KM support for clients: Building a better road

Know-how is increasingly important to the modern client, to the extent that it is now often covered in pitches and tenders. Indeed, clients themselves are requesting more sophisticated knowledge-support services. For that reason, firms are having to seriously develop their client-facing know-how offerings. By Ian Rodwell, Linklaters

“Fahr’n fahr’n auf der Autobahn…” Client-facing know-how is growing up. Once a rather neglected, ill-maintained byway in the complex client-relationship network, it is undergoing serious development with metaphoric resurfacing, additional fast lanes and sophisticated signage. The potholed leaf-strewn country lane of old is morphing into a transcontinental autobahn. A slight exaggeration perhaps? Well, the signs are there and growing stronger. For example, over the past 12 to 18 months, we have experienced growing and more sophisticated client know-how requests ranging from professional-support-lawyer (PSL) secondments to blogs, MP3 compatible training and joint law firm/client wikis. In addition, pitch and tender responses increasingly specify the types of know-how services we deliver, and we are now seeing the involvement of knowledge-management (KM) professionals, not only in the document preparation for pitches, but also in the pitch meetings themselves. Consequently, such requests and conversations are leading us to believe that client-facing KM may, at the very least, be the cost of doing business. Just as we wouldn’t deny the importance of a comfortable and welcoming reception in our offices, or stylish and pleasant meeting rooms, so our client know-how offering should be equally reflective of our brand, our values and the levels of service we aspire to. But maybe it’s more than a mere cost. If handled correctly, with a close understanding of the real needs of clients and an empathetic appreciation of the pressures they face within their own businesses, might it also be a potential source of competitive advantage: in what we offer, how we offer it and how we innovate.

Support function collaboration
If this is the case, then such an offering is not the sole responsibility of the know-how function. It will only thrive if there is close collaboration between the know-how, training and marketing teams, with the latter providing the context and rationale via which all such efforts are directed. After all, client-facing know-how does not exist in a vacuum; it exists as part of the firm’s wider client relationship management (CRM) and business-development initiatives.

‘Extranets are dead…’
So, what is it that clients of law firms expect as part of this offering? I am conscious that, as a supplier, there is a certain amount of presumption in answering this question. However, these suggestions are based on a number of conversations with a variety of clients over the past few months. At heart, and yes it is a truism, it boils down to the right information at the right time delivered in the right way. This overall need can be broken down in many ways – with some elements resonating with some clients, and some resonating with others. But here are some representative ideas from the pot.

First, there is a need for information that is not only relevant and timely but which contains the often-elusive ‘so what’ factor. It is not enough to merely detail the nuts and bolts of a legal development in an alert or newsletter; the client, quite rightly, wants to know how that impacts on their business – what are the consequences for them? In short, they are asking us to combine our awareness of regulatory or legal hot topics with our knowledge of their businesses – their strategy, risk profile, sector priorities and aspirations – to generate personalised insights and guidance.

Now let us assume firms assemble incisive and tailored content. Can they just format it within an elegant newsletter template and e-mail it away, breathing a sigh of contentment at a job well done? Perhaps not. Clients are becoming more and more sensitive as to how that content is packaged; specifically, can they receive it in a way that suits them? For example, with one client, we were asked to produce legislative updates, but within a template they designed themselves. The aim is that these templates – completed by a variety of panel firms – can be seamlessly integrated within the client’s own intranet. In short, it dovetails neatly to their own systems, processes and needs. Similarly, RSS feeds can make it possible for clients to receive a personally relevant alert. Why receive separate newsletters on different topics when an in-house lawyer can receive one alert that aggregates content relevant to his or her own areas of interest?

But surely sending newsletters is yesterday’s technology? Why not use an extranet to provide a warehouse of know-how for our clients. Again, maybe not. I remember one in-house counsel stating emphatically that “Extranets are dead”. The reason? Imagine you have been proudly offered state-of-the-art extranets by each of your, let’s say, five law firms. That’s five different web addresses, logons, passwords, layouts and interfaces to negotiate. Consequently, I suspect more clients will be asking for increased collaboration and aggregation between law firms. A current project involves ourselves and another firm working with a client to design and populate a website to be used by all three parties. It gives the client consistent and structured access to content from different suppliers plus an environment to – potentially – store their own knowledge.

So, let us assume we now have our collaborative websites up and running. Can we relax our efforts? Well only if you accept that silicon gratifies all our knowledge needs. As well as the electronic paths that connect law firms and clients, we have received requests for greater personal networking and relationship tie-ups between in-house specialists and our own PSLs. In one case, this was to better understand the PSL role as a precursor to developing a client equivalent. In others, it has led to fruitful and independent connections being forged, with the PSL developing a greater understanding of the client’s requirements and, on the back of that, being able to deliver more focused and informed training and updates.

‘Get your motor running…’
But noble as these initiatives are, do they merely reflect the same old car but with a new set of chrome alloys and dashing go-faster stripes? Can we, to coin a phrase, think innovatively outside the garage? One signal here is the increase in client requests for guidance on managing their own know-how. Under pressure to increase business efficiency and work smarter, they have recognised that law firms possess valuable accumulated expertise and experience in both the systems and cultural aspects of KM. Quite rightly, they have identified these as valuable assets that could be productively leveraged. As a result, we have participated in a number of meetings with clients – as part of a panel with several law firms and clients or in one-to-one sessions – which have generated useful and well-received insights and guidance.

It’s made me think that we are often unaware or underestimate the range of potentially client-useful knowledge we possess. If we move beyond know-how expertise, firms have, for example, teams of people with skills in devising training programmes and selecting talented training providers. With clients hungry, not only for technical training but ‘soft skills’ and management training, can such knowledge be successfully re-applied externally? We should also consider our IT professionals with their wide-ranging expertise in selecting and deploying IT systems for lawyers. If you are an in-house counsel within an investment bank or engineering firm, your own IT department may not necessarily appreciate the specific requirements of the legal community. Cue our IT consultants to provide that level of understanding.

In fact, if you think hard enough, opportunities to make your clients lives easier abound. Our information units now regularly field legal research enquiries from clients. In one exercise I was involved in last year, we helped audit a client’s small law library after their new head of legal expressed concern at potentially how out of date it was. This then generated an opportunity to offer outsourced book buying and loose-leaf services, plus legal research training for his team. It may seem an insignificant cog in the mighty CRM machine but for that head of legal, it represented one less headache to deal with.

‘There’s no such thing as value-add’
If we view the appetite for such know-how initiatives as growing, where might this lead? I was at a conference last year and we enjoyed a barnstorming presentation from a head of legal at a large multinational. It was provocative, thought-provoking and fascinating, and included the observation: “People talk to me about value-add offerings; but, believe me, at £600 there is no such thing as value add.” It’s a phrase that may provoke a fair amount of consternation but is it that disturbing? I think back to the legal publishers that I dealt with a few years back and at the end of a pitch for a new online product, they would invariably, with the air of an aged great aunt bestowing a bequest on a favoured nephew, announce that training was available but at a cost and invariably in a remote location where the coffee was generally awful. Maybe I exaggerate a little. But now such ‘value-adds’ are inevitably part of the general offering – available at no additional cost, delivered at my request and to my specifications. Are we moving to a time where tailored alerts, collaborative websites, access to PSLs, know-how, training and IT consultancy are unremarkable in their availability? Tied in with this, I think there will be a growth in links at all levels of the relationship. It won’t just involve lawyer-to-lawyer interaction but closer working between know-how, information and training professionals and their counterparts within the client organisations. In addition, with a greater expectation that panel firms will collaborate more closely, law firms’ appetite for such collaboration may well become a competency on which they are judged. Finally, might this also include collaboration around not only the delivery and storage mechanisms via which know-how is delivered but in the authoring of specific content. Might an astute client in 2010 expressing indigestion at receiving five bulky – and maybe not wholly dissimilar reports – on, say, the Companies Act 2010 prefer the more appetising prospect of one wiki collaboratively authored by those firms?

Perhaps it’s time to start development work on that autobahn again…

Ian Rodwell is knowledge manager at international firm Linklaters. He can be contacted at ian.rodwell@linklaters.com