Digital White Papers

13 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Boosting Enterprise Search with Beer Metadata Today, these problems are more efficiently resolved by enterprise search platforms like Recommind's Decisiv Search, Autonomy's iManage Insight (formerly iManage Universal Search) and Handshake's SP Bridge (formerly FAST Search). Even so, maintaining accurate metadata still vastly improves the ability to find content and to use a firm's enterprise search system more efficiently. When searching for content, a quick keyword search can help identify which documents concern a concept. Good metadata increases efficiency by helping searchers easily filter and refine their results. Imagine an aorney trying to find motions for summary judgment involving independent contractor classification. A simple keyword search for "independent contractor" would return not only motions for summary judgment, but also complaints, answers, legal memoranda, discovery responses, presentations and many other irrelevant documents. If the law firm provides a way for users to categorize documents as summary judgment motions, aorneys could apply a single filter to immediately exclude irrelevant documents from the search results. Metadata can also help aorneys identify others who might be able to help clients with specific needs. Suppose a law firm keeps track of the foreign languages its aorneys speak and it indexes this information in its enterprise search platform. Aorneys in this firm could identify subject maer experts by topic and further refine those results to only those aorneys fluent in a particular language (for example, mergers and acquisitions experts who speak Portuguese). Similarly, other metadata could help aorneys find subject maer experts based on their location, billable rate, bar admission or any other criteria that could be important to a client's circumstances or help develop business. Oen, metadata is not only helpful but also necessary to locating relevant information. For example, maer metadata could be crucial to identifying previous litigation maers a firm handled for companies in a particular industry. A team of aorneys could handle a lawsuit from cradle to grave without once referencing the client's industry in documents or time entries. Keyword searches would fail to identify the case, unless the firm has a system for accurately recording every client's industry when opening new maers. Facing Metadata Challenges Unfortunately, collecting and maintaining accurate metadata is more difficult than it seems. First, adding metadata takes time and energy. For each required field, users must consider and enter a description or choose the most appropriate option from a list. If an aorney wants to quickly open a maer or start working on a document, she is more likely to bypass any step that is optional. Another problem is that reasonable minds can disagree over how to categorize a document or maer. For example, absent a code for "position statements," employment aorneys in the same firm could easily differ on how to tag position statements draed in response to charges before government agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or National Labor Relations Board. Some might categorize these as "correspondence," reasoning that the document is formaed as a leer from an aorney in the firm to a government investigator. Others might see the document as a "brief " or a "pleading" because it contains factual assertions and arguments, is entered in an adversarial proceeding before a quasi-judicial body, and could later be important to federal court litigation. Neither approach Good metadata increases efficiency by helping searchers easily filter and refine their results.

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