Knowledge Management and
Technology for Today’s Legal
Professional
L. Keith Lipman, Esquire
Director, Advanced Technology
Solutions
What is Knowledge
Management?
Organizational
RE-USE of Materials or
“The Good Stuff”
“The Good Stuff”
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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
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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
Collaboration
Publication
Filter
Events, Tasks,
Event/Task Triggers, and Process
Authoring
Time and Billing
Knowledge
Store
(Re-use and
Research
Infratstructure
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?
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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
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People
Budgets
Documents
What happened in other matters
Out-of-the-Box Functionality
Phase 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
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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
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CIO, Technology Partner, and Managing Partner
Network Administrators
Trainers
Web Developers
Librarians
Paralegals and Attorneys
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Strategic Consulting
Network Engineers
Knowledge Engineers
Web Developers
• External
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 Building
or
The Next One to Three Years
Four Views of a Portal
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My Tools
My Practice
My Clients and Matters
Our Firm
My Tools
• Document Management
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– 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
Collaboration
Publication
Filter
Events, Tasks,
Event/Task Triggers, and Process
Authoring
Time and Billing
Knowledge
Store
(Re-use and
Research
Infratstructure
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
Visualization and User Interface Layer - Enterprise Knowledge and Information Portals
(EKIP)
My Clients and Matters
My Tools
My Practice
Our Firm
Systems Layer
Enterprise
Time and Billing Event and Task
Systems
Management
Systems
Publication
(The File)
Collatboration
(Internal and
External
including e-mail
Systems
Authoring
Systems
External
Research
and News
Internal
Knowledge
Store
Powering your Portal
• Need enterprise systems that are
preferably web-enabled or webbased.
• 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, ERoom)
• 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