LawyerKM

LegalTech New York and The Sixth Annual Law Firm Chief Information & Technology Officers Forum are right around the corner – coming up February 1 -3, 2010.  I’m looking forward to participating on a couple of panels:

First: External Knowledge Management: Using Internet Resources to Your Advantage, at LegalTech on Monday, February 1 at 4:15 p.m.   I am joining David Hobbie, Litigation Knowledge Management Attorney at Goodwin Procter LLP (and author of the Caselines blog), and Tom Baldwin, Chief Knowledge Officer at Reed Smith, LLP.   Rob Saccone, Vice President, General Manager, XMLAW at Thomson Reuters is moderating.

Here’s the outline:

• Explore free and paid-for services and content sources becoming available for firms to support their knowledge management, marketing and practice needs
• Using search sites and social networks for legal research, competitive intelligence and current awareness about clients and partners
• Find information that is out there about your firm
• Going beyond Google
• Best practices for understanding the messages the marketplace is sharing about you and your firm and how to manage the data

Next: Enterprise Search: How to Mitigate Risk and Drive Productivity, at the CIO – CTO Forum on Wednesday, February 3, at 11:00 a.m.  I am joining Ali Shahidi, Director of Knowledge Management at Bingham McCutchen LLP and Bill Puncer, Search Advantage Evangelist at LexisNexis.

Description from the program: Law firms are increasingly inundated with information.  Join us for a lively presentation on managing that information—making it searchable; actionable and enhancing its value within the enterprise, thus managing your risk exposure and driving productivity.  Discover how an enterprise search platform can power a range of flexible tools your firm can use to integrate, enrich and manage both internal and external information, reducing the risk of making costly mistakes and increasing productivity within the enterprise.

Also of interest is The Business of Law Symposium, Charting a Successful Course in Today’s Brave New World, sponsored by LexisNexis at LegalTech on Monday, February 1, from 1:00 p.m. to  5:00 p.m.  This promises to be very interesting, starting with a Keynote by Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith, Esq. There are three other sessions: Knowledge Management; New Structures for the New World; and Future Strategies.  Other notable speakers include: Ali Shahidi (see above) and Oz Benamram, Chief Knowledge Officer at White & Case, and too many others to list.  The program is eligible for up to 4 CLE credits.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

…

Steven Lastres, Don MacLeod, and I will be speaking at 9 a.m. on Tuesaday, July 28, 2009 at the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Annual Meeting in Washington DC.

Here is some information on the program from AALL:

Target Audience: Law firm librarians who need to understand how new web technologies can foster collaboration and deliver library services.

Learning Outcomes:

1) Participants will be able to assess the benefits and pitfalls of emerging Web 2.0 technologies from three perspectives: library management, knowledge management and lawyer training.

2) Participants will be able to build a convincing business case for Web 2.0 technologies to firm management and other decision-makers.

The presentation begins with an overview of the benefits of Web 2.0 as part of an overall Knowledge Management strategy. The program will explain what the benefits are to lawyers and clients, how to calculate ROI and demonstrate why law librarians should lead the process.

After a discussion of the underlying theory driving the adoption of Web 2.0 technology, the nuts and bolts of building and deploying Web 2.0 technologies will be reviewed, including showing which technologies pay off the best (comparison of tools) and how to get buy-in from management and adoption by end users. Part of this program will look at how to integrate new technologies with existing infrastructure.

The third perspective of Web 2.0 concerns teaching lawyers how to work in a knowledge-sharing environment. This part of the program will provide guidance on how to set up a training program in the law library to help lawyers master the tools they need for sharing information in their daily practice. The program addresses how librarians can encourage lawyers to rely on them for expertise in identifying and using the right resources.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Today is the last day of ILTA.  I’ll be covering a couple of sessions later. 

There are so many great programs here that it’s impossible to attend all of the ones that you’d like.  That’s why I am very happy to see that several people are sharing their notes and thoughts about the sessions.  Many people have expressed appreciation for this, so I want to make sure that everyone knows of some of the other live bloggers:

I’ve mentioned coverage by David Hobbie of Caselines and Doug Cornelius of KM Space.  I noticed that Amy Witt of Nina Platt Consulting is ILTA blogging at The Law Firm Intranet. 

If you know of others, please drop me a line and I’ll revise and / or repost a new list. 

Thanks. 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms 

ILTA – August 26, 2008 1:30 pm

These are my notes from the program.  [Since I am taking paper-free notes and because there is free Wi-Fi here, I thought that I’d add the notes to the blog.  Disclaimer: my notes are rough, so forgive the typos.]

From ILTA:

Title: The Ultimate Legal Technologist
Description: We discuss the value of legal or IT expertise as a foundation for legal technologists, specifically in the field of practice (or litigation) support.  The panel discusses their findings and experiences when the pendulum is swung in either direction.  Can you find legal technologists who hold in-depth expertise in both areas, and do they make the ultimate technologist?
Speaker(s): Joel Vogel – Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, LLP
Florinda Baldridge – Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P.
Michelle Mahoney – Mallesons Stephen Jaques
 
Learning Objectives: Identify the dynamics that lead to a successful service delivered by multi-disciplined professionals.
Learn about the personality types, perceptions and the reality when managing expectations of legal staff and clients.

No LawyerKM notes due to technical problems.  I recommend checking out the slides from the presentation.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

ILTA – August 26, 2008 3:30 pm

These are my notes from the program.  [Since I am taking paper-free notes and because there is free Wi-Fi here, I thought that I’d add the notes to the blog.  Disclaimer: my notes are rough, so forgive the typos.]

From ILTA:

Title:   Collaboration Tools and Technologies for Lawyers

Description:     Collaboration technologies and tools are the most important current developments in legal technology and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. During this session, the speakers discuss collaboration technologies for law firms, review tools and explore alternative platforms.

Speaker(s):     

Tom Mighell – Cowles & Thompson, P.C.

Dennis Kennedy – MasterCard Worldwide

Learning Objectives:  

Identify collaboration tools and technologies for law firms.

Analyze their utilization and explore alternative methods.

LawyerKM’s Notes:

• Do you know how your lawyers are collaborating?
  • email
  • wikis
  • meetings
  • SharePoint
  • etc.
• Collaboration is not new
  • history of collaborating
  • telegraph is the first form of IM (sort of)
  • telephone
• Collaboration today
  • mainly email 
  • document collaboration (redlining, track revisions, etc.)
  • conference calls
• Internal & external collaboration
  • geography and the parties are factors
  • audience is important – e.g. metadata stripping is important when collaborating with third parties, but not necessarily with internal parties
  • Internal: everyone on the same team, see metadata above; brainstorming, etc. openness about the documents
  • External: the collaborators might be on the same side, but might be adversaries.
• Basics: Documents and Projects
  • Documents – take advantage of the fact that documents are in a digital format.
    • Redlining and track changes are the norm today
    • Google Docs – a place for multiple people to collaborate on a document (Dennis and Tom used Google Docs to collaborate when writing their book: The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together)
  • Project Management – lawyers are very much project managers
    • they need to manage the cases and / or deals that they are working on
• Basic Collaboration Toolbox
  • choice depends on how you work
  • determining what you’re trying to do helps you match tools to the problem
  • calendaring, conferencing, document collaboration
• Collaboration Platforms
  • SharePoint
  • Google Apps (Dennis is surprised at the interest in this from a large law firm perspective – so am I see Web 2.0 in Law Firms)
• Web 2.0 Tools
  • key definition – using the internet as a software tool or application platform  (web 3.0 is the semantic web, see here)
  • Blogs, Wikis, Cloud computing
  • they are platform agnostic (PC or Mac – all the same – you just need a web browser)
  • Calendaring on the web allows easy collaboration
  • web-based large file sharing (e.g. Drop IO, usendit)
• Next Generation Concepts
  • user-generated content publishing (see, e.g., Wikipedia, YouTube, SlideShare, Mash-ups)
  • social networking (LinkedIn, Facebook) becomes an expertise locator.  [what about Twitter?]
  • Legal OnRamp, JD Supra
• How to learn about collaboration options
  • lots of collaboration blogs: Dennis and Tom’s blog
  • RSS feeds (subscribe to collaboration tag in technorati)
• Approaches to develop a collaboration strategy
  • is your approach active or passive?
  • collaboration audit – don’t assume that you know how your attorneys are collaborating – check it out. 
  • what is your firm’s collaborative culture?  - look at the way people actually work (even from a non-technological way)
• Defining and Implementing your collaboration approach
  • try to guide people to accepted products and approaches
• What is your collaboration culture?
  • the audit will help
  • what are people doing now
  • strengthen collaboration culture – establish a collaboration coordinator [sounds like a KM position; an evangelist]
  • let people know about successes
  • learn from your failures
• Conclusions
  • no longer an option
  • impact on day to day practice can be huge
• What to do next?
  • observe how you are collaborating (notice what tools you use)
  • pick one tool and investigate it

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

ILTA is on.

In the spirt of going green, I thought that I would take my notes at ILTA on my laptop instead of on paper.  The keynote speaker, Tim Sanders, scared the heck out of everyone about the evils of using paper – and law firms are huge offenders.

Since I am taking paper-free notes and because there is free Wi-Fi here, I thought that I’d add the notes to the blog.  Disclaimer: my notes are rough, so forgive the typos.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

See Ron Friedmann’s post describing the upcoming KM track at ILTA’s annual conference in Texas next week. Will YOU be there?

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Ark Group & Managing Partner Magazine have announced the 4th Annual program for “Knowledge Management In The Modern Law Firm: Creating Value for Your Firm by Integrating, Optimizing and Leveraging Your Knowledge Assets, Tools and Techniques in Support Of Explicit Business Goals.” It is scheduled for October 27-28, 2008 in Chicago, IL.

If history repeats, this will be a good conference.

Here’s the line up:

What Do Practicing Lawyers Expect from the KM Function?

• Mark Young, Managing Partner, Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP
• John S. Gillies, Director of Practice Support, Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP

Can IT and KM Both Be Strategic and Operational?

• Peter K. Kaomea, Chief Information Officer, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
• Tom Baldwin, [blog] Chief Knowledge Officer, Reed Smith, LLP
• Stuart Kay, Director, Global Information Systems Projects, Baker & McKenzie

The Convergence of Litigation Support, Practice Support, Risk Management and Client Services

• Brent E. Kidwell, Chief Knowledge Counsel, Jenner & Block LLP
• Stacie Capshaw, Firmwide Records Manager, Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Can Transactional-Based KM Practices be Extended to Support Litigation?

• Amy Halverson, Litigation Knowledge Manager, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
• David B. Hobbie, [blog] Litigation Knowledge Manager, Goodwin Procter LLP
• Mary Panetta, Director of Knowledge Management, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld

Fostering and Nurturing the Research & Development Function at Your Firm

• David B. Hobbie, [blog] Litigation Knowledge Manager, Goodwin Procter LLP

Words by the Numbers: Using Multi-Faceted Analytics to Drive KM in an International Law Firm

• Peter K. Kaomea, Chief Information Officer, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

A Retrospective Look at KM Initiatives Across Law Firms (Has DM peaked? The evolution of practice-based web services and the consignment of DM to the back-end, Portals – one solution or a myriad of opportunities?)

• Joel Alleyne, CMC, former Chief Information and Knowledge Officer, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, Chairman and CEO, Alleyne Inc.
• Joshua Fireman, Vice-President Market Development and General Counsel, ii3

Enterprise Search: Holy Grail, Panacea or a Failed Opportunity? (From content and collection to context and collaboration, Web 2.0 and its impact on longstanding KM problems, KM opportunities that KM professionals never seem to exploit)

• Joel Alleyne, CMC, former Chief Information and Knowledge Officer, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, Chairman and CEO, Alleyne Inc.
• Joshua Fireman, Vice-President Market Development and General Counsel, ii3
• Terrie J. Rollins, CEO, RMR Technology Group and former CKO, Federal Systems, Unisys corp.

Contact Peter Franken for more info:
773 281 4275
pfranken@ark-group.com
usa.ark-group.com

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

This is a PBWiki Webinar called “Getting the most out of PBwiki 2.0 for your business” on Wednesday, March 19, 2008.  Register.

From the invite: “Join us and explore how PBwiki 2.0 can help your business get more from your wiki. Explore examples of using folders and access controls, as well as how you can customize your wiki’s look in seconds, just based on your company logo.  Plus, ask the PBwiki team your questions.”

I’m looking forward to this because I am not crazy about PBWiki 1.0.

See other LawyerKM wiki posts.

See a page with all of my favorite blogs (many of which also discuss wikis).

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Google’s Universal Search for Law Firms & Interwoven  

Presentation on March 12, 2008, Vijay Koduri, Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise and Gautam Malkamekar of Persistent Systems. 

My notes from the presentation:

• Google Enterprise overview:
  • “mission organize the world’s information…”
  • enterprise information (i.e. info behind the firewall) is 40% world’s information.
• 600 Google employees dedicated to G Enterprise.
• 15,000 customers.
• Google Apps – the suite of apps (now also including Google Sites [see my gripe about Sites here]).
• 2000 new Apps customers every day!
• “Search is the starting point to the world’s information.”
• Knowledge workers (“KWs”) spend 25% of time looking for information.
• KWs search about 5 repositories looking for information.
• Expertise location is important 
• Impact on business is loss of productivity, not optimizing billable hours.
• What is Universal Search?
  • one search searches multiple repositories
  • the results are delivered without categorizing
  • the results are ranked by relevancy
  • an example of Universal search is Google’s Moma internal knowledge base
• Universal search allows client access via extranets (security is observed to only give access to allowed material).
• ROI: increase of billable hours – eliminate some time searching so that billers can spend some of that time doing billable activities (time is money).
• The Google Search Appliance (GSA) searches pretty much all repositories in the enterprise (file shares, intranets, databases, enterprise apps, content management).
• “OneBox” – Can make real time queries into various apps (ex. see a snapshot of a regional sales report in the search results – not just a link to the report).
•  Case Study: Akin Gump (not many details).
  • deployed GSA
  • used it to search intranet pages

Second part of webinar - Persistent Systems & Live demo 

The info here is spare because there were some technical problems)

How Universal Search is “extended” to interwoven

• Persistent Systems overview
• Connector Deployment – there is Persistent Systems connector between the Interwoven databases and the GSA (fed via XML)
• Quick – easy install, simple configuration. 

Live demo of Connector

• an apparently simple “walk through” set up – it took 5 minutes. 
• A Google browser is used, allowing to search just public content or public & secure content. 
• only content to which the user has access appears – demonstrated this feature by signing in as different users with different access credentials. 
• demonstrated Google OneBox – shows relevant real time information in the search results.
• They can also connect into other DMS products, like Hummingbird

Q&A:

• The GSA is a closed box and Google does not share the info with anyone outside of the enterprise
• GSA can search MS Exchange databases, too.
• It can search across multiple Worksite servers in different geographical locations.
• Security is checked
• The search must originate from the web page, but can be embedded in FileSite, with some custom work.
• Pricing: based on number of documents in organization.  Starting $30,000 (for two-year license, hardware, software, support) for 500,000 documents.  Can index up to 30 million documents with stacked GSAs.
• There is a small business version of product “Google Mini” 50,000 documents – $3,000.
• Application can search Word Perfect, as well as Word and many, many other file types.
• Information can be compartmentalized so that only certain people can see it.
• Works with single sign on mechanisms. 
• OneBox works by doing a real-time query. 
• Google does not keep your search statistics, but you can keep track of your own search statistics within the enterprise with Google Analytics. 
• They skipped my question: how many Am Law 100 firms have deployed GSA and how many have deployed the Persistent Systems connector?

Webinar is archived here.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms