Technology focus: Leveraging systems

Many law firms will look to adopt SharePoint at some stage. More than anything, the value of SharePoint lies in the ways in which it helps lawyers and support staff to perform their jobs. It is unfortunate, then, when firms fail to leverage the platform effectively, leaving value on the table when it comes to implementation.
This article provides a short overview of SharePoint and discusses how it can:

Make your intranet more effective;
Help teams manage structured information more easily;
Drive efficiency through process automation;
Improve search; and,
Help measure KM usage.

SharePoint in brief
SharePoint comes in two flavours: Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS).
WSS comes free on standard Windows Servers and is comprised of simple components. On their own, these building blocks offer limited value to a law firm because there are very few ‘tasks’ they facilitate, and to be fair, Microsoft is not aggressively pushing for WSS adoption. The major components of WSS include:

Hosting web pages;
Online lists (like spreadsheets);
Basic workflow; and,
Web parts (such as Google Gadgets).

MOSS is much more useful but is very expensive. MOSS enhances many elements of WSS, and offers additional features like content management, enterprise search and business intelligence. Firms unable to afford MOSS might instead consider an open-source platform such as Joomla, which offers similar features. Regardless, firms should plan for a customisation project should they adopt SharePoint.

Platform for a more effective law firm intranet
BlackBerries are astonishingly popular within law firms. They bring together simple concepts like e-mail and appointments in a way that is useful and elegant. SharePoint can do the same, making an intranet immediately useful and relevant to everybody in your firm.
SharePoint websites are best built from templates, which firms will create to meet their needs. The consistency gained from having templates makes an intranet easier to navigate for users. It also helps website owners focus on content rather than designing web pages, and reduces support calls to the IT Helpdesk.
These templates are flexible, allowing content owners to update pages with a Microsoft Word-style tool. Most templates set aside areas of the page where web parts (gadgets or widgets) may be added.
The real power of this template approach comes from the web parts. SharePoint comes with a range of these web parts, and firms can build their own or purchase web parts from vendors. For example, most firms will have relationships with a selection of premium clients and will share knowledge about these clients via an internal web page. For firms with InterAction, client relationship management (CRM) data could be displayed alongside regular text by purchasing the necessary web part from XMLAW.
The newsfeed viewer web part which ships with MOSS is one of the most useful that I have found. Its power comes from the ubiquitous nature of the newsfeed format, the ease with which newsfeeds can be created and the ever increasing number of software platforms capable of creating feeds.
Let’s look at a simple example: the Financial Times makes a number of feeds available on its website. Using your web browser, you can copy the web address of the ‘oil and gas’ feed into a newsfeed viewer on your ‘oil and gas’ intranet page. Having done so, it will appear, looking exactly like the rest of your intranet.
This approach can also be used to integrate systems that do not otherwise integrate with SharePoint. Perhaps your firm has a custom knowledge database. By creating a newsfeed interface, the records are easily embedded within SharePoint. Of course, the specifics of how to achieve this will depend upon your system, but the process is relatively straightforward.
There are three reasons why this approach is immensely powerful. First, content and data from the internet and throughout your firm can be easily integrated into SharePoint; second, this allows for teams to manage data in a way that makes sense for them, while presenting the data in a way that best suits regular users; and third, this means that even if your firm’s systems do not come with SharePoint integration, there is a simple way to accomplish this.
So, flexibility in hand, what might a SharePoint-enabled intranet homepage look like?
An intranet homepage needs to be a one-stop shop of useful information, consisting of links to key sector, client, practice and office resources, preferably tailored to who a person is and what they are likely to need. SharePoint makes this very easy, supporting filtered views of resources based on the person viewing the page.
News also has a place on the homepage, though in deference to key resources. Usage statistics that I have gathered show news tends to receive one click for every hundred clicks to online information. From my experience, people want their intranet to connect them quickly with the information they need to do their job. News is important, but it is ancillary to people’s more pressing need to ‘find resource X to complete task Y’, and they will often look to other communication channels like e-mail for news.
One advanced bit of functionality that has proved popular is to provide a quick search of key resources. A typical example might be to search for ‘taxi’. Intuitively, a result for someone in the New York office should be different than for someone in the Hong Kong office. It is even possible to have this information appear while you type, in the manner of a Google search. This doesn’t come out of the box but is very effective when it comes to delivering a powerful intranet homepage. Searches failing to find a ‘best bet’ are then diverted to the firm’s enterprise search.
The same model for the intranet homepage can then be used for client, practice, sector and office homepages. At a minimum, each of these pages should include the following:

Key partners, senior lawyers, directors or managers involved;
PSL/knowledge lawyers, marketing and KM support staff where appropriate;
Useful documents, training material and web resources;
A breakdown of relevant financials and performance metrics;
A mixture of internal and external news;
A link to a comprehensive list of partners, lawyers and support staff;
A calendar of events;
Links to collaborative tools (if appropriate); and,
Lists of key matters, credentials, pitches and projects.

Naturally, there will be a need to host further content underneath a homepage, and SharePoint makes that simple too. Templates for deeper content will tend to be more simple, focusing on text rather than fancy web parts, but operating in the same manner as a homepage.
One thing to keep in mind, for presentation-heavy content, is that you will save everybody a lot of time by leaving the content in Word, PDF or PowerPoint.

Managing structured information
SharePoint introduces two different tools which work well in tandem and make managing structured information much easier: lists and content types. Let’s look at lists first.
Having come from a computer science background, if there is one system above all else that IT dreads building, it is the CRUD database. CRUD stands for create, read, update, delete, and a CRUD database is the lowest common denominator of system design. Want to manage a list of books? CRUD. Secondees? CRUD. Pitches? CRUD.
IT people dread building these databases because it is a very boring, repetitive task. It is the first type of program a developer learns to write and they are forever being asked to write more. Often teams will end up managing this information in Excel because there are simply too many of these systems for IT to keep up with the demand for new systems. To a degree, SharePoint lists takes that need away.
SharePoint allows for a non-IT person to create lists which represent online spreadsheets. These lists can be reasonably clever, allowing you to set up ‘choice’ fields, attach files and look up values from other lists. These lists are not a replacement for a proper KM system, but SharePoint’s approach is ‘good enough’ in many instances.
Complementary to lists are content types (a containment hierarchy of sorts). Content types are used to represent any type of knowledge object and support sub-types. For example, you could have ‘legal knowledge’ as a content type with fields for:

Title;
Practice;
Date; and,
Hyperlink.

A sub-type standard form document could then be created with additional fields for:

Areas of law; and,
Jurisdictions.

Content types which can be used across a SharePoint intranet, are stored within lists and can be applied to files. While using SharePoint as a comprehensive document management system (DMS) is overly ambitious, it is certainly good enough to act as a store for key knowledge objects. To ensure you do not lose track of these objects, SharePoint allows users to limit a search to a single type of object.
Incidentally, when SharePoint evangelists talk about collaboration, they’re talking mostly about lists.

Efficiency is intelligent laziness
Several years ago, I did a piece of work for a magic circle firm, replacing a legacy system which suffered from having records badly out of date. To avoid the stigma of ancient records plaguing the new system, a manual review of all records was conducted every six months. The process took several days for one of the firm’s dedicated KM professionals. Most of this process could have been automated with SharePoint’s built-in workflow tools which are able to carry out a number of useful tasks, including:

Creating, copying, editing, or deleting list items and including documents;
Checking items in or out of a library;
Sending an e-mail message;
Collecting data from a user that can be referenced later;
Pausing or stopping the workflow; and,
Tracking changes made against a record.

In some circumstances, SharePoint’s workflow tool will completely remove the need to initiate a development project, and may allow knowledge managers to design tactical tools on their own. More complex workflows require the assistance of a developer and can be extremely powerful, to the extent that they could talk to your practice management system (PMS), DMS or CRM system.
Some KM processes that would benefit from workflow are:

Distilling knowledge upon matter closing;
Monitoring knowledge contributions from lawyers;
Knowledge capture when lawyers depart the firm; and,
Gathering intelligence after client meetings.

Years ago, with an Australian firm, I delivered a workflow which helped manage the submission of warrants to a stock exchange. The process was less expensive for the client and more profitable for the firm. By tracking matter progress through workflow, knowledge and training materials were proactively presented to fee earners.
Clearly, embedding knowledge and training into the workflow can benefit a firm’s margin and leverage by allowing junior lawyers to run complex engagements and by reducing non-billable cost. Granted, ‘simple’ client engagements are not the bread and butter of large law firms but they are common enough to think about executing them more effectively.

Search? Seriously?
I won’t try to pretend that SharePoint’s search functionality is on a par with Autonomy, Recommind or Vivissimo. It is not. I would, however, like to highlight aspects of SharePoint that are useful when it comes to search, even when integrated with one of the serious players.
First, for firms who have yet to implement enterprise search, SharePoint is a good place to start. While it lacks some obvious features like wild-card searching, there is still a lot to like. Users can create their own search engines, combining internal and external content. These searches can be very broad or very limited in scope. Using only a web browser, a knowledge manager can build their own search tools for the teams they support.
Search vendors are more likely to index SharePoint well than they are a custom KM database. Vendors need only crack the SharePoint nut once before they are able to apply the same technique across all clients using SharePoint. For bespoke KM databases, they must start from scratch each time. Further, the cost of customising a search engine to index a bespoke KM database will fall squarely on the law firm, while shortcomings in the indexing of SharePoint are likely to be borne by the vendor.

Understanding knowledge use and value
I would be remiss if I did not discuss usage stats, but I must confess to being of two minds when it comes to available options.
To effectively measure usage of SharePoint requires a reporting package that is ‘SharePoint aware’. There are reports available out of the box, but these are of limited use. There are several good third-party packages available (Nintex Reporting springs to mind), but most are not able to report on usage for knowledge resources stored outside of SharePoint.
Unfortunately, tools that do track usage of all internal tools tend to struggle when pointed specifically at SharePoint. Presently, I am not aware of a single tool that delivers a consolidated view of usage, and firms must select an approach with their specific needs in mind.
Problems aside, the available usage reports can be used to tailor and focus KM efforts. I mentioned previously users’ preference for ‘finding resources’ over ‘reading news’. Without hard data, you cannot benchmark or review the effectiveness of a decision, and usage reports are a good proxy for the measuring value. Consider the data a practice needs to decide which documents to update and which to archive. A PSL or partner may have a good idea, but PSL coverage tends to be sporadic in international firms, and people may grow attached to content they have authored. With evidence in hand, investment decisions can be better informed.
So there you have it, five ways SharePoint can help your KM programme: use it to power your intranet, manage knowledge using lists and content types, automate knowledge processes, improve your search capability and measure the use of knowledge resources. It offers a good platform for knowledge management professionals to deliver productivity tools to the firm. Like most generic solutions for business application software, SharePoint has its advantages and disadvantages. But spend some time with it and devote resources to tailor it to your firm, and you will be well rewarded.

Neil Richards was head of knowledge management systems at Linklaters LLP until 2008 and is now a consultant. Neil blogs at www.knowledgethoughts.com/blog/ and can be contacted at neil@knowledgethoughts.com.