Peer to Peer Magazine

58 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | SUMMER 2016 EXTRAS Librarians Creating Value The February 2016 report, "Developing Legal Talent: Stepping into the Future Law Firm," argues that value creation will profoundly affect the talent model and shift it toward those sophisticated in future-focused technologies. Legal librarians and law libraries are vital to value creation and to a firm's future. by Donna Terjesen of Visionary Information Solutions Librarians Creating Value In some cases, a misunderstanding of the library's capabilities to provide added value has caused firms to cut these resources to the bare bones. Law firms must leverage the value that lies in their knowledge resources, align these services with the firms' overall strategic plans and optimize technology choices to transform their libraries into information technology research centers. Advanced Degrees While some libraries languish in pre-21st-century research models, it will become common for library team members to have advanced degrees, e.g., Master of Library Science or Juris Doctor, providing the enhanced skills needed to support today's research strategies. The proliferation of technology choices and the skills required to strategically align them with the firm's overarching business goals will fall within the talent model of tomorrow's research professional, reducing over- and under-purchasing habits. Beyond Outlook and Excel The market shied from two major vendors (LexisNexis and Westlaw) to several niche vendors, including BloombergBNA, Ravel Law, Practical Law, Lex Machina and even Google Scholar. With all this research information available, librarians are having difficulty managing the marked increase in volume and types of requests from aorneys, oen due to their use of Outlook to track reference requests. Many then utilize Excel spreadsheets to track everything. Both programs create a perfect storm of duplicative work and reduced efficiency and knowledge sharing capabilities. Future-focused librarians and information technology leadership must embrace metrics-driven, knowledge sharing platforms, targeting key performance indicators to drive decisions on team utilization, capacity and content platforms and improve billable to non- billable ratios and knowledge sharing benefits. Lawyers are demanding that research and data be presented in actionable packages, not untenable "data dumps" resulting from using Outlook and Excel spreadsheets. Research services should provide analysis and structure to the information. Some technologies firms already use to achieve this are Quatrove, SydneyPlus and Quest. These platforms also provide virtual team management and collaboration tools that eliminate or reduce the effort needed to manage remote teams in various geographic areas. In terms of shiing the talent model, these technologies will: » Enable firms to hire the right resources with the exact skills needed wherever they are » Assist firms as they centralize their services » Break down siloes Tech That Assists, Not Replaces Cognitive computing technologies such as IBM's Watson have shaken up the industry and lend to sensational news headlines in legal. Despite the much-bandied fear that we will all be replaced by robots, platforms such as Neota Logic and Lex Machina are examples of how predictive coding could assist librarians in building beer answers faster for their aorneys. The librarian leaders and information professionals of the future must be business strategists and proficient technologists. A law firm that wants to remain competitive must develop a profoundly new research model that drives optimal value into the delivery of legal services. Utilizing the right technologies, legal libraries will turn into research centers that provide long-lasting value to firms and their clients. P2P

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