Page 106 - Leaders in Legal Business - PDF - Final 2018
P. 106
Establishing Expertise Publicly. To win the opportunity to pitch, firms must establish
their expertise publicly. This requires presenting specific matter experience by practice,
earning league table-top rankings, and winning awards. All three require locating
relevant lawyer experience and matters.
Pricing and Profitability Analysis Requires Accurate Historical Experience. Pricing
professionals need to find similar matters to estimate costs and set prices. To do so, they
need an accurate record of matter type and experience. Likewise, analyzing profitability
by matter type has the same requirement.
Integrating Laterals and Cross-Selling. With lawyers regularly moving laterally to new
firms, the complexion of cross-selling has changed. Personal connections and memory of
prior matters no longer suffices. To cross-sell effectively, partners need a constantly
refreshed source of information on matters and lawyers.
Enterprise Search Solved Many Problems – and New Products Will Do Even More
Around 2005, technology emerged that helped address the challenges of PSL costs,
absence of context, increasing email volume, and an inability to systematically identify
experienced experts. Enterprise Search, a method of organizing information derived from
multiple sources, went well beyond keyword searches of Word and PDF documents. This
technology searches multiple sources of information — documents, email, time entries, matter
intake databases, and client relationship management systems — and applies sophisticated
algorithms to create a retail-shopping-like search experience inside of law firms and
departments. These systems also demonstrated that finding a related matter is very helpful, as
finding a case similar to the one at hand identifies both lawyers with experience and relevant
documents.
With a few words, lawyers can search for documents, email, matters, or experts and have
a very good chance that the system would show highly relevant results at the top of a search
result hit list. They also display search filters to narrow results (for example, by jurisdiction,
lawyer, or file type). Today, several products are available to accomplish this, as described in
more detail in the next section.
Starting in 2016 and continuing into 2017 and beyond, Enterprise Search options have
changed and improved. Many law firms are moving or are planning moves to newer software
with greater capabilities. Some choices incorporate sophisticated artificial intelligence that will
improve search. First, the software will “know” who the user is, his or her practice, and recent
work. Those factors, previously untapped, will improve search results. And second, search likely
will become embedded in other platforms such as document management or Microsoft Word. In
that scenario, “search comes to the lawyer instead of the lawyer going to the search.” This has
significant potential to improve lawyer efficiency. (For more detail on this point, see an August
2017 article my colleagues and I wrote, Transforming How Lawyers Work: AI-enabled
Document Management.)
The Emergence of Specialized Experience Management Software
Around 2014, a new class of software came to market designed specifically to manage
experience. Examples of brands include Foundation Software, Prosperoware Umbria, and
Neudesic Firm Directory. These offer a single enterprise system that can power marketing, KM,
92
their expertise publicly. This requires presenting specific matter experience by practice,
earning league table-top rankings, and winning awards. All three require locating
relevant lawyer experience and matters.
Pricing and Profitability Analysis Requires Accurate Historical Experience. Pricing
professionals need to find similar matters to estimate costs and set prices. To do so, they
need an accurate record of matter type and experience. Likewise, analyzing profitability
by matter type has the same requirement.
Integrating Laterals and Cross-Selling. With lawyers regularly moving laterally to new
firms, the complexion of cross-selling has changed. Personal connections and memory of
prior matters no longer suffices. To cross-sell effectively, partners need a constantly
refreshed source of information on matters and lawyers.
Enterprise Search Solved Many Problems – and New Products Will Do Even More
Around 2005, technology emerged that helped address the challenges of PSL costs,
absence of context, increasing email volume, and an inability to systematically identify
experienced experts. Enterprise Search, a method of organizing information derived from
multiple sources, went well beyond keyword searches of Word and PDF documents. This
technology searches multiple sources of information — documents, email, time entries, matter
intake databases, and client relationship management systems — and applies sophisticated
algorithms to create a retail-shopping-like search experience inside of law firms and
departments. These systems also demonstrated that finding a related matter is very helpful, as
finding a case similar to the one at hand identifies both lawyers with experience and relevant
documents.
With a few words, lawyers can search for documents, email, matters, or experts and have
a very good chance that the system would show highly relevant results at the top of a search
result hit list. They also display search filters to narrow results (for example, by jurisdiction,
lawyer, or file type). Today, several products are available to accomplish this, as described in
more detail in the next section.
Starting in 2016 and continuing into 2017 and beyond, Enterprise Search options have
changed and improved. Many law firms are moving or are planning moves to newer software
with greater capabilities. Some choices incorporate sophisticated artificial intelligence that will
improve search. First, the software will “know” who the user is, his or her practice, and recent
work. Those factors, previously untapped, will improve search results. And second, search likely
will become embedded in other platforms such as document management or Microsoft Word. In
that scenario, “search comes to the lawyer instead of the lawyer going to the search.” This has
significant potential to improve lawyer efficiency. (For more detail on this point, see an August
2017 article my colleagues and I wrote, Transforming How Lawyers Work: AI-enabled
Document Management.)
The Emergence of Specialized Experience Management Software
Around 2014, a new class of software came to market designed specifically to manage
experience. Examples of brands include Foundation Software, Prosperoware Umbria, and
Neudesic Firm Directory. These offer a single enterprise system that can power marketing, KM,
92
