P2P

33 I L T A N E T . O R G H ere we are, several months into COVID-19 and some things have become obvious as a result of the radical shift to working much more remotely. Big changes are needed to promote efficient access to digital information both now and for the future. Some industries and organizations have begun to recognize that there are actually some advantages to be reaped when this access is intuitive to and frictionless for the workforce. Where it once may have been difficult to get endorsement for digital transformation, COVID-19 is playing out the business case in real time. McKinsey has estimated that the conditions of the past eight or so weeks have accelerated commercial digital transformation by up to five years in some instances. For the legal industry, this means that the DMS, file shares and personal directories, collaboration sites, practice and client focused databases and other repositories of digital information have become even more elevated and necessary, and having a method to digitally capture incoming paper-based information has become even more important. Additionally, the need for physical files either on or off site to be liberated and converted on demand will continue. In the longer term, the ultimate solution is to give every practitioner a sophisticated search tool that doesn't require an advanced degree to understand and use across all pertinent information stores, and firms are well advised to embark on, or enhance efforts to move with alacrity in this direction. Let's discuss some practical considerations that may be helpful as you work to wrangle your own internal initiatives and seize upon opportunities that have presented themselves in the last few months. People Power There is an opportunity to develop reasonably low threshold approaches to better, more intuitive information and document retrieval. In many instances, practitioners, in responding to their changed circumstances while needing to access this ecosystem of knowledge, have lit the way. After all, the more a user is vested in a solution, the more likely they are to employ that solution and encourage their colleagues and working groups to do the same. We've polled IG professionals at law firms and asked a number of related questions. • What processes were put in place to support remote work with respect to information/ knowledge retrieval that make sense for a larger implementation? • What would it take to formalize those processes? • How did you engage them collaboratively to develop and work through the processes? • What worked well; what didn't? Some people have come up with their own strategies and workarounds. Take the time to canvass not only your lawyers but your admin/support staff as well to determine what could possibly be expanded upon. What are some of the more interesting and potentially productive of these approaches and inadvertent initiatives that have bubbled up, and what can be done to encourage both consistent application and broader use? Firms have had to pivot quickly to supporting remote teams. In fact, Microsoft Teams has suddenly become the go to collaboration tool in legal, particularly for larger, multijurisdictional full service firms, although other mature collaboration platforms (Skype, Slack) offer similar functionality. The good news from an IG perspective, is that, with a SharePoint back-end,

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