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58 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 | F A L L 2 0 2 3 champions of change. Hockey observes, "I can say we need to do X, Y and Z, but the firm's attorneys could just say, 'No, we're not doing that.' "But when I proposed it to the committee and said why and how I believed we should be handling this type of procedure… when the attorneys on the committee got behind that, it was much harder for the end-user attorney to say no. Not least because it now has the backing and support of the firm's established and sanctioned committee." He adds, "For me that's really the crux of having that group. It helps you move these initiatives along and get the buy- in from other end users. Because ultimately nothing can happen without that." Oversight and controls The next step is ensuring that processes and procedures are faithfully implemented. To a large extent this is down to resources. Either people need to be in a position to monitor activity, or systems can be implemented that monitor or enforce new processes and procedures. For example, Hockey's prior firm had introduced a firmwide implementation of Microsoft OneDrive. Among other advantages, this was helping to solve the problem of 'shadow IT' where individuals inadvertently or habitually save matter material in places where the firm formerly couldn't see it, eg: their desktops. Now desktop folders are connected to OneDrive. The firm also developed the capacity to run various reports that are evidencing the transition away from what Hockey calls "the old Wild West" when anyone could create a folder anywhere, and save anything in it. Also, in relation to oversight and controls, Hockey followed the 80:20 rule, which is another way of saying he's solving the bigger problems first. "There was no way for us to monitor everything happening everywhere," he says. "So we identified the really big things we needed to attend to. For instance, we had a big push on email filing into iManage, because we found that as a big pain point when attorneys leave. If they had not filed their emails it created a massive headache for the attorneys taking over and for IT who need to run Outlook searches. We identified that as a priority so one control was making sure attorneys had filed all their emails before they departed." Upstream thinking While Chris Hockey accepts that not everything can be monitored, he's also found that another helpful strategy is 'upstream thinking'. In essence, this means that rather than cleaning up data in every system, it's about ensuring it's complete and accurate in the primary upstream data repository. In his prior firm this was the firm's new business intake system. Then, as data flows down into other systems – iManage and the time and billing system – it doesn't need any more work. Hence he put a lot of focus into working with the new business intake team on the controls that could be put in place. This is a realm where system design and perhaps even some automation can be brought in. For example, to rein in inaccuracies when form filling, they looked at implementing drop down options menus to replace certain free text boxes. Hockey adds, "More and more we also explored how we could automate different controls, trying to take some of the choice out of various forms. it's definitely part of our aspirational best practice." Culture club In the round, information governance best practice for all law firms should probably include establishing clear objectives, defining roles and responsibilities, and establishing standards and policies that govern how data is captured, stored, processed, shared and protected within the firm. There will be elements of data quality management, and compliance will be a big focus. F E A T U R E S

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