Best Knowledge Management ProjectWinner: Richards Butler
Effecting real cultural change to the organisation, both by developing and successfully deploying IT systems and by focusing on the ‘human’ side of knowledge management (KM), was the criteria for this award. The winner had to demonstrate a major improvement in client service or the development of new knowledge-based online services.
For rapid results, few KM projects can measure up to Richards Butler’s firm-wide knowhow database, ‘ouRBase’, which has had radical results by improving working practices and the speed with which information and knowhow can be accessed.
Developed on a bespoke basis by Granite & Comfrey, ouRBase provides firm-wide access to internally-produced memos, practice briefing notes, advice documents and precedents. It encourages knowledge-sharing across practice areas and maintains lawyers’ value to the practice as experts in their field.
The project, led by head of library & information services Loyita Worley and IT director Lee Hanley, is one of the first in the UK to have fully integrated a large number of external content feeds and internet resources from references in a firm’s internal documents. The system also supports a range of mobile access facilities.
When judgments or legislation within the database are amended, the original reference is automatically flagged so the reader realises there has been a further development and a direct link to that development is provided. The firm reports that the time fee earners spend finding information has fallen by 50%.
Best Use of IT by a National or City Firm
Winner: Wragge & Co
Birmingham-based Wragge & Co is one of the very few law firms to demonstrate that its deployment of IT has achieved a genuine shift in the working culture of its fee earners and provided the basis for significant advances in knowledge management.
The firm has provided unparalleled financial transparency to its clients, leading to a number of commendations from corporate in-house legal departments. Wragges is also known for offering an exceptionally broad range of extranet facilities targeted at individual clients and for its commitment to measuring and delivering a return on investment for IT projects.
Best Use of IT by a Regional Firm
Winner: Cripps Harries Hall
Under IT director Tanya Collett, Cripps Harries Hall has built an impressive range of applications and internal systems not usually associated with regional firms. The past year’s major project was the design and rollout of Purple Pages, a groundbreaking intranet.
Purple Pages features time recording analysis, money laundering and conflict checks, key client and departmental dates, news and developments from across the firm, social information and client and matter information.
The firm has also introduced an online conflict checking system that dramatically reduced the number of e-mails in partners’ in-boxes. In another move to increase efficiency, the firm was able to reduce the time spent creating bills by 50%.
Best Global Use of IT
Winner: Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom
For the Best Global Use of IT award, the winner was expected to demonstrate exceptional vision and strategy in the use of IT and show how this has contributed to it operating as a genuinely global organisation.
Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom may not have invested as heavily in radical networking solutions and industrial-strength enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems as some of its rivals, but when it comes to network flexibility, resilience and data back-up, the firm is becoming an industry leader. In the current political and economic climate, this cautious stance deserves recognition.
In the wake of last year’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, Skaddens’ no-nonsense approach to business continuity planning is widely held to be an example of good practice and has given rise to a number of innovative projects. Of particular significance is Skaddens’ data centre consolidation and redesign project. This involves migrating 22 separate data centres around the world into a highly centralised system that will provide Skaddens with increased levels of systems availability and disaster recovery while simultaneously allowing the firm to better support the needs of users of those systems.
Skaddens has also made faster than average progress in formulating and deploying a global strategy for mobile access facilities.
Law Firm IT Department of the Year
Winner: Lovells
The winner had to be able to demonstrate an impressive range of innovative projects and a solid record of supporting the firm’s IT systems. They also had to show clearly the value — financial or otherwise — that IT projects have added to the firm. Despite the departure of a number of senior IT staff, Lovells has consolidated its competitive advantage during the past 12 months, with an impressive range of challenging and innovative projects. Foremost among these are logistical moves, such as the merger with Simeon & Associes and moving the entire London headquarters to a new building.
Lovells’ IT department, now under Ian McFiggans, has migrated the entire firm from a variety of e-mail and operating systems run separately in 15 countries to a single global platform. Under a new head of knowledge management (KM), Alun Davies, the team has created a KM system for the product liability department and its clients. This enables fee earners to build their own ‘knowledge webs’ mapping out complex inter-relationships with clients and drawing them together in case materials and commentary.
An e-commerce venture ‘Anchovy’ provides streamlined, fixed-fee domain name registration, protection and recuperation services via a dual interface used by clients and fee earners. The firm has also built a library-based electronic filing system, eDocuments, which holds electronic versions of all documents found in practice floor libraries; enables fee earners to create project folders and assign access rights to them; and provides a secure private libraries storage facility for all users.
In the midst of all this innovation, Lovells’ IT team has not become distracted from the task of supporting the fee earners. In fact, it has reduced IT support call volumes by 35%.
Legal IT Director of the Year
Winner: Simon Thompson, Linklaters
The winner of this coveted award had to demonstrate inspirational leadership, a vision that puts them at the forefront of their profession and a remarkable ability to follow through on this vision for the advancement of their law firm. Judges also looked for evidence of exceptionally good communication between the IT director and the managing partner.
Under the leadership of IT director Simon Thompson, Linklaters has always been at the vanguard of legal technology and is widely regarded as a bellweather of new strategic directions, emerging technologies and emerging trends. Thompson’s department has produced many of the legal industry’s most successful applications of technology, such as Blue Flag, the high profile document drafting service based on Linklaters’ KM systems, and Clients@Linklaters, arguably the most sophisticated, advanced and best used client extranet system in the legal world.
But, in addition to sponsoring projects to develop flashy applications, Thompson ensures the smooth day-to-day running of his firm’s IT function and continually ekes out improvements. An example is the recent deployment of a new virtual desktop environment that allows greater central control of fee earners’ PC desktops and one day may reduce Linklaters’ dependence on some of its software suppliers.
This award does not take into account what is perhaps Thompson’s boldest move yet: the on-going rollout of an ERP system. This is best explained as a bid to align the firm’s back-office systems and IT strategy as closely as possible with those of its clients, in preparation for the arrival of web services as a business model for legal services. But if this massive project delivers as promised, he will have scooped considerable competitive advantage again.
