Digital White Papers

36 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Cultivating a Sharing Organization: Incentives That Really Work Structure, Process and Policies: We needed to design all process and credit details to work with the firm's financial program and policies Definitions: We needed to define assessment and prioritization protocols and the roles that KM, management and subject maer experts (SMEs) would play Oversight: How the program would be closely managed needed to be outlined or the program could fail Structuring an internal investment program to operate within a law firm is difficult. The underlying purpose needed to be sufficiently weighty to warrant the program's existence, and determining how the program would be funded and credit provided were critical. Designing the Fledgling Program Initially describing the purpose solely in terms of aiding KM efforts, in 2004 the Venture Fund Program's purpose read: "The purpose of the Venture Fund Program is to provide financial resources, in the form of internal working timekeeper credit, for investment by the Firm in the development of Firm intellectual property. Examples include the creation of practice area forms and practice guides, document assembly and other activities involving the compilation and use of Firm intellectual property." 1 2 3 Rather than set aside a specific dollar amount to fund the program, the firm instead anticipated that the amount allocated would equal a certain percentage of the firm's total projected revenue and would require approval from the board of directors each year. This created an annual check and balance for the firm to verify that the program was delivering benefit to the organization. The firm established a strict set of policies regarding credit that stated: "Working timekeeper credit shall be in the form of both working timekeeper hours and working timekeeper dollars deemed collected at the average firm realization rate applied to each such aorney's standard hourly rate unless an alternative arrangement is agreed to and set forth in the Agreement." Evolving Policy and Structure Additional policies were created in the years following the Venture Fund's inception as new scenarios emerged, with each wrien to protect the firm's investment and manage expectations for projects. Approved projects were limited to relatively narrow topics, and selected timekeepers were determined to have the expertise and ability to successfully complete and maintain projects long-term. Typically, SMEs were identified by leaders within the practice groups. Most projects were expected to be completed with working timekeeper credit within a set dollar range, with no single timekeeper receiving more than a set amount under the program. No credit would be awarded until a project was completed and approved by the department or practice group chair and the chief knowledge officer The Venture Fund Program took a different route by providing both a billable number and attorney credit for time spent on KM projects.

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