Digital White Papers

63 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT From Content Aggregation to Content Intelligence Moving Beyond Content Aggregation The use of content aggregation tools in law firms is not new. A majority of firms deployed these tools almost a decade ago to solve the problem of lawyers inundated with dozens of daily emails from vendors pushing their publications directly to the lawyers' inboxes and clogging a communication channel meant primarily for clients. Content aggregation tools provided an effective method to enable lawyers to consume current awareness more efficiently by aggregating all relevant content in one daily email at the beginning of a lawyer's business day. With the age of the internet came the disaggregation of the major legal publishers. What started as a handful of publishers mushroomed into thousands from both traditional media and social media. As a result, there has been exponential growth in the amount of current awareness content being pushed to end users. Also, with the new economic realities in the legal industry following the Great Recession of 2008, lawyers today are focused not only on practicing law but also on business development. As a result, the amount of time lawyers have to spend keeping up with current awareness, both for the practice and business of law, is compressed. The convergence of exponential growth in content sources and the breadth of what lawyers need to know to be successful as practitioners and business developers means that lawyers have shied how they consume current awareness. Instead of reading enewsleers cover to cover, lawyers now scan the headlines of current awareness material searching for specific content to implement on a real-time basis. Many traditional aggregation tools have not kept up with the changing needs of users, which has led to a demand for a smarter tool that can help lawyers effectively search and filter for the most relevant and actionable information related to their practice, clients, deals, etc. What Information Professionals Should Consider in a Content Intelligence Platform The expectation in law firms is that information professionals should understand what specific content is required for individual practitioners to be successful as well as for practice and industry groups, client and market teams and firm leadership. It is no longer acceptable simply to push publishers' RSS or XML feeds: users are looking for tools that provide context as well as content, that extract the noise and help them quickly focus on the most relevant information. Here are some functionalities information professionals should consider in advancing from providing content aggregation to assessing a CI platform: T A X O N O M Y A N D S E A R C H The backbone of any CI system is the taxonomy that enables information professionals accurately and automatically to categorize content by nodes, such as subject, client, industry, geography, practice group, etc. Look for relevant, pre-built search taxonomies to aid in reducing noise, as well as opportunities to overlay your firm's custom-built taxonomy with the platform's out-of-the-box taxonomy. Remember that a robust taxonomy leads to more effective and efficient searching of resources and on-point content delivery. When evaluating any CI platform, you should spend a significant amount of time testing to ensure you receive expected results. Instead of reading enewsletters cover to cover, lawyers now scan the headlines of current awareness material searching for specific content to implement on a real-time basis.

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