Digital White Papers

43 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT What Legal KM Professionals Can Learn from KM in the Big Four Agnihotri found social collaboration tools to be so valuable at the Big Four that one of her first projects at her first law firm, Akerman, was to implement a similar technology. It proved to be very successful. In the absence of a formal communications team, this kind of platform can become the firm's internal communications channel. For example, in one of the communities dedicated to celebration, the firm's employees shared photos of important milestones – an associate passing the bar or an office charity run. This tool replaced "pardon the interruption" emails and instead started to auto-populate with frequently asked questions and answers, creating a searchable repository of Q&As with minimal effort. In a firm growing by lateral acquisition, it also helped integrate new laterals, shortening their ramp up time and building trust and camaraderie, which in turn fueled a knowledge sharing culture. Agnihotri had leadership's support and endorsement behind these new tools. Governance was stitched into a well thought out adoption and training plan, but the support of firm management was a critical component to successful implementation. Training, Adoption, and Change Management Training busy billable professionals on new tools is oen a challenge. Although the Big Four firms have mandatory training hours for all employees, impressive e-learning programs and sophisticated internal communications, most of their client-facing professionals spend their days at client sites and are difficult to loop into campaigns about new internal programs. The adoption and change management team at EY works on creative mini-campaigns that include "what's in it for me" messaging and multiple touchpoints, including pop-up kiosks at the cafeteria during lunch time, videos embedded in emails, splash pages on the intranet, incentive driven scavenger hunts and micro training sessions. The KM team also relies on the e-learning platforms as an effective way to deliver training to a largely mobile workforce. Due to the scale of the Big Four, they work diligently to tie together their internal communications and stay consistent with the messaging around new programs across various member firms, practices and geographies. Expertise & Experience Professional services firms sell experience and expertise, and KM departments in both law and consulting firms play a critical role in capturing and searching firm experience. One of the first projects Agnihotri's group rolled out at KPMG was a centralized people directory with consultant biographies, both to respond efficiently to pitches and to locate expertise. The team used SharePoint people profiles to store biography information, including a self- selected expertise taxonomy. Although the KM team had to corral professionals to participate, the firm did add a question on professionals' performance reviews asking if their bio had been updated in the last 12 months. To capture experience, or credentials as they are called at the Big Four, KM team members conducted aer-action reviews for large or unique engagements. Team members arranged a 30-minute interview about the project, wrote a summary, then created the credential and uploaded it to their internal experience system. While the process was manual and time-consuming, the experience tool itself was sophisticated, with the ability to search by many aspects of the CINDY THURSTON BARE Cindy Thurston Bare is the Vice President of Consulting for Foundation Software Group, developer of Foundation Experience Management. She has 20 years of experience leading people and projects at large, international law firms. She was previously the Director of Knowledge Management at Orrick, a firm known for innovation and collaboration, where she led the firm's experience project. She is also a Prosci Certified Change Management Practitioner. Cindy is a frequent speaker on legal technology, innovation, collaboration, and marketing technology, including change management and adoption.

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