EXperience management matters
Two very important and perhaps more easily categorisable sources of law firm knowledge may relatively easily be separated into that which resides in documents, and knowledge which resides in matter information. The former is usually covered by an easily searchable document management system, common in almost all law firms. The latter is less straightforward, and while many firms will have a system for client relationship management (which can vary hugely in value provided to the organisation), when we discuss matter knowledge we are more concerned with facts of the deal. These will include the type of work we shall undertake with all relevant work streams, client, deal team and other party information, deal values and information relating to time.
We may incorrectly consider matter knowledge to be mostly relevant to business development departments — and there’s no doubt that it is priceless for them to understand the matter in its entirety. This then allows the production of related material for winning new work along with analysis of the industries in which the firm operates. However, this sort of knowledge is relevant to so many more individuals and teams. It allows the financial services and pricing teams to provide much deeper analysis of the firm’s work and profitability; the legal project management team inform, advise and propose strategies and tools that will enable the deal team to best manage the matter; and obviously for the lawyers themselves a window into not just their own matters but a picture firm-wide too, providing a much needed understanding of work outside their practice.
Until a couple of years ago at Shearman, matter knowledge culturally was considered less important by those outside of a small group. Consumers of such knowledge felt that they should play no role in its creation, validation or upkeep and the system in place was unfit for purpose when creating, retaining or searching for required matter knowledge. Introducing a new system — only a partial remedy, but still a huge foundational start — was the initial step.
A roadmap for change
A lift and shift from a legacy system is undoubtedly every knowledge team’s worst nightmare, but when firms are under tight deadlines and managing pressure from stakeholders to deliver solutions quickly and specifically, this may be the approach. With experience management projects, however, it’s vital knowledge professionals (or system owners) have the time and trust to do their jobs properly to deliver a much better solution that incorporates usefulness, flexibility and longevity.
Our pilot phase for the lift-and-shift approach showed that this was not going to work. Critical issues that couldn’t be remedied included excessive data silos, a schema rooted in the practice team, duplicative values in a woefully confusing taxonomy created for matter intake, and several integration shortcuts. The effect was uncoordinated data, a product failing to meet its potential and a continuation of a siloed practice team approach to matters.
We may incorrectly consider matter knowledge to be mostly relevant to business development departments, but it is useful to so many more individuals and teams
We began a strategic data review initiative to redefine both the product’s data schemas and complete system architecture — a lengthy 18-month project, but one that was essential to force the firm to tackle long overdue cultural approaches to matters. Significantly, we had to ascertain an understanding as to the knowledge team’s role as product owners who could define requirements and set a roadmap to achieve firm’s goals. We also had to align stakeholders, with a common understanding that old practices needed to change (a previous historical focus restricted the firm’s thinking).
The knowledge team crafted a product roadmap to deliver enhancements in sprints, each of which would bring varying levels of system improvements via data and integration changes. Our goal was to improve the searching and reporting by redeveloping our data model and making the capture and sharing of information more efficient. The first set of deliverables centred on breaking down silos and coordinating our content across teams, systems and departments. We pulled new integrated data, previously inaccessible, from our singular client-matter data hub.
We then undertook the difficult but necessary work of consolidating duplicative fields, normalising taxonomy lists and automating data entry wherever possible. We separated unique concepts like work type, role, industry, and practice team, with each of these being a distinct datatype that requires its own place in the system’s architecture. The team then rolled out coordinated fields and firm-wide taxonomies (these being practice group agnostic), consistently leveraging industry standards (via use of noslegal and SALI) and approaches we knew worked well at peer firms. Simple fields and defined terms create accurate layers of data, which when combined form a powerful tool for search and data analytics.
Making knowledge sing
While we are still a couple of months away from releasing the finalised product, the largely unintentional interest created during the process has been unprecedented — creating a cultural change at Shearman with respect to matter knowledge. Simple rollout of a good product will not drive such change. Key to this has been hard and often turgid data work — that seemingly nobody else wanted to discuss, let alone approach — along with collaborating with trusted vendors, knowledge sharing with peer firms, and agreement with executive leadership defining what the firm wanted to achieve.
This work has subsequent benefits to the firm, laying the groundwork for enterprise search projects. An experience management system brings together data from systems and stakeholders across the firm, the majority of which will not be consumable to lawyers and business professionals initially. The task of knowledge professionals is to make that data tell a meaningful story — and that can change culture.
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