Presented by,Rohit C. D’Souza

PORTAL, EXPERTS, TEAM: A LAW FIRM CREATES EXTRANET 2000

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Alston & Bird LLP

• Alston & Bird LLP, commonly abbreviated A&B, is the largest law firm in Atlanta and the 43rd largest in the United States

• A&B has been practicing the business of law for over a 100 years and today is comfortably positioned in the top 100 firms with services organized into 4 coordinating groups of practice:• Adversarial• Transactional• Intellectual Property • Tax

•Website: http://www.alston.com/

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Authored by Wendy L. King

• The then Manager of the Knowledge Services Department of A&B, realized that her 12 years’ experience in IT are being put to good KM use in one of the nation’s largest law firms.

WLKing@alston.com

Experience• Technical

leader• Project

Manager• Consultant• Developer• Trainer

• A.A.S in Computer Science

• B.A. from Western Illinois University

• Certified Knowledge Manager• Certified Knowledge Environmental Engineer

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QUICK Trivia• Can you name this famous TV series???

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KM @ A&B• Knowledge is an essential element of a law firm & the proper management of that knowledge is crucial to a firm's effectiveness

• Containing & maintaining a secure knowledge base represents an on-going challenge that in turn affects the viability of the organization

• A&B already has a Knowledge Services department which develops tools for Knowledge Management.Was that enough for A&B or did the KM needs

require further refinement???

Competitive Necessity Competitive Advantage

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Knowledge Management Committee, March 2000

• KMC was formed to consider every aspect of knowledge retention and intellectual capital

• First goal was to create a KMS (Knowledge Management System) to provide 3 levels of support to individuals searching for info pertinent to the successful practice of law

KMC KMS 3 levels of support

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KMS – 3 levels of support

1. Develop & Maintain a Knowledge Portal

2. Create a Panel of Experts

3. Form a Knowledge Creation Team

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#1Develop & Maintain a Knowledge Portal

• Employees will have the ability to access the portal and find legal articles, web sites, research studies, and books relevant to their particular need

• Knowledge repository

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# 2Create a Panel of Experts

• The panel of experts will be comprised of Technology Liaisons and a Knowledge Coordinator

• If requested information cannot be found in the Knowledge Portal, online notification of that failure will be sent to the Knowledge Coordinator who will then work with the Technology Liaison to obtain that information

• It will then be incorporated into the Knowledge Portal for future retrieval

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#3 Form a Knowledge Creation Team

• The Knowledge Coordinator will head the Knowledge Creation Team.

• The primary responsibility of this team is to work with the Technology Liaisons to determine the on-going needs of the firm.

• Once identified, the information is then disseminated throughout the firm through the Knowledge Base.

• The KMC also recognized the importance of an awareness of current and accurate issues in the legal community that relate to knowledge management. It has taken steps to insure the retention of knowledge experts within the firm and on the committee.

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KM & Attorney-Client Relationships

• Firm enables online communications and knowledge sharing between the attorney & the client via a secure collaborative extranet

• The 1st gen extranet design was NOT based on an object oriented methodology and it did not allow for code reuse at the object level; it was an all or nothing approach

• To create a new Client Extranet, an existing extranet was copied in its entirety and modified to meet the new clients' needs. Although, this allowed for quick delivery it posed several issues that needed to be addressed in the 2nd gen Extranet.

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How Did We Create Extranet 2000?

• Plan was to  create a robust and scalable application utilizing current object-oriented design methodologies

• This application would have one code base; thereby enabling the development group to: • quickly identify and correct defects• incorporate enhancements and • best meet the overall needs of the attorneys and the clients

they serve

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Features of Extranet 2000 Application

• Features provided to attorneys & clients:

• ability to conduct threaded discussions – collaboration

• use electronic whiteboards for online document revisions

• provide the ability to post and retrieve documents

• conduct full-text searches

• the ability to maintain a joint calendar for viewing important events, meetings & engagements

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some more…

•workload report that allows users to view, add, edit & report on team members & their availability

• a corporate Rolodex for quick searching & retrieval is provided for attorneys & clients

• a process for attorneys & clients to connect to a Concordance Summation & Case Information System database from the Extranet – cross references

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… and there’s more

• the 2nd generation Extranet had the ability to provide clients with continued enhancements to the Extranet as the attorney and client needs grew – scalable

• the 2000 Extranet system will provide a set up wizard for utilization by Knowledge Services to quickly setup a new client extranet with the available features they desire – intelligent & intuitive

• the new system will allow for better support & growth of the extranet services provided to both the attorneys and the clients, thereby creating & maintaining knowledge not only within the firm but also extending beyond to the clients as well

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Glossary• LLP –

A limited liability partnership (LLP) is a partnership in which some or all partners (depending on the jurisdiction) have limited liability.

• A.A.S –Associate in Applied Science (AAS)

• Tacit knowledge – (as opposed to formal or explicit knowledge) is the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalising it

• Rolodex – A person's list of business contacts and friends

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Suits (2011) – On the run from a drug deal gone bad, Mike Ross, a brilliant college-dropout, finds

himself a job working with Harvey Specter, one of New York City's best lawyers.

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Alston & Bird is not just talking about Knowledge Management;

they are doing it!

References: http://www.eknowledgecenter.com/articles/1001/1001.htm

Thank You!