Cindy Chick found a new law firm librarians' blog.
In a recent article in the California LegalPro supplement to the San Francisco Daily Recorder (September 27, 2004), "Blog-On!", Diahann Munoz, a reference librarian in the DC office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, talks about how the library staff (16 librarians) at Morgan set up a private text-only blog on Blogger.com to save such tidbits as "new database information and passwords, answers to difficult questions . . . information regarding vendor or professional meetings, links to articles of interest..and new discoveries about products and services . . ."
What is Semantic Interoperability? What is "semantic interoperabilty"? Semantic interoperability is the ability of one computer system to "understand" the meaning of words stored in another system.
Framed within the context of our world of legal knowledge management issues, read this:
A French farmer searches his own computer system for "avocat". Obviously, he is looking for information on "avocados," the fruit. But what about the French civil servant searching his system for "avocat"? He would expect to find information on "advocates" or lawyers.
Semantic interoperability (also called "semantic integration") becomes an issue when the farmers' system and the civil servants' system are linked together, as they might be on the intranet of a global business or government information system. The comprehensive new system must have some way of knowing when "avocat" means "avocado" and when it means "lawyer."
Peter Brown, Head of the Information Resources Management Unit, Directorate of Information Technologies for the European Parliament, will discuss his experience in developing a new information architecture (including issues of semantic interoperability) for the European Parliament at a Society of Knowledge Base Publishersroundtable on March 22.
To give you a sense of the enormity of Brown's task, consider this:
"The European Parliament debates and drafts legislation in 11 languages and has a complex information and document management infrastructure to match. It needs to compose, maintain and track texts throughout lengthy legislative procedures, ensure linguistic equivalence at all times, offer multiple roll-back and commit procedures, advanced version control and cooperate across institutional boundaries working with varied infrastructures. Furthermore, the expansion of the European Union on May 1st this year (2004) (taking in 10 new countries and 9 new languages from Central and Eastern Europe) pushes the linguistic complexity even higher. In this scenario, semantic interoperability comes centre stage."
For more information on semantic interoperability within the European Parliament, see Peter Brown's PowerPoint presentation given in May 2004 at UC Berkeley's Center for Document Engineering.
Outsourcing in India: After the Tsunami The largest international law firms have made generousdonations to the countries devastated by the recent Indian Ocean tsunami. But I wonder if global law firms and corporate counsel will be inclined now to help rebuild economies by outsourcing some (or in some cases, more) of their IT and legal services to the affected countries, and India in particular.
In the legal services sector, there has been much outsourcing activity in India in the past year. For an excellent overview, read Outsourcing Legal Services (in Global Law Review: India Law & International Resources).
According to Angel, "the important thing today is for law firms to have an outsourcing strategy, even if this results in a decision not to outsource."
". . . If law firms fail to respond they risk losing ground among more imaginative competitors and even worse risk their clients by-passing them completely by directly outsourcing legal services to cheaper countries."
Although there are no official numbers on how much Indian outsourcing companies charge law firms, or how much they pay their employees, Indian advertisements normally quote annual salaries of $ 10,000-$12,000 for a paralegals—about a third of the salaries of US paralegals.
Highly politicized during the US presidential campaign, with its barrage of partisan charge and counter-charge, the outsourcing issue persists worldwide. In the social and economic havoc wreaked by the disaster in the Indian Ocean, the outsourcing of entry-level white collar jobs now begins to seem less like a campaign issue and more like a worthwhile option for charitable contribution from wealthy nations. What do you think?
For the article, the authors conducted an informal survey at a recent SCL KM Group meeting of some 40 London law firm KM professionals. Of the five questions posed, I would have expected to see higher percentages in all but the last of these questions: Firms considering KM in the context of matter management process: 25%
Firms considering KM in the context of client relationship management: 10%
Firms with integrated document management and e-mail strategy: 10%
Firms with aligned KM and risk management strategies: 18%
Firms with the same person responsible for KM and risk management: 8%
In the few firms where KM and RM are led by the same person, the authors note the advantages and disadvantages of each approach:
"Unified management may result in a unified strategy—a holistic view providing the sought after alignment. In different management hands both may be pursued as disciplines in their own right—each providing their own business benefit, but with an inherent danger that objectives may conflict. The current prevailing view is that both disciplines should be managed separately but with close liaison between those responsible for them so that the relevant strategies are aligned."
The authors make several other interesting points, some of which illustrate the potential tension between KM and RM.
"Risk management tends by its very nature to be risk averse whilst knowledge management should focus, at least in part, on creativity, innovation and personal development generally seen as risk positive mindsets."
"A current knowledge management initiative in many firms is to enable the right knowledge inputs to be available at the right time in the matter management process. On the face of it this should assist with risk management. However, it is essential that firms have the proper processes in place . . . to ensure that the knowledge management activity itself does not create its own risks for the firm." (e.g., "the right version of the right document at the right time").
Clyde describes the key applications of enterprise blogging:
As sources of information As a tool for project management For communication For competitive intelligence For marketing For knowledge management and knowledge sharing As a basis for customer service As a newsletter
Clyde maintains an excellent weblog resource page here.
· Attracting and retaining the best staff is a fierce battle—where the expectations of all, from new graduates to senior lateral hires, need to be met. The days when professionals joined a firm and stayed for their whole career have passed.
· Accelerating the speed with which a lawyer, or other staff member, becomes fully effective increases the return on investment made in that individual and the ongoing contribution they can make.
· A firm's knowledge base must be greater than that of its individual staff members if it is to be worthy of existing. Preserving, sharing and developing individual skills and experience, under the mantle of effective leadership, is necessary for the firm to be worth more than its constituent parts. This seminar investigates the knowledge opportunities and challenges faced by law firms as they seek to recoup their investment in people—at all stages of the staff lifecycle.
Simon Levene is a consultant, Baker Robbins & Company, and is coordinating the SCL KM group. For further information on the SCL KM Group please contact Simon Levene.
As guest presenter, Catherine Monte, Director of Knowledge Management at Fox, Rothschild, LLP, will describe her KM experiences in two different law firms including the internal collaboration she has fostered at Fox Rothschild LLP. (She also did knowledge management work at Clifford Chance).
Possible topics include:
— Why is it important to collaborate with practice areas, professional development, marketing, and other internal law firm functions? What are some tips on starting and fostering such partnerships?
— How does KM software integrate with other programs and the intranet?
— How do the KM needs of litigators and transaction (contract) attorneys differ?
— How do you control document quality in the KM system? How do you "vet" (review) documents to be stored in the KM repository?
— Do you have one taxonomy for the whole firm or multiple taxonomies for different practice areas?
— How does the KM system affect work flow— i.e., the time it takes to get work done in a law office?
— How do you staff the KM function—number of people, their skills, their tasks?
— What are "practice service attorneys," and what is their role in KM?
— Does the KM system require training? Who does it? How long does it take?
— How does the DuPont Legal Model affect KM in law firms?
