Article: Is it time for a KM playbook at your law firm?

By Jennifer Brown, Editorial Consultant, ADB Insights

The global pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in law firms. In particular, it has shown a greater need for the silos of knowledge to be served up on platforms lawyers can use — and as the pandemic lingers, knowledge management (KM) teams are trying to bring that vision to life.

 Like so many professionals, when COVID-19 hit, the world as most lawyers knew it changed, and they were forced to consider the tools their KM organizations had been pushing for years. The previous experience of sharing information in person has moved online, but now KM departments are challenged to convince lawyers the online watercooler is just as effective, if not more.

Andrew Terrett, Borden Ladner Gervais

Andrew Terrett, Borden Ladner Gervais

 “We will probably see more change in the next five years than I have seen in the past 20,” says Andrew Terrett, national director, legal technology and service delivery at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, speaking as part of a panel on Advances in Knowledge Management webinar from the Canadian Legal Innovation Forum. “I think it was going to happen anyway, but COVID-19 has given us a tipping point, and now we have the wind in our sails, and we need to take full advantage of that and move as quickly as possible to drive this change.”

 Terrett says BLG has achieved more around digital transformation than it would have in several years in terms of lawyers working from home and leveraging digital tools.

 “We need to build on it and put in new playbooks and guardrails for the lawyers, so they know what to look for and which tools to use. They need it simplified, so it’s more easily consumable,” he says. “Law firms have become hostage to a lot of vendor demos — they appear with shiny toys, and we implement a few and turn around and say we have too many tools and the lawyers don’t know what to use.”

The attempt to make things easier for lawyers has inadvertently created too much complexity — now the challenge is to simplify it so lawyers can see through the forest of tools that are available. “There has too much focus on tech and not enough focus on process and behavioural change over the last 10 years,” says Terrett.

People need a good reason to use new tools that bring information to one hub, says Terrett. “It all comes down to how law firms charge out their time and are compensated. They aren’t intrinsically motivated to collaborate as a good thing to do.”

Enter the virtual watercooler

Where lawyers could verbally request that an assistant or associate get the information required when drafting a document, it takes more time in a distributed environment of remote working. Lost are the watercooler chat opportunities —an electronic repository of precedents or research has become paramount.

In the law firm ecosystem, KM teams have become essential services during COVID, especially for those firms where the workforce has been primarily working remotely. KM is the hub that now facilitates the needs of lawyers.

“I find remote working creates more need for centralized systems that connect the lawyers more than ever before. Centralized databases of information and knowledge have been called upon more rather than less,” says Kate Simpson, national director of knowledge and practice innovation at Bennett Jones LLP. “Collaboration has become the buzzword to replace innovation. That is now selling more tools.”

Kate Simpson, Bennett Jones

Kate Simpson, Bennett Jones

Melissa Uster, Davies

Melissa Uster, Davies

Terrett says necessity became the mother of adoption. “That’s been terrific, but we have also lost something very integral to the DNA of the fabric of a law firm, which is that watercooler chat — that opportunity to have conversations that are serendipitous and allow lawyers to get involved in other matters. That is still a challenge,” he says. “We are using instant messaging, Webex, Microsoft Teams, and I don’t think there is a technology that has allowed us to replicate that watercooler interaction fully, and that is still going to be an ongoing challenge into 2021.”

One single source of reference 

Having a hub to access information has been critical at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP. An intranet project underway before the pandemic has seen greater adoption since lawyers have been working remotely, says Melissa Uster, legal resource counsel at the firm.

The firm was capturing conversations by creating discussion forums for the various practice groups. Rather than send a one-off email to someone who may have the answer to a question, the lawyers are encouraged to send emails through the discussion forums on the intranet. Lawyers in a practice group receive an email indicating a question has been posted to the discussion forum, and they can answer directly. All the information is categorized, tagged and can be searched. A blog feature has been added so people can include practice updates or deal work. All COVID-19 resources, both internal and client-facing, have also been added to this hub.

Uster says that while it used to be easier for lawyers to go directly to the KM team to ask a question, now they are going straight on to the intranet to look at the practice group pages.

“It doesn’t fully capture that dialogue you might have in the office, but it is a step towards that direction, and we can maintain it for future reference and searching,” says Uster. “Our lawyers were familiar with the tools we had, and COVID-19 has accelerated the use of them.” 

Davies is also looking at external client collaboration. “We’re not able to bring them into the office now or have those in-person conversations, so we are looking to share information and extranets for them for the same ease of use we have built internally,” Uster adds.

 
 
 
Jason Moyse, Autologyx

Jason Moyse, Autologyx

Training people to adopt behaviours that seek out a single source of truth is only half the story, says Jason Moyse, director at Autologyx, a workflow automation digital operations platform.

“It’s not necessarily a single system of record. All the pockets of knowledge are in different spots, so there needs to be something to marry all of those together,” he says. “That’s part technology and behaviour as well — we’re looking to change behaviours as much as leveraging technology.”

Simpson says the idea is to turn flat intranets into more dynamic working platforms. “I think that is our challenge — how do we put the right things in the right order during a workflow to allow people to go from one phase to another without having to sit back and wonder where else they need to go. That will be our focus in 2021,” she says.

Moyse calls this considering the “human in the loop automation”.

“You have technology that needs to be mapped together, silos of information that need to be mapped together, and people processing legal work that need to come in at the right time,” he explains.” It’s about mindful, thoughtful design upfront. That’s the work where firms are asking: What is it we’re trying to achieve, and how are we going to marry all these elements?”

Terrett agrees. “I think we often get too enamoured of technology and forget about the person using the technology. Focus on the person first and what it is they are trying to do.”

The road ahead 

For 2021, Simpson suggests KM departments concentrate on foundational elements rather than paying for big-ticket items. “All collaboration platforms, AI, are all going to require data and good metadata and good taxonomies, which require us to clean up our data. Focus on those under-the-hood technology projects,” she says.

At BLG, Terrett says the focus will be on “great design and user-centred experience.”

“We need to seize the moment — never been a better time for KM to move the agenda forward than right now — take that ball and start running down the field as fast as you possibly can.”

Andrew Bowyer