P2P

64 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | W I N T E R 2 0 2 1 How We Made It Happen Many factors played a role in making this initiative a success. The principles outlined here are true for knowledge projects more generally as well. Pressure for change. One of pressure, need, or incentive is required to make change happen successfully. This can sometimes be a challenge, however, during the pandemic people were forced to change and adapt rapidly. For example, it became essential for lawyers across the world to be able to sign documents electronically and conduct remote proceedings. Senior endorsement. Regardless of the unique circumstances of the pandemic, endorsement and support from senior members of the firm has always been an effective way, if not the most effective way, to encourage change. Our senior management team supported this initiative with messaging and promotion coming directly from our global managing partner and our US and EME managing partner members. This endorsement added extra credibility and helped drive many of the projects forward quickly. Leadership and goal. KM project-managed this initiative overall but partners and associates led individual projects. Having leadership, a clear vision and people with a vested interest (such as a key individual or small group responsible for driving progress) was an important part in moving these projects to completion. Relevant and capable people. Knowledge projects tend to focus on complicated areas of law, technology, or data. We involved people with the relevant skills or experience who had the capacity to play a role in each individual project. For model form projects this meant involving lawyers with the right experience, and for projects that were more technology focused we involved our internal technology and practice innovation teams and Gravity Stack (our wholly owned legal technology subsidiary.) Planning and communication. We spent significant time planning and then communicating so everyone knew what was expected, by when and what the end goal was. This was achieved by having regular calls or virtual meetings and following up with emails succinctly outlining objectives, action points and key stages of the project (and adapting plans as needed). Running global projects predates the pandemic, however, because use of technology improved, it led to better collaboration and greater efficiency. Reward and recognition. Every project in this initiative needed lawyer input. Billable work will always take precedence over knowledge projects so we had to think about how to engage and how to reward and recognise contributions. This was achieved, largely, through offering billable credit of up to 50 hours per person. Because a lot of time and effort went into completing these projects, we also recognised and celebrated key contributors by working with our communications team on an internal brochure, an intranet page, case studies and presentations. "Knowledge projects tend to focus on complicated areas of law, technology, or data." F R O M T H E K M C C T

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