(This story first appeared in the June 2006 issue of LJN's Legal Tech Newsletter. For more information, visit www.ljnonline.com.)
Say Knowledge Management in non-KM circles—especially in law firms—and you’re likely to get a blank stare. This is often because the mission of knowledge management has not been communicated to stakeholders, or the term has been used so broadly that it no longer means anything. As the Director of Knowledge Management at Polsinelli Shalton Welte Suelthaus (248-attorneys with nine offices), this is a challenge I’ve been working hard to overcome.
One way to overcome the “what is KM?” challenge (and to gain great credibility for someone in my position) is to be able to respond to a well-defined need with an equally well-focused solution. Such opportunities do not come along every day, but good fortune smiled on me recently when a group of attorneys came to me with a problem: they wanted an easy way to create an electronic brief bank for litigation documents and an electronic repository for corporate research. They wanted attorneys to be able to do one search across all firm documents and have on-point results returned quickly. The search needed to be flexible, easy for the attorneys to use, and reliable. The rationale for having such a tool at their command was quite simple—the more time attorneys spend looking for information, the less time they have to do what the client needs. Creating efficiencies to conduct research faster and more effectively would address an obvious need.
On face value, it would seem that a firm like Polsinelli Shalton Welte Suelthaus (PSWS) would have the perfect tool in place for attorneys to locate needed work product – that is, the Document Management System (DM). When firms began adopting DMS programs it was hoped (somewhat unrealistically) that they would be a panacea for many, if not all, firm knowledge management initiatives. Results have fallen a bit short of expectations. In the context of work product retrieval, the shortcoming was simple: our attorneys found the DMS too difficult to use. Don’t get me wrong, the DMS is a very good tool for version control, and allows documents to be stored and retrieved easily if the user knows a document number or other specific information from the document profile. After all, that is the way the DMS is designed to work. However, if an attorney doesn’t know the document number and just wants to search to see if anyone has ever created a particular type of document or has researched a particular legal issue, the DMS falls short because its search mechanism is not designed for such project-specific searches.
With the advent of Google™ and the omnipresent phenomenon of people “Googling” what they want to find, the attorneys at PSWS wanted something just as simple to use when they were doing research or preparing a document that they might not be familiar with. PSWS has 9 offices in eight cities making it is impossible for any one attorney to know or be familiar with everything that attorneys in other offices have done. As mentioned above, the DMS is not a practical tool for such searching, so we began searching for an application that would make it easy for our attorneys to find work product.
The specificity of our mandate made the search for solutions fairly simple. A few of the KM software programs we reviewed simply tried to do too many other things that distracted from the problem we were trying to solve. A few other solutions the firm considered were tied closely to proprietary research tools. Our attorneys use a variety of research tools and we feared that tying our work product retrieval efforts too closely to one research product would potentially polarize our users. We also did some research on implementations of some of the more established solutions and heard tales of long and difficult implementations. We didn’t have time for a long implementation schedule, and it would cast mud in the collective eye of our KM initiatives if this project did not have a smooth and successful deployment.
After several reviews of potential work product retrieval solutions, we came upon an application called RealPractice (from Practice Technologies, Inc.; www.practicetechnologies.com). The RealPractice approach to work product retrieval is a radical departure from the DMS model. Where DMS systems rely upon profiles created by users to facilitate searching – something that is generally done as quickly as possible – the RealPractice system removes any onus from the user to profile documents, and instead uses artificial intelligence to automatically create meaningful abstracts of every document in the system. The idea here is that if the system has substantive “knowledge” about what documents contain, users will have an easier time hunting down what they need. Abstracts include information such as the substantive areas of law that is in the document, governing law, type of document, and courts (if a litigation document). After the documents have been automatically profiled, RealPractice categorizes the documents by the criteria listed above. This allows the user to search for work product based on the type of document or expertise they need. The category searching can be combined with key word searching.
The way RealPractice works might be better illustrated through the following example: let’s say an attorney was interested in locating a patent license agreement that discusses royalties. The user would enter the following search using pull-down menus and a text search box:
Document Type: Licensing
Document Subtype: Patent Licensing Agreement
Full Text: Royalty
After submitting this search, the attorney would see a results screen that displays concise synopses of documents that meet given criteria. The synopses include the actual title of the document, the parties involved in the transaction, the attorneys who drafted it, the date it was created and the jurisdiction it was created for. This allows users to assess what they have located without opening and reading documents—documents that in some systems might only be identified by obscure file names.
From an end-user perspective, there are many appealing aspects of RealPractice. First, the design of the program makes sense to our attorneys. The interface is incredibly simple to use, and mimics the “Google-like” searching that many users desire. Also, litigation-oriented documents and transaction-oriented documents are stored in separate “banks” so attorneys know exactly where to go to conduct their research. This provides a level of comfort, as attorneys know they won’t be wasting their time searching documents that do not apply to their area of law. Using the actual title of the document to identify the documents rather than the document name given in the DMS adds a tremendous value to the search options and the results.
The sense that the developers at Practice Technologies “get it” when it comes to how attorneys want to retrieve work product was evident from the first demonstration of the product. Response was very positive, with minimal explanation, and our managing partner could immediately see the value of the program. The firm ended up approving the licensing of RealPractice on an expedited timetable.
Finding what seems to be the “killer app” is one thing. Getting people to use it is another. All too many times firms have purchased great software, only to find it becomes shelfware because not enough time and/or planning was done to make sure it was implemented.
When it came time to roll out RealPractice in September of 2005, we had a strategy in place. I wanted our attorneys to think of it as a fun program that solves the research and work product retrieval problem for them in a very straightforward way. The professional services team from Practice Technologies, including Oji Nwankwo and Phil Daman, were accommodating with our schedule. Oji and his team did a wonderful job behind the scenes to make sure we stayed on schedule in terms of getting existing firm documents processed into the RealPractice system, and setting up parameters for the automatic profiling of future documents. To highlight the significance of the roll-out—and to build enthusiasm among our attorneys—Phil and I traveled to each office to conduct demonstrations for any attorneys interested in attending; we served snacks and beverages to help sweeten the deal! Many firm shareholders encouraged associates to attend the demonstration sessions, and now expect them to search RealPractice first before they use other computer assisted legal research.
At this writing, it’s been six months since the official rollout of RealPractice at PSWS. While I have not had the opportunity to collect hard metrics on system usage and efficacy, there is anecdotal evidence that suggests that our attorneys are making use of the work product retrieval system. One piece of evidence is that I still get calls and questions about the program periodically from users. Another concerns a few conversations I’ve overheard in practice group meetings where I have heard associates are asking each other about a particular topic, and one of the associates will ask if they’ve checked RealPractice.
The work product retrieval model posed above is certainly not right for every firm. My instinct is that a system like RealPractice would be overkill for smaller firms that have a more finite collection of documents and, presumably, more interpersonal connection thanks to closer physical proximity. For larger firms with a broader array of practice specialties and geographic locations, however, work product retrieval can make very good sense. If you think your firm might be ready for a work product retrieval system ask yourself the following questions:
- Does your firm maintain a litigation brief bank and a collection of transactional research memos accessible across the firm, and if so, how are these collections kept current?
- Do attorneys have any complaints about finding the documents?
- If the “banks” could be online with a search screen that is legal-specific but just as easy to use as Google, would attorneys find such a system of value?
- Do attorneys send out e-mails looking for someone who has done a certain type of document or conducted research on a particular issue?
- Do you think attorneys spend about 2 hours a week reading and possibly responding to “has anyone ever done…” types of e-mail?
If you answered yes to at least three of the questions above, you might consider adding work product retrieval to your arsenal of knowledge management tools. If you answered yes to question number 5, you’re on the way to making a strong ROI case for such an application…and that can be a rarity in the amorphous world of knowledge management!
Angie Turner is the Director of Knowledge Management at Polsinelli Shalton Welte Suelthaus PC.
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