The trend for knowledge management (KM) and its specialists, to move ever closer to the strategic core of law firms’ businesses was highlighted perfectly by the success of Addleshaw Goddard at last year’s Business Leadership Awards. The award also highlighted the trend towards firms working in partnership on client matters.
As Addleshaws’ research and knowledge manager Richard Gaston recalls, he and his team began noticing requests from some of its tier one clients (ie those in the top 25 in terms of fee income), coming to the firm with specific KM problems.
One financial services client in particular had received requests from its auditors to ‘prove’ that it was on top of potential areas of material risk.
“We built a database of all the factors subject to legal risk and created a single point of access,” says Gaston. “It’s a classic KM issue – how do you get all the key information in one place in a way that allows the client to access and use it?”
A legal extranet
For one client, which had more than 10 firms on its advisory panel, Addleshaws has built an extranet covering various areas of law and legal updates which provides access for the client to every firm.
“It highlights national legal developments on a two- to three-year horizon,” reveals Gaston. “And the project was conducted in a genuine spirit of collaboration.”
This extranet highlights another developing industry trend, that of firms working in partnership to better serve clients. In this case the extranet features information such as updates on corporate law, including crime and other areas.
“The way it works is that firm X or firm Y will take the lead on certain areas and get the opportunity to demonstrate their expertise to the client,” says Gaston. “There is a bidding round every six months so there’s an opportunity to refresh the firms providing the knowledge. And again, the KM goal is that all of the KM is in one place, presented in a single, concise manner.”
Gaston says that, generally speaking, all the panel firms in this example felt the benefit of taking a collaborative approach. “There were no big bad wolves and they saw that,” he adds. “The key thing is that certain clients increasingly want their firms to work together as a community. There’s so much chat about the expectations of bigger clients that firms will collaborate around KM and processes.”
Gaston believes one of the reasons for this is that it offers in-house lawyers an opportunity to raise their profile within their organisations by helping their business manage legal risk. Clearly, for many sectors there is also simply a lot more regulation around so anything that can help is likely to be welcome.
Gaston reports to Simon Callendar, Addleshaws general counsel who joined from Olswang around nine months ago, where he performed a similar role. In turn, Callendar, a member of the firm’s executive along with managing partner John Joyce, Michael Leftley and Adrian Collins, reports to the board on matters including KM initiatives.
At Addleshaws, Gaston says, the executive has been instrumental in backing the development of KM at the firm, where the strategy for the next three years is being developed.
“There’s still something of a perception that KM is a value-add and therefore free, but I’m passionate about what we do and believe it should, in certain circumstances, have a fee associated with it,” insists Gaston. “There’s been a real change in the past five years. KM has moved from being just a back-office service to being much more client-facing. The executive have been supportive and are engaged with what we’re doing.”
As to the impact of winning the award, Gaston says it helped raise the team’s profile internally.
“It’s also an external validation of what we do,” adds Gaston. “I’ve lost count of the times people have stopped me to say ‘well done’.”
The executive’s willingness to embrace novel uses of KM may have been shaped by the success of Addleshaws’ trailblazing transactions services team (TST), which harnesses the power of technology to deliver legal services more efficiently.
As Gaston points out, there is a degree of overlap with what his team does, notably the use of and interest in technology, although the TST is there for a specific purpose – the more efficient delivery of legal services.
Business Leadership Awards 2015: Knowledge Management Team of the Year
Addleshaw Goddard’s knowledge management team handled a range of matters last year, notably blazing a trail in terms of collaborating with rival firms at a client’s request, and as a result picks up the Best Knowledge Management Team of the year award.
Having already helped a client with a specific and urgent matter, the same client raised the issue of how to manage the significant volume of information on legal developments it was receiving daily and the fact that it was struggling to identify an effective solution. It asked Addleshaws, in particular the firm’s research services division headed by Richard Gaston, to lead a collaboration project with peers from three other panel firms to help its in-house team better manage its internal
horizon scanning of legal issues that were likely to affect them. The fact that the firm was able to meet this challenge through collaboration with its competitors is an indication of the firm’s commitment to improving client service, whatever it takes.
“The outward, client-facing focus of the KM team is impressive and the consultancy aspect demonstrates how KM can be a factor in winning business and increasing client satisfaction,” said one judge. “I also thought it interesting that the KM team collaborated so closely with competitors at their client’s request.”