Peer to Peer Magazine

WWW.ILTANET.ORG 43 King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) is a multi-national law firm headquartered in Hong Kong with a strategic focus on the world's growth markets. As part of its strategy to create a more networked and cohesive law firm and deepen engagement with customers and staff, the firm has embarked on a series of critical technology- enabled social and mobile initiatives. In 2012, the firm developed and launched its Springboard social intranet. The platform integrates firm-wide content around clients, sectors, matters, people and communities. Springboard also supports "Google-like" search functionality across the firm's systems and incorporates social tools to allow communities of interest to engage, collaborate and share information. User feedback suggests the social messaging platform is helping to cultivate a more collaborative, participatory and real-time knowledge culture. To help facilitate mobility and agility, KWM launched Connect — a personalized mobile app for iPhones and iPads. The app delivers secure, highly personalized live data from the firm's internal systems to lawyers' mobile devices. Connect has been installed on 1,000 mobile devices to date and is already changing the way in which the firm's legal staff manage their work and prepare for client interactions. To promote the firm's thought leadership, three blogs have been established: IP Whiteboard, In Competition and China Law Insight. The aim is to bring ideas to life, convey enthusiasm to readers and engage the firm's audience in dialogue. The blogs represent a significant departure from the firm's traditional alerts and newsletters. This was seen as an important step internally, paving the way strategically and culturally for more extensive use of social media channels. The response from clients and the broader community has been positive and demonstrates that there is clear value in having both regular and timely dialogue on key issues. Driving Efficiency and Thought Leadership with Social and Mobile CASE STUDY: King & Wood Mallesons Watson is IBM's supercomputer that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and sophisticated analytical software and processes at a rate of 80 teraflops per second. To replicate the human ability to answer questions, Watson accesses 90 servers with a combined data store of over 200 million pages of information, which it processes against six million logic rules. In 2011, Watson beat two human experts at the U.S. quiz game "Jeopardy." Since then, it has been used in the medical field where Watson assists doctors in diagnosing and treating patients by analyzing large amounts of unstructured text and developing hypotheses based on that analysis. Major financial institutions are also working with Watson to tackle data-intensive challenges across the financial services sector, including banking, financial planning and investing. For example, Watson is already being used in customer service and as a wealth advisor. To decide what's next for the supercomputer, IBM launched the Watson Academic Case Competition where 100 students participated. They were divided into 24 teams and were given 48 hours to develop a new use for the computer accompanied by a feasible business plan. The winning team suggested that Watson could be used not just to look for evidence for legal departments, but also to predict each piece of evidence's probability of success. Nick Brestoff of International Litigation Services believes that Watson could lead to an imminent rise of "legal informatics" and sophisticated computerized approaches to information management driven by concepts like predictive coding and vector clusters. Jordan Furlong, writing for "Practice Source," suggests that Watson is the final warning to firms to rethink how they acquire and use talent. He paints a future where "... even the most complex legal work will be deconstructed, parts broken out from the whole and assigned to the most effective yet least expensive provider.'' The Rise of the Smart Machine CASE STUDY: IBM's Watson AI Supercomputer

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