Expensive centralised, standalone systems and complex processes of communicating and storing information are amongst some of the main contributors to wasteful and inefficient processes. People need to work on a platform that gets them out of their in-boxes and word documents. New tools like wikis, blogs, RSS and personal dashboards are combined in this platform and move away from a document-centric view of the world towards people-centric solutions.
This kind of connected, social intelligence is what Web 2.0 era is all about. By aggregating the simple actions of large groups of people, we can reduce wasteful repetition, quickly connect people with each other and the information they need to make quicker more informed decisions, create shared value and an evolving body of knowledge for the firm and clients alike. This effectively turns a law firm into a highly efficient, high quality social reading, writing and filtering network.
How Web 2.0 can help
Finding what you need when you need it
Most legal professionals are overloaded with information, and spend hours sifting through irrelevant content trying to find the latest version of a document or an email with the revised instructions. Not only does this make people less productive, they may also be prone to make bad or ill-timed decisions and be unable to maintain desired standards of quality. The obsession with storing and categorising increasing volumes of information (in Outlook, shared drives and databases) makes the important stuff harder not easier to find.
Much of the problem of information overload on projects is really a case of “filter failure”. By stemming the flow of emails, making visible activities to people’s team and colleagues, and enabling people to better navigate across information irrespective of where or how it is stored will help to ensure people find what they need to work more effectively.
An internal “Twitter-like” micro-message stream (also known as a micro-blogging service) integrated into an enterprise wiki or workspace ties together people’s activities and outputs in respect of the particular project or case. These micro-messages of up to 140-characters enable people to signal to co-workers what they are working on, easily raise and respond to a variety of rapid-fire questions, discuss ideas, and share links and information. In the past, much of this interaction would happen on email, clogging people’s inboxes with irrelevant or annoying communications that others were better placed to handle.
People can choose who they wish to receive messages from, and they don’t need to read everything. Messages are presumed to be non-critical unless they are specifically directed at an individual, so you get to them as you can, or just follow-up on the latest few.
In addition to this 140-character messaging between colleagues, activity streams allow people to track activities on the project, such as the latest amendments to or comments on documentation (in the wiki page), any changes to project pages they created or edited, and latest news regarding the client posted on the blog. All these activities can be channelled into one stream of information. By integrating micro-messaging into the tools people use for their daily activities, they do not have to make the effort to go to another place to see what’s happening.
So, for example, updates on the progress of deal serve as a reminder for the next steps and priorities on the project, while the micro-messaging allows people to throw quick questions or comments out to others working on the project to help them get on with their tasks.
Streamlining new matter in-take
New matter intake can be a time-consuming, complicated process for firms. Whilst some firms try to automate this process, many rely on e-mails and the knowledge of a few to identify pertinent information that need to be placed in to the hands of a conflicts manager for review and approval. These processes can be precarious, if the information being relied on is incomplete or unreliable. Worse, people will have little or no visibility so as to be able to rectify the situation.
Micro-messaging (described above) is also an excellent tool for keeping people informed of the matters they are working on and for rapidly raising flags about potential conflicts and issues when that information is circulated. “Profiles” can also be linked to the matters people are working on, and be updated with the status and recent activities in respect of the matter.
Figure 1 ”” An example of a “profile” page
By circulating new matter information across the firm in a blog or a recent update to a wiki page, more people can be reached more effectively. Not only can this reduce risk by allowing more people to participate in the process and providing an audit trail to prove that all necessary checks have been performed, it can also reduce email overload and free up lawyers from administrative work, as new matter intake information is delivered, assimilated and processed by many hands largely in the course of people’s daily work.
Transforming the current awareness process
Current awareness is immensely important to any legal firm. Commonly, information officers are responsible for collating information about legal topics, market, industry and legislative changes, clients and competitors, and then packaging it up in a word document and circulating it via email to lawyers in the firm. But pushing out weekly or monthly bulletins makes it difficult to be reactive and stay current in the between times. This can result in publications containing information that is out-of-date or of little interest or value.
RSS and blogs offer exciting ways to revamp the current awareness process.
RSS feeds can be customised to deliver information tailored to the practice area, or feed preferences determined by the individual, and displayed within his or her personal space along with the tag cloud and bookmarks. They distinguish what needs to be actioned (inbox items) as opposed to what needs to be read or considered (feed reader, blog, wiki, and so on). They also curb email bombardment, giving people the ability to scan the information quickly, signal whether it has been read, rate or comment on it.
Figure 2: An example of news-feed aggregation in a social software platform
Blogs are also proving to be an extremely popular and successful alternative to traditional newsletters. Internal blogging allows people to communicate their expertise related to a sector, industry or technology, and makes it easier to reach people in different geographical regions or practice areas. They replace the time-consuming process of compiling its weekly newsletters, so that information can be easily added, categorised and published at any time. This process moves away from monthly publication cycles and keeps the information flowing all the time. Importantly, it also enables readers to give immediate feedback and ask questions about content items.
Improving personal information management
One of the main contributors to information overload is the overuse of email. Email is no longer used as a simple communication tool, but is also used to manage tasks, provide news alerts and engage in “closed group” discussions. Moreover, many lawyers use Outlook as their default document storage facility. Lawyers hoard volumes of emails in case they are useful at some later stage, leaving them to organise their inboxes into an entire collapsible mess of inflexible folders and sub-folders.
Not only is this time consuming, it also limits access to the information, since email accounts are typically open only to the account holder. Furthermore, discussions that take place within emails are visible only to recipients. Rarely do lawyers have the time or inclination to extract valuable know-how for from emails for inclusion in a knowledge base. What’s need is the ability to easily cut through the deluge of email and content to access the information that supports people’s work. The personalisation of information presentation via personal start pages will be critical in helping people simplify their access to information and expertise.
Figure 3: Personal Dashboard
Personal start pages or dashboards allow each person to decide what and who she or he monitors, and to aggregate in one place all information from various systems including: workspaces, internal communication and project management systems, know-how and CRM databases, and third party sources. People can subscribe to recent changes made to all pages or spaces with certain tags (e.g. client name or topic area) as well as information coming in from external social networks, news and information feeds, allowing them to monitor legal developments, business opportunities, work progress and more. With work being done openly and transparently on a platform, status and information updates will flow automatically as people do the work.
Client retention and value-added legal services
Firms can also cater to clients’ requests for greater and more tailored access to the firm’s information and know-how by setting up secure spaces to engage with their clients. Many of the expensive extranet initiatives that sprung up some years ago (such as deal rooms) can now be created more cheaply and effectively using Web 2.0 technology. For instance, lawyers working on documents could do this via a wiki or workspace. Similarly, firms could use these spaces to offer regular updates regarding the status of a transaction or project, collate associated documents, meeting notes, risks and associated news or other information, simply by giving clients access to selected data flows that people are creating as they carry out their work on the platform. Blogs can be used to push out tailored snippets of information to clients in real time, making it more digestible, current and valuable. Clients can also signal their interest in particular areas rather than receiving a blanket range of information, and strip away time-wasting excess as a result. Whilst there are some specific examples of feeds being pushed out from individual portals, this is not done on a more general basis, for instance in respect of all content on law firm websites.
Next steps…
Although we have seen some successful early adopter projects, these have just scratched the surface and most firms have a long way to go in order to realise the potential of Web 2.0 to re-shape business structures and process in a more responsive, lower cost way that takes advantage of network effects to turn lots of small-scale actions into impressive results on the aggregate level. Whatever the shape of the future law firm, it seems clear that social technologies will have a major part to play.
Penny Edwards is an enterprise social computing consultant at Headshift Ltd, where she leads the user analysis, engagement, adoption and community building elements of projects with legal and professional services firms.
Email penny@headshift.com.
Penny is co-author, with Lee Bryant of Social Networking for the Legal Profession, published by the Ark Group.
