KM for the Google generation

Profile: Jane Bradbury, knowledge management dircetor at Field Fisher Waterhouse

By Joanna Goodman

Innovation is a key aspect of the Field Fisher Waterhouse (FFW) brand. It also drives the firm’s approach to knowledge management (KM). So it is no surprise that knowledge management director Jane Bradbury has recently introduced cutting-edge search technology into FFW’s KM architecture as the firm expands into Europe. ‘KnowledgeSearch’, powered by Recommind’s MindServer technology, provides sophisticated concept-based search capability across all the firm’s knowledge resources, including its document management and practice-management systems as well as its website, intranet and social software sites and external research sites. The other side of the search equation is to harness the knowledge and expertise of everyone in the firm and leverage it to drive the business forward.
The war for talent, retention issues and work/life balance are key drivers for the current focus on knowledge capture and retention amongst knowledge managers. “We need to do all we can to support lawyers in delivering top quality and responsive assistance to their clients,” says Bradbury. “I do believe that providing an individual lawyer with easy access to the collective knowledge of their colleagues can only make their working lives easier.”
In this market environment, how can firms capture the knowledge and know-how that people bring to a firm and retain it when they leave? Bradbury believes that when people are leaving a firm, it is too late to capture their knowledge. “It’s unrealistic to expect that in the months before somebody leaves you can suddenly download the contents of their head. It’s really a question of developing a knowledge sharing, coaching culture supported by systems and processes,” she says. “The interaction between KM and the human resources (HR) specialists is a critical factor in achieving this and was a key theme at the conference. KM has been linked in the past to legal training, business development and marketing, but firms are now concentrating on developing closer links between KM and HR.”

Web 2.0 and Google-style search
In her 18 months at FFW, Bradbury, who is also responsible for learning and development, has deliberately introduced products and processes that resonate with the Google generation. The fact that FFW is clearly comfortable working with social software – not to mention its high-profile online presence – supports graduate recruitment and training. “KM resources like our Google-type, one-stop search facility and the fact that we use blog technology show potential trainees that we’re responsive to new ways of working,” she says.
‘KnowledgeSearch’ complements Web 2.0 applications by providing one-stop access to all FFW’s knowledge resources. “It’s Google style, so it’s high recall, very fast and searches across our systems. Key to its deployment in a law firm is that it also produces highly relevant results: it enables people to filter down search results incredibly quickly,” explains Bradbury, adding that for lawyers this represents a complete change in style of searching. “Instead of being very specific about what we’re looking for in the traditional legal way, we’ve adopted the Google-type approach of casting the net wide to see what is out there and then narrowing down the results.”

Capturing tacit knowledge
While deal-related information is relatively straightforward to manage, it is important to decide what sort of tacit knowledge needs to be captured and disseminated. “This tends to revolve around communication rather than technology,” says Bradbury, adding that a round table discussion at the Ark conference had focused on transaction debriefs, coaching, thought leadership and storytelling. All these elements are also linked with training and development. “Traditionally, a trainee would sit in the office with a senior solicitor or partner and learn on the job. These days, partners do not necessarily have time to mentor trainees on a day-to-day basis, so we are finding other techniques for passing on this type of know-how. The conference round table discussion group all agreed that the transaction debrief was a very effective solution.”
Transaction debriefs are facilitated by professional support lawyers (PSLs) who identify points of interest, such as points at which critical decisions were made. “These elements are not necessarily documented, but they can often shape a deal or influence how lawyers progress a transaction,” explains Bradbury. “Know-how is often difficult to transfer – but if you learn from experience, including the experience of others, things can suddenly click into place.”

Expertise locators
Bradbury believes that KM has a key role in shifting FFW from being a London-centric law firm to a European-wide law firm in terms of supplying information about ongoing deals and lessons learned. “The conference highlighted the emerging recognition that KM, including expertise, needs to be built into workflow from the beginning. In other words, from matter inception onwards we need to put more detail into our systems about the type of transaction being carried out, the documents that will be used and the nature and industry sector of the client.”
To this end, FFW’s integrated search system includes an automated expertise locator. Bradbury explains how it works. “If I carry out a search against a particular topic, the system searches through all documents on our systems, which are fully indexed, and produces an expertise ranking based on who has authored documents or conducted transactions around that topic. So no manual updating is required. Experience is also factored in as a key function of expertise, so the system is weighted towards partners. As FFW is growing rapidly with some 150 fee earners joining FFW across London and Europe over the past 12 months, it is particularly important to establish who knows what,” she adds.

Learning from new joiners
Bradbury underlines the value of capturing the knowledge and insight of experienced lateral hires. “As well as getting new joiners up and running, we need to focus on harnessing their knowledge and know-how. Although we have been concentrating on systems and processes, I am conscious of the need to capture lessons learned from people’s experience at other firms. When somebody moves firm there tends to be a great emphasis on induction and on getting them to understand the values and culture of the firm they’re joining, but we can overlook the fact that they’re bringing in valuable expertise, particularly if they are at a relatively junior level.”
FFW recently applied this approach to trainees. “At the end of their second week with us, we asked trainees to give a presentation about the role that the internet played in their lives, how it could shape their lives at FFW and the ways we communicate with our clients. It was fascinating and they came up with some great ideas,” says Bradbury. “Part of our job is to look at how people work and how they communicate and find out how they expect to work when they join the firm,” she adds. “The same applies to lateral hires. We are looking to harness people’s ideas when they join the firm to keep the firm fresh and to learn as much as we can from them.”

Providing unified support
Bradbury is working towards developing closer integration between KM and other support functions. “The PSL, the information officer and the business development (BD) manager for each practice group work near each other within the fee-earner teams – sometimes they are even in the same room,” she explains. “The idea is to establish a triangle of support lawyer, information and BD expertise. As well as ensuring that relevant knowledge is captured and disseminated, this facilitates communication and provides more unified support to fee earners. It is also important to use our resources where they are most effective and exploit the fact that PSLs are qualified lawyers, information officers have excellent information retrieval and research skills and BD managers are then more outward-facing and help drive the business.”

Ongoing challenges
Bradbury emphasises that her role and the roles of the PSLs present constant challenges. These include updating knowledge resources, providing just-in-time interventions and ensuring that lawyers get the information and support that they need at the right time. “Above all, PSLs really have to know exactly what’s happening with the various deals that are going on at any one time,” she says. “The fact that PSLs, information officers and BD managers all attend fee-earner group meetings helps to keep them in the loop, and is key to successful KM.”

Looking ahead
Another key strategy is to hone and refine knowledge delivery, building on the benefits of Web 2.0. “Instead of e-mailing a question to the know-how team, lawyers simply post it on the blog and a PSL will respond. Not only does that provide a searchable record, but everybody can contribute to the discussion without cluttering their inboxes. It also saves PSLs’ time as they no longer have to answer the same question several times,” she says. “We’re also looking to improve the technology by allowing lawyers to subscribe to RSS feeds, so that instead of receiving weekly know-how updates, they will receive only the information that really interests them. They will then be able to align their profile to their current work or interests.”
Following the undoubted success of ‘KnowledgeSearch’, Bradbury is looking at redesigning the intranet so that it is based on Web 2.0 technology. This will help to keep FFW ahead of the game in terms of knowledge capture and dissemination – and of course, innovation.