The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/116777
case studies TRANSLATING FINANCIAL DATA INTO STORIES Bloomberg Law recently interviewed John Alber, Strategic Technology Partner at Bryan Cave LLP, about their in-house software program, Rosetta. During the interview, John explained that Rosetta is all about taking big data and making sense of it in the form of narrative stories. Using key performance indicators, such as margin/ profitability, billable hours, collection speed, etc., Rosetta creates a dialogue of feedback that helps lawyers better understand their business, determine how to price legal services and deliver on promises to clients. This isn't a new development for Bryan Cave. For the past 10 years, they've developed a financial suite of software that aimed to use financial data to help improve legal service delivery. With Rosetta as the latest iteration, they hope to deepen the level of lawyer engagement, as the stories Rosetta develops focus on key decision points and real opportunities for improvement — without having to make sense of numbers, charts and figures. These are just some of the ways we are controlling data growth in the big data era. We also have all our data on a storage area network (SAN). This technology allows us to trend our data and track rate of growth easily. Another way we are controlling data growth is through the use of redirected folders. Redirected folders are useful in our remote access solutions, and we implemented them for just that reason. An added benefit is that it gives IT a way to manage flat files. We redirect the following user folders to the network: my documents, pictures, favorites, desktop and a few other folders. Most users naturally save files in these locations, but we also warn them that if files are not in those locations, they will not be backed up. Users have a vested interest in complying with the file location requests. Since these files are now on the network, IT can see what is in them and run reports on that data. One thing to note is that our acceptable use policy allows personal use of the network. However, if a user is abusing the privilege, we notify them and give them an external drive on which to put their personal data, giving us another way to control data growth. We do not delete anything until the user has a copy that is off the network. Because we are accommodating, most users are, too. People Continue To Matter With new policies and technology solutions in place, our next step was to disseminate the details. We delivered memorandums and visited users with questions. We provided training on how to use our updated DMS. It is the user's obligation to ensure that the proper documents get into the DMS. Since it was a big shift for the firm, and users might struggle with putting email messages into the DMS, we interact with users diplomatically, while still enforcing the policy. It's important to make sure people are continually compliant. In our firm, IT leadership has really thought of everything to encourage adoption from the users, including getting management buy-in. One Step at a Time From the beginning of our data management efforts, we realized it is important to move slowly; our firm's data did not grow out of control in a day, and it will take many days to improve the situation. Changes were made in small, manageable doses. With the people in place to drive data management, a well-planned strategy and the appropriate technology, our big data can and will be centralized and controlled. Watch John's interview with Lee Pacchia from Bloomberg Law at www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAOv3sushqo. SOURCE: INFORMATION PROVIDED COURTESY OF BLOOMBERG LAW. Robert Morrison is the Security Engineer at Fredrikson & Byron, P.A. He can be contacted at rmorrison@fredlaw.com. 38 Peer to Peer