I’m pleased to be able to be able to announce the winners of
the 2007 Law
Technology News Law Firm and Law Department Awards. If you’re
going to be at LegalTech, I understand tables for the awards dinner are still
available. (As a member of Law Technology News‘
Advisory Board, I’ll be there.)
While all
the winners deserve congratulations for their efforts, I need
to highlight one in particular, the award for " most innovative use of technology
in a law firm," which goes to Morrison & Foerster’s Chief Information Officer,
Jo Haraf, and the firm’s Knowledge Management Counsel, Oz
Benamram, for their development of "AnswerBase," a one-stop intelligent
search system designed to present users with information drawn from every significant
system within the firm, starting of course wit the document management system,
but also including personnel and human resource records, financial and accounting
data (down to the individual time-sheet level), client and matter databases,
and even records of alumni. Perhaps because AnswerBase draws from so
many different data sources, its nickname is the "Googlification" of Morrison
& Foerster.
The reason I need to highlight it is that I was retained by Morrison & Foerster
to lead an analysis and review of AnswerBase vis-a-vis its predecessor
Knowledge Management system during last summer and fall,
and reached the resounding conclusion that AnswerBase was strongly superior
to the firm’s legacy systems, by providing highly relevant documents and discovering
genuine subject-matter experts within the firm with impressive accuracy. By
interviewing a broad cross-section of lawyers at the firm’s New York offices,
I was able to determine that the design and functionality of AnswerBase essentially
replicate, as I put it in my report, "the way lawyers think" rather than reflecting
technical considerations or limitations. Also as I put it there, the
key challenge to any knowledge management system is to understand this fundamental
truth:
Associates look for documents; partners look for clients.
So, for example, one associate had this experience: "I had been researching
the requirements for establishing a broker-dealer for a few days with little
to show for my work; when I turned to AnswerBase, I found a firm memo outlining
all the actual steps within a matter of minutes."
And a partner (and practice group leader) told me simply: “Clients
are very interested in knowing what else you’ve worked on that’s
similar. Why? They don’t want to pay for you to
go learn it: So it’s very very helpful to find that stuff through
AnswerBase.”
Recommind, the firm that provided the fundamental "MindServer" technology
underlying AnswerBase, has built an online ROI
calculator which lets you enter actual numbers for your firm (such as
number of associates, median number of hours they bill, blended hourly rate,
etc.) and see what they might mean for your firm.
Recommind has also published my
whitepaper on AnswerBase, together with
the Appendix which explores bases for calculating ROI. I invite you
to take a look, and again congratulate Jo, Oz, and their team for a fascinating
solution to an age-old problem.
To learn more, including seeing an online demo of AnswerBase in action,
click on the Morrison & Foerster logo:
