The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/116777
BASIC MDM PROJECT OUTLINE 1. Get Buy-In Make the business case to management and demonstrate local wins by solving a process problem (e.g., user provisioning) 2. Make Design Decisions Pick your data elements (start small!), define the object model to meet your business needs, and decide where to fit the MDD into your data flows 3. Select the Data Start with a single data element or business object (user, group, client, matter), outline the data shared between systems, assign the authoritative data sources and define destinations. 4. Build the Schema Define your data model, understand the change process for data elements and think about flexibility and extensibility for the future 5. Build the Integrations Source your data for events of interest, build the transformations and assign destinations 6. Develop a Roadmap and Data Governance Plan Outline project stages, define data formats and data quality, assign a data steward to manage the MDD and limit the editing rights of involved stakeholders 64 Peer to Peer time, which is useful for changes to distribution lists, practice groups or matter teams. Lawyers immediately understand the value of the initiative when daily processes are faster, more reliable and easier to execute. Conflicts and Confidentiality Management: Law firm risk management has become vastly more complex in the past few years due to the explosion of digital information, the frequency of firm mergers and lateral hires, and the stringency of client and regulatory requirements around information security. Finding that legacy risk management tools and practices no longer suffice to meet client audits, firms are now using a master data approach to improve conflicts searches and refine information security strategies. MDM enables faster and more accurate conflicts checks because it provides a 360-degree view of the attributes related to a given client or matter. IT can work with risk management stakeholders when designing the "master" concept of a client so it represents information required for clearance. A centralized, authoritative repository of client information is useful especially for firms that have merged branches from different jurisdictions. One top global firm manages its conflicts process using MDM to attain an overall sense of its risk exposure without compromising how local searches function to meet requirements by jurisdiction. Many clients and regulatory bodies now require lawyers and staff only access matter information on a "need-to-know" basis, and law firms are struggling to establish access controls that protect sensitive client information without compromising knowledge and collaboration. Historically, firms managed ethical walls on a lawyer-per-matter basis, denying access to lawyers with a conflict of interest. Today, firms must discern which client information is sensitive, tag that information appropriately and dynamically manage who has access to what information throughout the firm. MDM helps firms collect and analyze attributes of matters, documents, areas of law and data types to catalog sensitive information and implement firmwide controls. Faster and Simpler New Business Intake: Finally, MDM helps individual practices and working groups increase productivity. All matter life cycles contain certain repeatable tasks, like opening new matters during intake. Lawyers and clients alike are often frustrated by how difficult it is to open a new matter and begin work. Firms struggle to develop a streamlined intake process that can accommodate the different requirements for opening matters across practice groups. By tagging patterns between matters and facilitating data flows between systems, MDM can be used to prepopulate intake forms and streamline workflows, reducing cumbersome data entry for lawyers and analysts, and speeding up the overall process. In the long run, firms can repurpose data collected during intake to find patterns between matter types, useful for both knowledge management and business development. BUSINESS-ORIENTED IT Law firms increasingly center their business models around data and information. While all firms hold vast quantities of information, very few leverage it meaningfully to develop their business. The problem is the value of information is not intrinsic; it's contingent upon its accuracy, accessibility, structure and presentation. MDM enables firms to access and consolidate information scattered across systems and to structure it to deliver key insights to management. A successful MDM project fosters firmwide collaboration and productivity, and ultimately provides a competitive edge.