Meet with lawyers to identify and/or develop key goals (“wishes”)
Internal knowledge management
- Share and re-use work product
- Contact management
- Capture tacit know-how and re-use (“best demonstrated practices”)
- Catalog professional expertise
- Collaborative tools
Delivering services to clients
- Matter management (billing information)
- Client-specific document delivery and/or collaboration via extranets
- Collaborative tools
- Knowledge databases and legal updates
- Advisory systems (e.g., document assembly, checklists, and expert systems)
Evaluate current situation (“reality”)
Internal
- Map existing processes for creating, saving, and re-using work
- Understand incentives to share, contribute, and re-use
- Review existing intranet, work product systems, extranets
- Interview key staff (e.g., Librarian, Marketing Dir., Finance Dir., Prof. Dev. Dir.)
- Review technology infrastructure
Client
- Assess needs and interests
- Get feedback on potential responses to proposed goals
- Help identify additional needs and services firm could provide
Competitive
- Benchmark internal practices against other law and professional service firms
- Survey client-facing initiatives and impact on firms and clients
Vendors
- Assess potential services and/or software solutions to achieve goals
- Evaluate vendor quality and responsiveness (talk to other customers)
Write first-cut plan (“closing the gap between wishes and reality”)
- Organize and explain goals
- Prioritize goals based on business benefits
- Estimate (rough only) resources — technology and staffing — required to achieve goals
- Discuss organizational and cultural shifts that may be required
- Identify key issues and areas for further investigation
- Conduct follow-up research as necessary to fill-in gaps
Review and Refine Plan
- Discuss first-cut plan with management and section heads
- Discuss first-cut plan with key directors and staff
- Convene client focus groups or other mechanism for client feedback
- Assess in more detail subset of vendors identified earlier
- Based on feedback, perform additional research and refine plan
Develop working plan with proposals for pilot projects
- Specify technologies and staffing
- Develop budget
- Specific goals and activities
- Metrics of usage and value created (not necessarily the same)
- Include milestones and feedback loop to adjust pilot project