The 2015 shortlisted firms for The Lawyer Business Leadership’s innovation in knowledge management (KM) category discuss the struggle to implement KM and how to engage an entire firm to achieve success.
Q: What are the key criteria of a knowledge management initiative that law firms should analyse before starting out?
Kate Stanfield, head of knowledge management, CMS: Any knowledge management (KM) initiative should be constructed around business need. Knowledge management is about improving quality, efficiency and effectiveness and should always have those considerations from the outset.
A knowledge audit is a great starting point to identify particular business issues and what success should look like. Metrics such as profitability, volume of work, and resourcing can also be used to identify key projects for the firm as well as looking at areas of risk, quality or standardisation.
Another criteria is the dynamics of knowledge sharing; the importance of firm culture in successful knowledge management and the way that people work and use that knowledge. This links back to identifying a critical business need; although a good KM project will result in culture change that will only happen if there is discernible benefit to the business.
In the current business environment, core competencies and high performance depend on a number of factors, including the firm’s knowledge and intellectual capital. Exploiting the knowledge assets of the firm is key to sustainable competitive advantage. Knowledge is a critical success factor for organisational performance.
Patrick DiDomenico, chief knowledge officer, Ogletree Deakins: Before starting a KM initiative, a law firm should have a clear understanding about why it is undertaking the effort, what benefits it expects will come from it, and who will lead the initiative. Often, law firms decide to begin a KM initiative simply because a competitor has done it. Playing copycat is a mistake. For example, a large, multi-office law firm may have a need for a software application that helps its members identify which attorneys have experience in particular areas of law.
The great number and geographic dispersion of the attorneys probably warrants the investment in such an application. However, a smaller, single-office law firm may not need to invest its time and money in a similar application because smaller, tight-knit groups tend to have more personal knowledge about colleagues. It is also important to understand that KM initiatives can be labour intensive. Be sure to have the right people in place to make the initiative a success.
“Law firms often decide to begin a KM initiative simply because a competitor has done it, but playing copycat is a mistake”
Q: What are the biggest mistakes that law firms can make when creating or implementing a knowledge management system?
Susanne Homer, knowledge and information resources manager, Gowling WLG: Failing to gain buy-in over the importance of KM – i.e. not quantifying the cost and benefit of the KM investment to the business in a way that ensures it is seen as a strategic driver of the business, and thus ensuring its future investment.
Another thing to avoid is the ‘reinventing the wheel’ syndrome. Most core precedents can be sourced via the publishers’ KM systems which is cost effective, does not require input in updating and allows practice support lawyers (PSLs) to concentrate their efforts on crown jewel and client-specific precedents and know-how. You could use infinite amounts of resource on KM. We don’t have that much and need to prioritise in areas where we can have most impact.
Recognising the power of digitisation and leading from the front are key drivers for success. Choosing an IT system that is hard to maintain, develop and support can discourage its use.
DiDomenico: There are two potential mistakes that can really derail a KM system – one at the creation stage and one at the implementation stage. First, understand that software vendors sometimes make promises that their software cannot fulfil. Ensure that the software does what the vendor’s salesperson says it can do.
Second, don’t expect that software will be usable or “user-friendly” out of the box. You should focus on the user experience (UX) when implementing and customising software so that it is as easy and intuitive for attorneys to use. If software is overly complicated, attorneys will resist using it and it will be a waste of investment. Make sure that the user interface is as simple possible.
“We have a co-ordinated team to drive effective implementation of the system and initiatives such as KM-related training”
Stanfield: It’s easy to fall into the trap of getting carried away with implementing the best technology without understanding the key business drivers – what the firm really needs it for, and how the firm would interact with and benefit from the system. A KM system should engage people and fulfil the business objectives whether this is with simple technology or complex systems. Ultimately, understand the business need.
One common mistake is to engineer a system that is overly complex and onerous to maintain. An effective KM system should support and promote the four processes of creation, storage and retrieval, distribution and, finally, use and application. However well the IT is applied within a knowledge system, if the human interface and change process is not successful, the content will not be well maintained and will not be the right content or of sufficient quality to complete the cycle of usage and benefit to the business process.
Q: How do you measure the effectiveness of your KM system?
DiDomenico: The best way to measure the effectiveness of a KM system is through a combination of system metrics and anecdotal evidence. Good software applications and platforms have functionality to measure all aspects of usage. For example, who accesses what content and how often. However, this is only part of the story. Measuring the value of content, and why an attorney used it, can be difficult. For this, you should talk to attorneys and ask them about their experience; seek feedback.
Feedback prompts can be built into a KM system, but such prompts are infrequently used. Seeking direct responses from attorneys is often the best way to measure the true value of a KM system or the content it delivers.
Stanfield: Measurement should be both objective with quantifiable metrics and subjective. For example, how good or bad was the user’s experience and did the system actually help?
Various metrics are gathered for analysis to look at different aspects of usage – not just which lawyer or which departments are using the system, but what content were they accessing? Was the content of enough interest to be downloaded? Was that content then used in another document? What documents are created within the organisation that did not originate from one of our knowledge assets?
A balanced ‘scorecard approach’ to measurement can include surveys, usage reports, content contributions, usage of knowledge documents in transactions. A critical measure is whether good content continues to be contributed and kept up to date. Lawyers will only acknowledge the value of a system and contribute good know-how if it works well and allows them to retrieve valuable know-how quickly and easily.
“It’s easy to get carried away with implementing the best technology without first understanding what the firm really needs it for”
Homer: Forensic analysis of usage statistics for our precedents, KM and publishers’ materials allows us to understand the effectiveness of our KM system and improve its effectiveness. The implementation of Research Monitor has facilitated impartial reporting of comparative use of publishers’ resources, allowing us to concentrate on promoting the most suitable and cost-effective research tools to our fee-earners. Regular comparative KPI reporting allows us to weed unused precedents and know-how items, enabling us to concentrate on retaining materials of significance.
Manzama allows us to review our share of voice in legal and sector publications allowing a comparative review of the effectiveness of our KM against competitors’ and for legal teams against other teams’ share of voice.
We have a co-ordinated KM team, including PSLs and representatives from key business services teams, to drive effective implementation of our KM system and initiatives (such as a central training budget for KM-related training). This team regularly meets to ensure effective implementation of KM initiatives.
We regularly seek feedback from our fee-earners about the effectiveness of our knowledge strategy via Surveymonkey. These surveys yield statistical feedback but also allow fee-earners to make suggestions for enhancements of our KM system.
Managing KM systems after a merger
Following the merger between Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co and Canada’s Gowlings earlier this year, Gowling WLG knowledge and information resources manager Susanne Homer maps out how her team succeeded during a time of change
A merger can significantly impact on knowledge management – from data collected and stored, storage systems used and retention and access policies, to the way that a KM strategy is developed, promoted and valued.
We saw immediately the opportunity to roll out our KnowlEdge strategy across the wider firm to the benefit of the wider business.
We implemented effective central project management with day one and post-day one objectives which were closely monitored in the run-up to and post-merger period. These included integrated phone numbers, access to non-client specific precedents and know-how, central ‘how to’ guides for all areas of practice and a strong merger message. Once consent was given, the knowledge managers in each firm worked closely together on strategy-sharing data where possible.
Both firms’ non-client specific precedents were reviewed and a ‘best of both’ approach was adopted for transfer to a new integrated precedent collection.
“We adopted an integrating research resources strategy seeking a ‘best of both’ approach”
Integrating all PSLs into the knowledge team to manage effective implementation of a single agreed strategy was a key driver of the knowledge merger.
We adopted an integrating research resources strategy seeking a ‘best of both’ approach but also realising significant financial dividends in our negotiations with information providers. We are developing a firm-wide taxonomy (for library catalogue, intranet, internal know-how) to further integrate our KM documents and systems.
As Derek Southall, our head of digital and Innovation says, “A merger is a time to be selfless – people’s jobs will change and you need to make sure you do the best job for the firm. Mergers are seldom about putting two firms together, there is normally a review of strategy. The merger is the start of a lasting adventure”.
Q: How does your business manage the information and data collection efficiently to turn it into business assets?
Homer: We have put a huge amount of effort into delivering knowledge in an organised fashion to optimise ease of access.
Via our KnowlEdge initiative and team we provide practice area and sector knowledge centres that are one-stop-shops for all fee-earner knowledge needs – providing access to internally generated and externally sourced knowledge materials. These knowledge centres are based on a standard template but teams have freedom to adapt their knowledge centre to their needs, including team diaries, wikis and specific team-only resources.
Our internal knowledge repositories kept in Filesite provide access to all internal documents. Our catalogue system from Bailey Solutions manages access to print materials across our offices and also indexes websites and electronic sources of information, with personalisation of favourites to come.
Our KPI reporting co-ordinates data from internal and external systems – from fee-earner time recording, use of know-how and visits to our website, to externally validated use of publishers’ research resources from Research Monitor.
Stanfield: It’s important to build a culture to adopt and support knowledge, with effective strategies and technology for using knowledge resources efficiently.
A distributed network of knowledge experts who have a key understanding of our lawyers’ and clients’ needs operates throughout the firm to identify and create key knowledge assets. All knowledge documents are qualified and categorised using the firm’s standard taxonomy by the experts.
The knowledge system is engineered to be intuitive and easy for users to manage content, across all our teams and offices.
DiDomenico: Information or data without action is useless. You can have enormous amounts of data in a database, but if it just sits there, unexamined and unused, then nothing will come of it. In order to actually do something useful with the data, analysis and interpretation is key.
Data analysis can be used to make all kinds of decisions about a law firm’s business. For example, analysing the financial data on matters can reveal which matters are profitable and which are money losers.
Another way to take advantage of information and data is to reuse it. For example, an attorney’s work related to the analysis of a trending legal issue can be repurposed to form the basis of an article, blog post, or presentation to market the firm’s experience in a particular area of law, leading to business development.