The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/657874
53 WWW.ILTANET.ORG RAMIN VOSOUGH Ramin Vosough is Neudesic's Vice President of Products. He is focused on technology products that advance expertise location and social collaboration globally for law firms and legal departments. Contact Ramin at ramin.vosough@ neudesic.com. MIKE MANNING Mike Manning is Neudesic's Senior Manager of Product Marketing. He is focused on communicating the impact of the company's suite of social collaboration products. Contact him at mike.manning@ neudesic.com or on Twitter @ firm_directory. Beyond the Interruption: Leveraging Expertise Location To Capitalize on Talent FEATURES Email is oen used to fill the technology gap when expertise location capabilities are absent in practice management platforms. A "pardon the interruption" (PTI) message might be sent firmwide or to a select group with the expectation that someone qualified to answer the query will reply, likely at their convenience. "Who has experience litigating claims under the WARN Act or RESPA?" "I need help with intellectual property disputes, aviation law and Florida civil procedures." The entire process includes too many people while simultaneously excluding too many people. Only the sender typically sees the reply, so the information is not indexed or searchable. The next time the need arises to locate intellectual property expertise in a certain state, industry or court affiliation, the same time-consuming and non-billable process repeats itself. Centralized knowledge managers (CKMs) or enterprise search capabilities offer alternatives, adding value but falling short of the smarter practice innovation that firms are keen to embrace. CKMs oen use a combination of their own tools that might include email, spreadsheets, custom applications and enterprise search, and they help firms solve the challenge by shiing the need to identify expertise from billing aorneys to a group of non-billable professionals. Ultimately, the process is still time-consuming and unwieldy, and it can take weeks to uncover the right internal team. Enterprise search options leverage a keyword lookup capability and could include specific filters. Such platforms might also infer experience based on contributions to client notes, maer narratives and other documents, or who billed against a particular client, which oen delivers a high number of false positives in search results. Significant depth in the search experience also equates to a corresponding challenge in deployment, including a hey investment in training. P2P PTI Email Messages and Other Inefficiencies