Workflow based content management solutions in law firm

Transcription

1 Workflow based content management solutions in law firm John Neuhaus, National Manager Information Services, Clayton Utz. 1. Abstract The Clayton Utz knowledge and research intranet site was developed to provide easy access to internal and external information sources via web pages or links. While the site is still the keystone of our online services, advances in IT and user expectations have begun to blur the line between the intranet, document management systems and business applications. At the same time the proliferation of online resources and methods of access makes it difficult for lawyers to select the best resources for a task while raised client expectations require high quality work to be delivered in shorter time frames. To address these issues Clayton Utz is developing solutions based on day to day workflows, such as a legal research task or the completion of a court form, which aim to make selecting and accessing the best resources as easy as possible. Some of these make use of the existing intranet while others will be built into business applications. 2. Introduction This presentation will discuss the content we currently have at Clayton Utz, the way we have managed it in the past, the reason why we need to improve on this and the projects we are conducting to deliver the improved service. It also will also cover some of the strategic skills our team is developing to make sure we deliver the best results from these projects. 3. About Clayton Utz Clayton Utz is a national corporate law firm with 1600 staff and offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Darwin, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. It's a growing business both in terms of staff and revenue, and like all law firms is highly dependent on access to information. Information Services, the area I am responsible for covers knowledge management systems, print and online library services and precedents. Our primary resource for delivering electronic services is the knowledge and research site on the Clayton Utz intranet. 4. Definitions As content management is a relatively new area the terms are not always well defined or commonly understood. My starting point is clarify what I understand the terms to mean in this presentation. 4.1 Intranet A network within an organisation which is not accessible to outside that organisation. It is normally based on TCP/IP protocols, uses a standard HTTP server, looks and works much like a normal Internet website and is accessed with a web browser.

2 4.2 Work portal "Portal" has many uses and meanings in information technology. Obviously the basic definition is just a gateway so portal is often applied to web starting points such as Yahoo or Google. To differentiate the term in this paper I'll be using work portal to describe an application which combines other applications and data, often in a personalised way, to allow individuals or groups to perform common work tasks. The line between intranet and portals in blurred as many applications are available on intranets while portal products usually use intranet technology and are accessed with a browser. In many ways a work portal is just an intranet site with additional functionality and personalisation than what is possible in a standards HTTP server to browser environment. From a users point of view it doesn't matter, they just want a better and easier way of doing their work! 4.3 Content management The science (or art?) of organising, storing and designing interfaces for accessing content. Originally used in the context of intranet content it has now developed into a concept for describing the management of all content across an organisation and in some cases relevant external content. It includes specialised areas such as information architecture, taxonomy management, intranet content management, document management systems and records management. 4.4 Knowledge management The Clayton Utz definition is the means used to capture and process closely held intellectual assets so they can be easily and broadly accessed and reused for the benefit of an organisation. 4.5 Knowledge products As knowledge is a cognitive process which exists only in an individuals head you can't actually capture or manage knowledge itself. At Clayton Utz we use knowledge products is used as a collective term for intellectual assets which exist as an artefact such as computer file, a sound recording or on paper. "Explicit knowledge" is the more common term in knowledge management literature to describe similar material. 4.6 Precedent documents Not to be confused with a precedent in law, precedent documents are a specific kind of knowledge product created in law firms. They are generally standard documents which are produced by senior partners and legal staff for reuse across the firm. They often contain extensive author notes to advise a user and are increasingly being automated. 4.7 Enterprise search engines An enterprise search engine trawls and creates indexes for information across and enterprise in a manner similar to an intranet search engine. A crucial difference is the algorithms used by enterprise search engines to provide rankings. While Internet search engines such as Google can include factors such as the number of links to a page or document to improve search results, enterprise search engines generally need to calculate relevance based solely on an analysis of a the document and its metadata. Because of this enterprise search engines often offer automatic and manual categorisation modules.

3 5. Content at Clayton Utz Like most law firms Clayton Utz has a wide range of content that needs to be managed. Internally this includes documents, both on the document management system and on normal server directories, intranet pages and documents, external online content, paper files and even books. Information Services has responsibility for specific types of content within the firm: Knowledge products including precedent documents and the reference libraries. The Clayton Utz reference libraries are collections of best practice documents including advices, papers presented at continuing legal education meetings, example documents such as a specialised lease, internal memos, seminar papers and newsletters produced for clients. Information provided by commercial services and legal publishers including both print and online resources. The online resources are managed by links from our intranet and library catalogues while the print resources are managed by the library catalogue. 6. How we manage this content now Like most firms we've looked to the firm intranet at a solution to managing this content, and presenting it in an easy to use interface. We developed the knowledge and research site, included links to resources by type of resources and topic and rated some resources to make the selection of material easier. While the knowledge and research site on the intranet is popular, it's the second most heavily used site after the home page, and received positive feedback from our earlier focus group studies and more recent customer satisfaction surveys we still need to extend and improve our services to further reduce the time lawyers spend using our services to perform common research tasks. 7. Problems for legal staff - time and quality In common with most service industries law firms are under pressure to deliver work to clients quickly. Advances in communications technology will only continue to increase client's expectations over time. There are also internal reasons for reducing the time take to do research. Most law firms still work on a time based billing model. While this may seem an incentive to spend more time on research the reality in many firms, including Clayton Utz, is that much recorded research time is written off, i.e. not billed to clients. Individual lawyers have targets of billable hours and written off time is not counted towards these targets. Another important time and quality issue is the selection of resources for a specific task. While adding more online resources to the knowledge and research site has increased the scope of research which can be conducted, it also increases the difficulty of selecting the correct resource. For example we have five case citator services, most have strengths and weaknesses and may be more useful than another in a specific situation but how do we effectively communicate this to our lawyers? 8. Why the knowledge and Research intranet site isn't enough In a an attempt to save our lawyers time and help them select the best resources for a research task we have developed task based intranet sites for caselaw, legislation and company/business research however in some ways we have reached the limit of standard intranet technology. The reasoning behind this decision is:

4 1. Our Lawyers work in Outlook, Word, the document management system and the practice management system. The knowledge and research site is an extra "place" they have to visit to complete their work i.e. they have to open a browser and navigate to the site. As such it exists outside the standard applications and workflow. 2. There are too many places to look for information on a set task. While standard intranet technology can create directories of resources, even with the best scope notes and rating systems you still have to search a range of separate resources. For example if a lawyer was looking for commentary on a section of the Corporations Act they could search LexisNexis, CCH, AGIS, the ASIC Digest and Website, Westlaw our internal seminar papers index and our internal reference libraries. 3. As Information is held in various databases across the firm we need solutions which more effectively draw that information form these repositories, not a system where that information has to be duplicated to some extent. 9. Content management solutions 9.1 Links within precedent documents While internal document links make maintenance problematic there is some opportunity for pursuing this strategy with our precedent documents which are constantly updated and reviewed. Our first implementation of this has been with our court forms automation project. As well as adding expert author notes to guide the person using the form we've added relevant links to external court commentary services providing easy access to both internal and external expertise. At the suggestion of our litigation lawyers we also plan to include links to relevant best practice documents from the reference libraries within relevant precedent documents. 9.2 Resources within applications An example of extending research capabilities to a standard business application is the Citelink plug-in application for Word and Internet Explorer recently launched by Westlaw Australia. The key features are the ability, within Word, to highlight a citation and either check the citation history or retrieve a copy of the case. While it only includes a small range of tasks the "Swipe click and it's done" promise it offers does build genuine research functionality directly into a lawyer's workflow. For example: A lawyer checking the history of a case they referring to in an advice. Steps Westlaw Citelink Present workflow 1 Highlight citation Open the knowledge and research intranet site from the start menu 2 Click on the Keycite icon Select Westlaw 3 Click in the Keycite box 4 Type in or paste in the citation 5 Click on the go button or press the enter key

5 Although it hasn't been launched to the Australian market at the time of writing, LexisNexis do have a technology to deliver similar functionality using the Microsoft Office 2003 Research Task Pane. Other then some experimentation with Citelink we haven't developed this model to date. While these examples are publisher specific they do provide a good model for ways in which other resources could be incorporated directly into workflows by individual organisations. An example of this could be setting up an enterprise search as a Microsoft Office Research Task Pane service or providing a browsing link to a "branch" of the firm's reference library or precedent document taxonomies. 9.3 Proto- work portals Clayton Utz is also developing "proto-work portals" for some practice areas. These prototypes are being built using the existing capabilities offered by the firms Interwoven Worksite document management system rather than committing to the investment required to implement a portal product such as Plumtree or Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. While they are limited in scope as they don't currently include Outlook or the practice management system they do integrate fully with the document management system and provide links to relevant research sites. The research work portals we are creating are customised to practice group level, i.e. a team practicing in the same area of law, however they do offer a level of personalisation as they can also present documents related to the current matters a lawyer is working on. 9.4 Enterprise Search While Enterprise search engines are not new to Clayton Utz our current implementation only indexes the firm's intranet and Internet site. We've developed a new project to extend this search to other resources including the precedent documents, the reference libraries, the library catalogue, our seminar papers collection and various 'legacy' knowledge product databases. The success of Google and similar search Internet engines has raised user expectations about speed and comprehensiveness of information searching and returned results which will be difficult to match. Most enterprise search engines also offer federated search options which can potentially search external resources, this is outside the scope of our current project and would require a closer level of co-operation with our external suppliers, but will be an interesting area for further investigation. 10. Strategic Skills for Librarians While developing and implementing our current suite of content management projects we've identified the following strategic skills for Information Services staff IT consulting skills. While an experienced law librarian has an excellent chance of developing a useful Intranet research site in isolation a work portal site requires significant input for a practice group to be successful. The practice group also needs to take ultimate ownership of the site. The model we are developing is of a consultancy service where we can develop a research work portal with a group, assist in the design and layout and set up maintenance procedures, documentation and workflows. If necessary the practice group will also have the option to "contract out" the ongoing maintenance of the work portal to Information Services.

6 10.2 Closer co-operation with information technology. All of these projects require significant IT resources that go way beyond the standard support required for the existing knowledge and research intranet site. One way have achieved this is by learning to work with IT's standard project methodology. This has included providing training in the Prince2 project methodology to relevant Information Services staff. Co-operation also increased markedly in late 2003 when Information Services was merged with Information Technology to form Technology and Information Services Developing and Managing Taxonomies While most law librarians are familiar with maintaining a thesaurus for a library catalogue we need to broaden these skills to include the kind of workflow related taxonomies required by practice groups. As we'll as offering the consultancy skills discussed above we need to make sure consistency is maintained within taxonomies and make sure they are applied across the firm Managing enterprise search engines. Search engines can't produce perfect results "out of the box". Due to the importance of relevancy ranking and inclusion of metadata it's important for librarians to be actively involved in both the development of initial project and the ongoing tweaking required to improve search results. 11. Recommended reading Eric Lease Morgan. Portal implementation issues and challenges. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Vol. 31, No. 1 October/November 2004 by Delia Venables. Report of Developing a Portal for your Law Firm Conference presented by Ark Group, 18th and 19th June LexisNexis services for the Microsoft Office Research Task Pane. Westlaw Australia Citelink