mary bet at the very end of their corporate existence. Whereas companies that are making bets all along, even big bets, but not bet-the-company bets, prevail.”

Law firms and legal departments should consider adopting the same approach and add to their KM wish list. By continuing to experiment and innovate with new KM ideas, they will guarantee their competitive edge and longevity.

I found this process quite liberating and encourage you to do this exercise as a way to jump start your KM ideas in this new year. Once you have your KM wish list, brainstorm how to make these KM wishes become reality.  What is on your KM wish list and how would you implement it? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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• Categories KM Strategy, Social Media
• Author ginevrasaylor

By Scott Rechtschaffen, Chief Knowledge Officer, Littler Mendelson PC

 Lately, I have been thinking a lot about innovation – I suspect most readers of this blog have too. But what is “innovation” in the legal industry?

I think of innovation as being dramatic and disruptive – processes that significantly change the way we deliver legal services. I then think in terms of technology: increased efficiency through legal process improvement, automation and online services. Perhaps my perspective is formed from being in San Francisco, surrounded by start-ups looking for the next industry to disrupt. If Uber can destabilize the public transportation industry (apparently, the market for taxi medallions is at historic lows across the country) and AirBnB can threaten to upend the hospitality industry (the CEO of AirBnB has boasted his company will add more rooms in two weeks than Marriott will add in an entire year), then surely the emerging legal technology start-ups will have the same impact on the legal industry. As Basha Rubin, CEO of Priori Legal, wrote recently in a post on TechCrunch:

Legal technology is booming, with companies attempting to disrupt the legal space at every level and from every angle. And with good reason. Some estimates value the market size at as much as $400 billion. While legal still hasn’t caught up with other industries — either in terms of funding or widespread adoption, the future is bright and coming at us fast.

Naturally, many legal industry knowledge management professionals, me included, see these developments, believe in the inevitability of disruption in the industry, and conclude that law firms must respond by increasing efficiency, implementing process improvement, and becoming more innovative through the use of technology.

But maybe there is more to being “innovative” than enterprise search, document automation, process maps, and client dashboards. Perhaps the real future stars of our profession, those that will boldly lead us into the future, have already been innovating in the trenches for years. Maybe there is more than one definition of innovation.

I thought about this question when I recently attended two events. Both events were dedicated to innovation in the legal industry. But the approaches to innovation they highlighted could not have been more different.

The first event was the semiannual Iron Tech Lawyer competition at Georgetown Law School.

I have previously posted about this remarkable event, the culmination of Professor Tanina Rostain’s Technology, Innovation and Law Practice Practicum. During this course, teams of students are paired with outside organizations and, using Neota Logic’s expert system software, spend the semester developing online legal applications. This semester’s course, billed as the Administrative Agency Edition, featured student teams paired with diverse agencies such as the New York Department of Consumer Affairs, the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, and South Brooklyn Legal Services.

As I previously reported, hearing law students talk about user experience, design elements, and graphic interfaces was remarkable in itself. But, hearing law students discuss using technology to make legal solutions more accessible to middle and lower class clients desperately needing quality legal advice was truly – if I may use the word – innovative. Given the enormous need to provide access to justice, here in Professor Rostain’s class was a veritable Y Combinator of law students/budding legal entrepreneurs looking to develop online solutions for targeted users needing help. One student-developed app was designed to help users determine the availability of anti-SLAPP protections; another was designed to help parents navigate the complexities of determining whether their children qualify under educational programs for children with disabilities; yet another helped small businesses navigate the byzantine licensing requirements for operating under New York City law.

What is so remarkable about Professor Rostain’s class is seeing law students apply software solutions to routine legal issues, in effect enabling access to the law for those otherwise unable to afford legal assistance. This is the future of law: technology enabling access to the legal system for those previously unable to afford lawyers.

The second event was a dinner in New York hosted by the Financial Times recognizing the most innovative law firms and lawyers in North America in 2014. Our firm was one of dozens honored by the Financial Times for being innovative. But, something about the event made me wonder again about the meaning of the word “innovative.”

Most of the firms and lawyers recognized by the Financial Times as being the most innovative were not being recognized for adopting cutting-edge technology or implementing dramatic changes in their service delivery processes. Instead, they were being recognized for innovating how they litigated cases, managed matters, and served their clients. There was no triumphant technology or dramatic legal process improvement; these were just examples of really terrific and, yes, innovative lawyering. Take Roberta Kaplan of Paul Weiss who was recognized for her pro bono representation of Edith Windsor in the Supreme Court challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act. She did not disrupt the delivery of legal services or deploy cutting edge technology. Instead, she deployed clever legal strategies to achieve success that will affect the lives of millions of Americans. (Ms. Kaplan has successfully represented Airbnb so she is no stranger to disruptive technology.) Consider Tara Lee, global chair of DLA Piper’s cross border litigation practice, who has traveled through war zones to defend African countries struggling against global vulture funds.

So, what is the difference between these two views of innovation? We in knowledge management too often reach for the shiny toy on the shelf and, just as often, try to grab as many toys as we can. In our zeal and passion for technology and our belief that change must be significant, we fail to realize that many of the attorneys we work with are innovative in their own way. They have been trained to look at litigation and transactions in innovative ways to get the best results for their clients. By looking at new ways to apply the law or defend their clients, lawyers are innovators at their core.

Too often we define “innovation” as applying cutting-edge technology to the delivery of legal services. But, we fail to recognize that the attorneys with whom we work – the stalwarts of our profession – have been innovating for years. They have been developing creative and unique approaches to win cases and advance their clients’ interests. Just the other day, I learned about one of my colleagues who tried a case before a jury. The other side thought its case was a slam dunk and made significant settlement demands. My colleague developed a unique approach to the case, tried it, and the jury came back with a complete defense verdict after only three hours of deliberation. My colleague’s approach to litigating this case was nothing less than innovative.

What is the take-away? I believe that legal industry knowledge management professionals must stop insisting that attorneys make the leap to online services and technology solutions or face obsolescence (although we should certainly continue to advocate the advantages of these). Instead, we should recognize the innovative solutions to legal issues that they are developing as part of their regular practice. Recently, one of our attorneys identified a significant change in federal regulation that would dramatically affect a particular industry. He put together a comprehensive package of materials to help companies in this industry comply with these new regulations. We quickly helped him create an online portal to distribute these materials and generate some revenue from the online “product.” In this example, where exactly was the innovation? Was it in the comprehensive package of legal materials the attorney put together or the online portal we developed? The real innovation was in the work the attorney developed – identifying both a new challenge and a novel solution for his clients; the portal was mere technology. Without the attorney’s creative approach to this legal quandary, the portal would have been a hollow piece of technology.

As knowledge management professionals, we must always remember the source of true innovation: the creative endeavors of our attorney colleagues. The technology solutions we advocate and implement are mere conduits to bring their creative legal genius to market. While they benefit from our work, we would be nowhere without their expertise and knowledge.

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• Categories Client-Facing KM, KM Strategy
• Author ginevrasaylor

By Jennifer P. Mendez, KM Firm Solutions Manager, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C.

As knowledge management (KM) professionals, our oft-stated goal is to identify, create, and share salient information and experience across our organizations. We want to get the “right information to the right people at the right time.” But in a setting where individuals can be protective and skeptical, we need to do more than just demonstrate KM’s value; we must actively promote it. While promoting KM can be a formidable undertaking, it is certainly worth the effort. Below are a few ways I have found especially helpful in effectively promoting KM within a legal organization.

Get Buy-in from the Top

Establishing a KM department is only half the battle; it is nearly impossible to make progress in KM without top-down support. KM often requires a change in firm culture and work practices. Therefore, firm leaders that value knowledge sharing and a culture of collaboration are essential to the promotion and adoption of KM. Firm leaders, senior managers, and key influencers must be encouraged to act as KM champions within firms. These influential groups of people should set examples for the rest of the organization by participating in knowledge sharing, collaboration, and incorporating KM tools into everyday work. Once you have buy-in from the top, let them communicate the importance of KM to the rest of the organization. Identify the individuals that embrace and see the value in KM and let them to evangelize. Having firm leaders that are willing to promote KM leads to greater adoption of KM technologies, processes, and initiatives.

Highlight and Train on Resources

While KM is more than just technology, technology remains a catalyst to KM’s practice and adoption. Unfortunately, some attorneys undoubtedly resist KM efforts simply because they are technology-based. This is a tough nut to crack, but it can be done.

First, members of your organization should know not only the technology-based resources available to them, but why they should want to use them. The best way I have found is to promote examples of “use of tool = more business,” which tend to resonate with all attorneys. This kind of promotion is especially effective when that message comes from the attorney who is the subject of the success story.

Second, technology comes easy to some but not to others, making an effective training program critical. While in-person training sessions are always the best, periodic live WebEx sessions are also effective, provided the courses are interactive and punchy. We have also found that our KM Counsel (a/k/a Practice Support Lawyers) are best suited to training other lawyers on KM tools since they can talk the talk. Of course, training sessions should present information about KM tools in ways that are clear, succinct, accurate, and foster comprehension. Any more than 15 to 20 minutes and your remote audience will be lost to multi-tasking.

Word-of-Mouth

With so much technology at our fingertips, we often forget one of the most powerful ways to internally promote our services is not through advertisements, firm-wide emails, or announcements on the firm intranet, but through good ol’ reliable word-of-mouth from fans. The best way to get people to sing KM’s praises is to do great work and help someone at every given opportunity and whenever possible.

When you have saved the day helping attorneys locate model documents, experts, or pre-existing work product, they are often happy to promote you to others who are having difficulty locating the information they need. When you have helped secretaries locate the New Business Intake or direct deposit forms, they will share your greatness with their colleagues. If you are doing your job correctly and giving folks access to the knowledge and information they need, they will happily spread the word. A referral from the right person can go a long way in promoting KM within your organization, especially when it comes as a “Reply All” to an “All Attorney” email asking for help.

Measure Value and Share Results

Metrics in KM has been discussed and brooded over for quite some time. Metrics are important and informative; they help prove that KM has an impact on the bottom-line, provides a value-added service to firm clients, and helps people work more efficiently. However, it is often difficult to measure the value KM provides in real dollars and cents. The key is to find something to measure. I am not suggesting that you make up numbers or measure insignificant statistics, but if you look close enough, you will find something meaningful.

Think about usage and adoption rates for a firm intranet to demonstrate the value of that resource. To promote enterprise search, you can look at the number of searches conducted or the decrease in firm-wide “PTI” emails. By measuring the amount of time each attorney saves for every firm-wide email eliminated by your enterprise search tool, you should be able to make a case for time-savings, efficiency, and – potentially – revenue generation.

Having KM Counsel record their time is another way to demonstrate the value provided by KM efforts. A valuable metric is to compare the time KM Counsel spent creating exemplar documents and templates (much of which would be non-billable or written off under flat-fee agreements) to the number of times the final template is actually used by an attorney. Doing so will allow you to estimate the amount of actual time KM Counsel save your firm’s attorneys – allowing them to focus on actual billable work.

When all else fails, conduct surveys and generate metrics based on the responses. The goal is to measure something – anything – to demonstrate KM’s value. If you look hard enough, you will find great numbers to support your department’s efforts.

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• Categories KM Strategy
• Author ginevrasaylor

By Gwyneth McAlpine, Director of Knowledge Management Services,