Digital White Papers

KMSTANDARDS IN PRACTICE they say. To make attorneys feel invested and that their voices have been heard, we must have their materials in the system. Once we have the document set, a legal solutions architect begins the indexing and massaging. The tool is pretty good at matching "like" elements. However, it requires a human to intervene — sometimes heavily. To use a simple analogy, the tool might not know that Gala apples and Honey Crisps are both to be put in the "apples" bucket. The administrator can jump in and force that connection. Then, when you rerun the program, those two sets are connected, and you are more likely to see Braeburn apples in the mix as well. This is because the footprint for comparison has changed, and the tool has effectively "learned" through its training. However, that doesn't get around the fact that perhaps each of those apples should be in a different bucket, which leads to the next step. After the basic framework and matching has been done, the set requires attorney review. Everything up to that point has been done via machine or skilled person with little subject-matter expertise. An expert set of eyes is needed. We often walk through the structure of the document and drill inside each clause with one or more attorneys. Based on that exchange, we'll reconfigure the tool and bring it back for a second review. Once the attorneys feel comfortable with what we have, we will link the project to the "knowledge" section of our intranet. We then create the proper communications and set up some walkthroughs with prospective users. We have crafted our own user guides, driven largely by the three paths we typically see. AREAS OF PAIN Though the KMS tool carries an impressive feature set, there are still areas that frustrate our progress. User Interface: The single biggest barrier to use is the interface. There is power in the layers of the tool, but the learning curve, even for a basic end-user attorney, is steep. In general, it is overwhelming and designed more for a frequent, expert user than a casual visitor. The problem is every attorney starts out as the latter. Global Search: At present, there is no way to search the entirety of a project. You can search within a given section, but not through all sections if they are not related. Depending on the use, this can be a significant annoyance and limit some utility of the tool. The natural inclination of an attorney, knowing the tool can search within all the clauses (in a given category), is they should be able to search across all the documents. Indexing and searching are not necessarily related, but the fact that all the text appears within the tool creates a certain expectation of searchability.

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