Pinsent Mason's Annual In-house Round Table Pinsent Mason's16th In-house Lawyer Round Table tackled some of the biggest issues facing their departments – how they go about sourcing legal services, the challenge of demonstrating the legal spend’s return on investment, the legal function’s role in corporate governance, and the approach they take to guarding and exploiting their company’s intellectual property.
The conference will deal with the legal issues relevant to digital collection building, whether in the shape of institutions repositories, depositories, library e-collections or even course specific online material collections. You can register your interest by completing this form.
Do You Need a Certificate in KM?
Are you thinking about obtaining a certificate or a diploma in knowledge management? What competencies can you obtain from institutions that offer these educational programs?
In KM Competencies: Is Certification the Way to Go?, Patrick Lambe, principal of Straits Knowledge, explains why certification programs may not be the right way to go. Lambe states: "It seems clear then that a short certification programme couldn't possibly cover all the competencies required for knowledge management. Nor would you want it to." " . . . [Y]ou need to have a clearer understanding of the competencies you want to build."
Stokeld's paper evaluates the range of managerial skills and competences exhibited by legal managers in both private law firms and in public and private sector organisations and determines the level and type of managerial training deemed appropriate.
Final Reminder: Legal KM Conference
FYI: The preferential lodging rates at the Westin Times Square [(212) 201-2700] for attendees of Ark Group's Knowledge Management for the Modern Law Firm conference must be confirmed no later than Jan. 22nd. After this day, rooms will be allocated according to availability and rates may change.
If you're thinking of attending, register quickly for both the preferential room rate and the excited utterances 25% conference discount (discount instructions below)
Following Ark Group’s very successful "KM for the Legal Profession" conference in Chicago two months ago, Ark (publisher of Inside Knowledge magazine -- formerly Knowledge Management magazine) will hold another more "advanced" legal KM conference in New York City on February 22rd and 23rd (Wednesday and Thursday) at the Westin Times Square Hotel (preferential lodging rates available).
Developed as a "very unique program and format," largely driven by suggestions and requests from the Chicago conference attendees, the upcoming NYC conference, Knowledge Management for the Modern Law Firm, will feature a series of small interactive panel discussions (and at least two workshops -- one each day) with some of the KM giants in our industry. Think of this conference as a series of topical "think-tanks" led by leading law firm KM practitioners.
This conference is designed to help move your firm's first-generation KM technology initiatives to the next strategic level. In fact, much of the content will focus on the three C's: culture, collaboration, change -- among your various law firm business units (Information Technology, Library/Information Services, Human Resources, Finance, Marketing/Business Development, Training, and Risk Compliance).
To ensure the level of open and meaningful dialogue, this conference is limited to just 40 delegates. That is just the right number of attendees to make this format effective.And here's the kicker -- As an excited utterances reader, you will receive a 25% discount for this conference. Instead of paying US $1795.00, you pay US $1346.25.To receive your discount, e-mail your contact details to me (be sure to include your name, title, law firm, address, zip code, phone and fax).
The core of the KM partner's role is to take overall responsibility for planning and implementing the firm's approach to capturing, creating, organising and sharing knowledge for the benefit of the business. Training is an integral part of knowledge sharing and therefore naturally falls within the KM partner's remit.
Anderson offers reasons for why a KM partner is necessary.
Of course it is not essential that a partner undertakes the role, but there are several advantages, including:
• signalling that the firm takes KM seriously;
• ensuring KM is integrated into top level decision-making;
• and allowing clout to be employed where necessary.
The KM partner does not actually need to implement; in fact he/she probably shouldn't! Staff qualified in IT, information management and legal skills are invaluable -- but leadership is critical.
KM & Law Office Design: Danish Style
I have long been fascinated with "proxemics" -- man's appreciation and use of physical space (see this previous blog). A number of law firms have rethought their physical spaces to achieve more innovative and flexible knowledge sharing environments.
Here is the relevant part of Bjerrum and Aalokke's work:
The law firm had a traditional office environment where all the employees had private or shared offices except for the personal assistants (PA) who where placed in an open office environment. The law firm had a strategy for increased knowledge sharing and increased openness and as a part of this strategy the firm decided to use glass instead of walls in the offices and meeting rooms. This may seem a very small change in the office design, but it was recognised as a big step and visiting other Danish law firms.
In this law firm we interviewed 40 employees: partners, lawyers, trainees and PA’s.
We saw a workplace where everybody walked very fast. A workplace, where most of the offices had open doors and where some were always closed. We saw a lot of short meetings in and out of offices and a lot of laughing and talking in the open space. Whenever there was a meeting in one of the partner’s offices the door was always closed.
The general opinion in this law firm was that legal work only could be carried out in a traditional office environment. The various groups all agreed that PA’s share an open office environment partly because of the design of the building, partly to strengthen the professional and social network.
The groups also agreed that partners and lawyers need to have their own office, because they have a very noisy behaviour. They speak a lot on the telephone and they dictate. At the same time they need to concentrate a lot on their legal work. The trainees on the other hand have been placed in offices in pairs, because they are new in the company and in a learning process. And everybody agreed that the trainees would benefit a lot from sharing.
In our interview with the employees we found that their conception of work was that law work primarily equals individual work. When asked to describe their work the lawyers describe long or short cases and the organisational relations like for instance “I’m working for . . .” or “I refer to . . ." but never “I work with . . .” Nobody describe[s] their work as collaboration with others. On the contrary they underline the individuality of their work.
Informal meetings with your colleagues are considered either a luxury or interrupting and disturbing. Either way it is not considered real work. So if you have talked to somebody during your workday it is like you have been playing hooky from work:
“I talked to different people – nearly half an hour with my boss. Then you have to work late” “It is cosy to be sitting together but it’s not increasing the efficiency.”
“The work needs a lot of concentration. The most efficient way to work is to turn off the phone.”
How did the conception of work correspond with the office design? It did correspond very well. The offices underline that the work going on in the law firm is individual work where it is necessary that you can close a door. The combination of the different methods broadened the picture of the work going on in the law firm:
In our observations we saw that all the employees had a lot of informal meetings during the day. In the registrations of their work no one included those meetings and they did not include the major part of their working from home either. In the interviews we found that they didn’t include the informal meetings because they didn’t consider them real work and they didn’t include the working late or some of working from home because it wasn’t work that you could be billing.
New Practice Development in PSFs Tim Morris, Director of Executive Education and Professor of Management Studies Department at the Oxford Said Business School, is a leading scholar in the field of knowledge sharing in professional service firms. Just refer to the bibliography below for his contributions to the field.
So, when Professor Morris publishes a new paper on practice development in PSFs, I take notice. And so should legal marketers.
In this most recent work, the authors outline a process model of how professional firms innovate by creating new practices. They identify four elements of new practices:
partner agency (motivation to climb to partnership/desire for reputation as an expert)
differentiated knowledge base ("cognitive capital")
internal turf creation ("political capital")
organizational support (time and people allows for cross-selling)
Taken one at a time, partner agency is the desire ("personal initiative", "entrepreneurial spirit", "desire to build an empire") to become a partner, and the efforts one makes in terms of "personal brand-building".
A differentiated knowledge base requires a partner to create a new and distinctive corpus of professional knowledge that can lead to new domains of activity with current or prospective clients. Using consistent "processes"and "methodologies", partners must go beyond standard legal knowledge (a move from "gospel" to "general approach" to "thought starter" to "differentiated knowledge" -- in other words, create new knowledge to solve client problems, now and in the future.
In tandem with building a new and differentiated knowledge base, practice group leaders must have personal political power, i.e., own their turf internally. "Owning" clients was seen as a critical resource in creating turf for a new practice because partners were allowed a degree of control by brokering the sale of various of the firm's services to a client."
Also in tandem with building differentiated knowledge, the partner must secure organizational support. Partners must be able to obtain personnel and time resources (e.g., borrowing unassigned junior associates, lifting some of the normal partnership administrative duties, relaxing revenue targets).
The four PSFs studied (none of which included a law firm) all stated they "piggy-backed" on to existingg clients and projects in order to 'road test' their new service." "This form of 'cross-selling' . . . (and "test-marketing") . . . of the new practice's service to a client . . . within the firm was a tangible form of organizational support."
The authors conclude that if any of these four elements are lacking, then the PSF will be seriously compromised in its attempt at setting up a new practice.
Tim Morris bibliography:
(1) Archetype Change in Professional Organizations: Survey Evidence from Large Law Firms, Ashly Pinnington & Timothy Morris (British Journal of Management, vol. 14:no, 1, March 2003)
(2) Exploring Heterogeneity in Professional Service Firms: Comparing the Nature of Professional Work and Knowledge Flows in Engineering Consulting and Law by Timothy Morris and P. Anand (3rd Oxford Conference on Knowledge Intensive Firms, 2002)
(3) Asserting Property Rights: Knowledge Codification in the Professional Service Firm by Timothy Morris (Human Relations, vol. 54:no. 7, 2001)
(4) Knowledge Types and Knowledge Flows in Multinational Professional Service Firms by Timothy Morris & Namrata Malhotra (EGOS Conference, Lyon, France 2001)
(5) Knowledge Creation in Professional Service Firms by Timothy Morris and P. Anand (Academy of Management Conference, Chicago 1999)
(6) Codification and Control: Knowledge Management in the Professional Service Firm by Timothy Morris (Managing Knowledge Intensive Firms Workshop, St. Anne's College, Oxford University 1999)
(7) Holes and Covers in Knowledge Work by Timothy Morris & P. Anand (Seminar on Knowledge in Professional Service Firms University of Alberta, Canada 1999)
(8) When Knowledge is Power: Knowledge Transfer and Mergers and Acquisitions Between Professional Services Firms by Laura Empson & Timothy Morris (Conference on Knowledge/ Power Shifts, Warwick University 1997)
(9) Organization and Expertise: Knowledge Bases and the Management of the Professional Service Firm by Laura Empson & Timothy Morris (British Academy of Management Conference, UK 1996)
Perhaps you’ve been there. When a discussion is so weird that the only response one can provide is sarcasm. It’s a desperate move. Such was the case on a recent law firm marketing listserv discussion of law firm blogs. Law firm marketers, you see, are busy right now arranging holiday parties and sending institutionalized holiday cards. The important things. Many are so busy hacking away at the trees they don’t realize they are in the wrong forest.
Here was my response:
Top Ten Reasons Blogs are a Bad Idea for Law Firms
(10) They might fail. Goodness knows you don't want to try something that isn't 100% guaranteed to work.
(9) Those in marketing can't control it. It's those renegades over in the IP practice area. The one's who it is rumored keep Macintoshes in their homes. And I think some of them are just associates. So what do they know?
(8) Somebody might call you an early adopter. You know pioneers are the ones with the arrows in their backs. Turtles who stick their heads out of their shells, well, whack! Mom said, "Don't grow up to be an early adopter - be a lawyer."
(7) IT doesn't approve let alone know much about them.
(6) Somebody might take issue with something stated in the blog and, well, everyone knows that controversy is disastrous not to mention newsworthy, viral and eye-catching.
(5) There's no good source for pre-chewed & digested blog content like professional services firms purchase for their regionally protected newsletter which they pass off as their own knowledge.
(4) Marketing is sure that, after about 63 blogging days, the buck lands on their desk and they'll be ghost writing content.
(3) On some professional services marketer’s scale, it doesn't make the top 5 list, which I gather is the maximum number of marketing initiatives a firm can handle at any one time.
(2) Those who are rumored to be succeeding are selfishly posting content to their blog and not extolling the virtues of blogging to the professional services community.
(1) And the number one reason blogs are a bad idea is that, although a new blog is created every 2 seconds, that search engines are favoring blog content with algorithmically driven prominence, and blogs are really nothing more than a website with a simple content management system, there only seem to be two guys who understand them. For the rest of you, get those holiday cards out the door.
Do We Need Another KM Survey?
A recent Altman Weil Flash Survey of AmLaw 200 Law Firm Management Techniques show less than hopeful plans for knowledge management.
Survey data was collected in July 2005 from AmLaw 200 law firms, with a tad over 30% participating.
Defined as the "systematic acquisition and sharing of information to create [a] learning organization" the results were as follows:
5 firms (8.2% of the respondents) said they have no KM plan in place and do not plan to use in the future.
13 firms (21.3% of the respondents) said they have no KM plan in place, but they plan to implement one in the future
43 firms (70.5% of the respondents) said they do use KM as a management tool.
The respondents were then asked to rate their firms' KM experience.
9.3% of the respondents rated their KM experience as "very successful".
32.6% of the respondents rated their KM experience as "successful".
37.2% of the respondents rated their KM experience as "neutral".
20.9% of the respondents rated their KM experience as "somewhat successful".
0.00% of the respondents rated their KM experience as "not successful at all".
With only 41 % of firms responding positively to KM as a law firm management technique, why we do we continue to pursue it?
The QShift Document Assembly Solution
In 2001, David Munn, legal counsel for Fair Isaac Corporation, launched, Legaltech.com, a website devoted to information on technology for corporate counsel. Now, Munn returns to cyberspace with the launch of his Legaltech.com blog.
"Our department had been looking for a replacement system because our current document assembly system, Attenex Structure, is no longer supported by the Attenex. QShift has a similar design to the Structure program, with a clause library and document models, but it's much more intuitive and flexible. Since it's delivered as an ASP, it doesn't require support from IT, which is a big plus for a corporate legal department.
The people at Ixio have been very supportive and helpful. The product is still relatively new, and Ixio has been good about seeking our feedback and incorporating it into new versions of the product.
Another plus of a web-based system is that you can provide access to your outside counsel or even temporary attorneys. All they need is a web browser. Access permissions are controlled by one or more administrators.
Creative outside counsel should look at a system like this that would allow them to provide their corporate clients with a document assembly system that the firm could populate with content appropriate to the client.
My biggest gripe about the product is the cost. Ixio recently raised their price from a bargain price of $55 per month/$150 per quarter to $99/month per user. For someone who uses the product heavily it's a bargain - less than the cost of lunch for a month. However, for a larger department with a few power users and a large number of users that will access the system only occasionally, the price will quickly mount. I’m hoping Ixio comes out with a more flexible pricing scheme to encourage companies to roll out the system to a broader group of users.
You can demo a limited personal version of the program for free."
Why My Law Firm is Video Blogging
2004 was proclaimed "Year of the Blog".
2005, "Year of the Podcast".
Now with two weeks into the new year, Neil Squillante, founder of TechnoLawyer and its blog of the same name, predicts 2006 will be the Year of the Mobile Video.
"The stage is now set for law firms and other small businesses to take advantage of video. Thanks to a confluence of software, hardware, and online venues, virtually any business can create and distribute engaging videos with decent production values at almost no cost.
I don't know exactly how this development will play out in the legal sector, but it would not surprise me to see the following:"
• Law firm web sites and blogs with videos. How about video lawyer bios featuring interviews, footage of speeches, television appearances, courtroom performances, etc. Stream the videos on the site, and offer iPod-compatible downloads as well.
• Engaging CLE videos that finally make use of the medium as opposed to the recorded lectures of old. Forget streaming and sell downloads instead so that lawyers can watch them anywhere.
• Deposition videos for your clients to download so that they can see you in action rather than read a dry transcript.
Across the pond, English solicitor, Justin Patten, just introduced a video blog on Human Law, a law firm blog that explores the interlinked themes of law, technology and people.
Patten provides an excellent overview of video blogging here.
Do you know any other law firms who are video blogging? E-mail me.
Social Networking and CRM: the Next Step for Law Firms
[via knowledgeline]
Tom Baldwin, Sheppard Mullin's Chief Knowledge Officer, blogs about two new social networking software products which will enhance your firm's client relationship management system.
Contact Networks and BranchIT mine e-mail on your firm's own network, eliminating the privacy/security issues involved with an ASP. All law firms, particularly those handling cross-border transactions, must keep privacy and security issues foremost in mind. Remember, this past September, Clifford Chance's Paris office "accidentally leaked colorful descriptions of senior executives" employed by its client, Airbus, the aircraft manufacturer.
Baldwin says,
What I like about Contact Networks and Branch-IT is that these products address two crucial shortcomings of traditional CRM systems.
First, because they mine your firm's e-mail server and create individual contact records from e-mail your lawyers send and receive (filtering out spam and other junk mail) there's absolutely ZERO data entry required by lawyers or their secretaries - genius.
The second thing these systems do is offer various access levels to contact information which can provide lawyers a much greater level of control over the use of their contacts than in a traditional CRM system.
Contact Networks takes it a step further and maintains their own database of companies, along with the executives of those companies, and the system will attempt to match up (based on the domain of the e-mail) an e-mail address not only with a company, but with an individual person. Their database also tracks what industry/SIC code the company is in, which is great information [and] hard to manually keep in CRM.
That being said, these systems aren't meant to replace CRM, they are simply meant to offer a supplement for the all important 'who knows who' questions that arise. CRM is still needed to manage mailing lists, track opportunities, etc. But, if your firm is serious about leveraging its relationship capital, these tools shouldn't be overlooked.
So which law firms have adopted this new technology?
Incentive feature: BranchIT provides a tracking system to encourage and reward staff for sharing their relationships.
Feedback feature: BranchIT provides both employees requesting an introduction to a target individual outside the company, and employees holding relationships with the target individual a mechanism for rating their interaction with each other.
The Knowledge Management subsection of the British Columbia Legal Management Association (BCLMA) will continue its discussion of intranets (what works and what's new) on Tuesday, January 24th at the Vancouver office of Fasken Martineau. Bring your questions to the group. RSVP to Greg Christensen at Fasken.
"One of the more difficult questions to answer is where KM information should be stored and accessed. Because studies show that attorneys spend the largest amount of their workday in e-mail, doesn’t it make sense that Outlook should become the KM platform? Is this even possible? What are the drawbacks? A variety of recent legal blogs, list-servers, articles, and webinars have focused on this issue. People tend to be much divided, falling into one of two camps: the Outlook as KM camp and the Portals Are Still the Best KM Tool camp."
Which camp does your law firm—and your competitor—belong to?
excited utterances readers receive a 25% discount on the Knowledge Management for the Modern Law Firm conference. For discount, e-mail your contact details to me [include name, title, firm, address, zip, phone & fax].
