Wendy L. King, Manager of the Knowledge Services Department of Alston & Bird LLP, is finding that her 12 years’ experience in information technology are being put to good KM use now in one of the nation’s largest law firms. She oversees development of Alston & Bird’s Knowledge Management solutions ranging from Knowledge Management Portals to Secure Collaborative Client Extranets.

King asks--and answers--the question: How does a law firm not only maintain and share the tacit knowledge within the firm but also, make their knowledge readily available to the clients?

She comes to what could be, for most people, a truly overwhelming task, via past experience as a technical leader, a project manager, a consultant, a developer and a trainer; she holds an A.A.S in Computer Science and a B.A. from Western Illinois University and is being certified as a Knowledge Manager as well as a Knowledge Environmental Engineer.  Contact the author at WLKing@alston.com.

Knowledge is an essential element of a law firm, and the proper management of that knowledge is crucial to a firm's effectiveness. Containing and maintaining a secure knowledge base represents an ongoing challenge that in turn affects the viability of the organization.

Alston & Bird LLP 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 four coordinating groups of practice: Adversarial, Transactional, Intellectual Property and Tax.  So how does a law firm not only maintain and share the tacit knowledge within the firm but also, make their knowledge readily available to the clients without being lost in the overwhelming scope of Knowledge Management?

KM System Provides Three Levels of Support

Alston & Bird already has a Knowledge Services department, which develops tools for Knowledge Management but the question raised was whether the firm’s Knowledge Management needs required further refinement and who was best equipped to the task. The firm’s response to that question was the formation of the Knowledge Management Committee in March 2000 to consider every aspect of knowledge retention and intellectual capital. The committee is served by both attorneys and staff and has shown great enthusiasm and responsiveness in what is still its infancy stage. The first goal the Committee established for 2000 was for their development group, Knowledge Services, to create a Knowledge Management System to serve the needs of the firm. The Knowledge Management System will provide three levels of support to individuals searching for information pertinent to the successful practice of law.

1. Develop and 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.

2. Create a Panel of Experts

The panel of experts will be comprised of Technology Liaisons and a Knowledge Coordinator. Practice areas will categorize the Technology Liaisons. 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.

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 ongoing needs of the firm. Once identified, the information is then disseminated throughout the firm through the Knowledge Base.

The Knowledge Management Committee 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. Toward that end, two of the committee members are pursuing certification through the Knowledge Management Certification Board within the eKnowledgeCenter.

KM and Attorney-Client Relationships

With the immediate Knowledge Management needs of the firm identified and a plan in place to meet those needs the attention was then given to the needs of the attorney-client relationship. The firm currently provides a secure collaborative extranet which enables online communications and knowledge sharing between the attorney and the client. The success of this first generation endeavor has led to its refinement and expansion in the year 2000.

The first generation 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 2^nd generation Extranet.

How Did We Create Extranet 2000?

By developing applications with the "copy-modify" approach, several severe issues were created. Maintenance and enhancement tasks created an unnecessary loss of time caused by the multiple code base scenario as well as an unnecessary burden on the servers housing the extranets. Therefore, the plan for the 2000 Extranet was to create a robust and scaleable 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.

Upon completion of the "requirement-gathering" phase it was determined that the first version of the 2000 Extranet would provide the attorneys and clients with the ability to conduct threaded discussions, use electronic whiteboards for online document revisions, provide the ability to post and retrieve documents, and to conduct full-text searches. In addition, the ability to maintain a joint calendar for viewing important events, meetings, and engagements was essential. A workload report that allows users to view, add, edit, and report on team members and their availability is included, as well as a corporate Rolodex for quick searching and retrieval is provided for attorneys and clients. We incorporated a process for attorneys and clients to connect to a Concordance Summation and Case Information System database from the Extranet. Factors taken into consideration for the 2^nd generation Extranet were the ability to provide clients with continued enhancements to the Extranet as the attorney and client needs grew. 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. It is anticipated that the new system will allow for better support and growth of the extranet services provided to both the attorneys and the clients, thereby creating and maintaining knowledge not only within the firm but also extending beyond to the clients as well.

The formation of a Knowledge Management Committee and continued support of the Knowledge Services department show the awareness and commitment of Knowledge Management within Alston & Bird. The firm is dedicated to the continuing efforts to find and implement effective ways of maintaining the essential element of Knowledge within their firm. Alston & Bird is not just talking about Knowledge Management; we are doing it!