Legal Technology Journal

Lovells has developed a business tool to support and promote the sharing of information and knowledge internationally, and to support the firm in realising its values.

There was a strong desire from the outset of the project to use technology to rationalise a number of internal information and knowledge repositories into a single searchable system and decentralise content management and support. This was not an attempt to recreate or supersede the content in the source systems, but to ‘surface’ and leverage it through a common platform via internal community, client and matter-centric InterLovells ‘views’.

The business and its values

Lovells is an international legal practice, with over 3,000 people operating from 26 offices in Europe, Asia and the United States. The firm advises many of the world’s largest corporations, financial institutions and government organisations, regularly acting on complex, multi-jurisdictional transactions and commercial disputes.

In the course of 2007, Lovells rolled out a ‘values’ programme across the global business to reflect its strengths and vision for the future. The Lovells values appear on the firm’s website and are:

• clients come first;
• quality in all we do;
• one firm-wide team; and
• commitment to the firm’s success.

The roll-out of InterLovells coincided neatly with the launch of the values programme. InterLovells supports the business to realise the goals of the values programme through facilitating improved communication and the sharing of knowledge, information and key resources across the global practice. InterLovells also supports the bringing together of information about the business’ clients and the lawyers working with them internationally.

Business benefits

The InterLovells initiative brings a number of direct and indirect benefits to the business. Content owners were encouraged to review their information prior to publishing onto InterLovells so there has been significant content rationalisation, both of InterLovells and on ‘Knowledge+’ (Lovells’ legal know-how tool). The implementation is not just a technology initiative but a significant change management project, challenging Lovells’ lawyers and support teams to ‘think internationally’ and significantly increase the transparency of key information (organisational charts, team strategies, client engagement terms, etc).

Strategy and project objectives

Lovells’ strategy is to bring together the global practices’ core knowledge and information resources into a single searchable business tool, accessible internationally, with local content management and support. The objectives of the project included:

• Enabling Lovells to respond to a global and dynamic client base by strengthening the international service and facilitating access to key legal and business resources.
• Supporting practice areas and support departments to work internationally.
• Supporting other international communities of practice, eg trainees, (professional support lawyers.
• Bringing together information about clients, matters and the lawyers working with them.
• Supporting and improving communications internationally, across practice and support areas. • Enabling communities, such as committees and informal groups, to publish, maintain and share material.
• Decentralising content management, with local content ‘owners’, publishers and technical and content support.
• Facilitating the internal referral of business and promoting capabilities within each of the business’s offices and practice areas.
• Streamlining business processes and procedures to create efficiencies and reduce risk through the capture and improved dissemination of key information, eg letters of engagement, office policies and procedures.
• Facilitating the internal capture of and simplified access to relevant external information including news feeds.

The technology

Sydney Plus’s ‘LawPort’ was selected from a shortlist of products as the delivery mechanism for InterLovells to replace the firm’s intranets and existing legal know-how system, called ‘Total Access’. Lovells enhanced the portal product with functionality to meet the requirements of the global practice by including integration with Tikit’s ‘KHS’ product, called ‘Knowledge+’ internally. The knowledge management (KM) team took the opportunity to review the content of the business’ legal know-how system and significantly reduced its content by focusing the system on core know-how materials such as model, advice and example documents only and changing the delivery mechanism for other materials such as legal updates so that these are now published by content owners directly to InterLovells.

Content feeds and data integration

Content feeds and integration from Lovells Knowledge+ and finance systems use the business’ shared taxonomy to accurately distribute and integrate content across InterLovells. The bespoke design of the feed mapping system developed to Lovells’ specification allows for site architecture changes to be rapidly implemented (for example following changes to practice area focus). The bespoke taxonomy has been developed using Tikit’s ‘Classification Manager’ software, uses pre-existing classifications where extant (eg Elite ‘work types’) and allows consistent content classification across systems including Knowledge+ and InterLovells.

InterLovells indexes content held within Knowledge+ to enable searching directly from the InterLovells desktop. Content is mapped to practice area sites based on content classifications. Matter information can also be presented on practice community sites based on mapped ‘work type’ codes and users can immediately see all lawyers who have recorded time to a particular client and matter within the system.

The roll-out

Following a successful international pilot in November and December 2006 involving Amsterdam, Brussels and London users, the roll-out commenced in January 2007 with an aggressive roll-out programme. Since April, InterLovells and Knowledge+ have been launched to New York, Chicago, Paris, London, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Alicante, Madrid, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore, Beijing, Dubai and Ho Chi Minh.

The London roll-out programme involved 11 auditorium sessions of up to 100 people and launches were phased by practice stream and support area. The roll-out in Germany, led by the local Lovells know-how manager and supported by the London KM team, involved 28 presentations across four offices over a two-week period. Launches across the Asia region coincided with presentations at the Asia Regional Conference and involved a number of face-to-face and remote sessions run from Hong Kong across the region.

Office launches have been supported by e-learning tools developed by Lovells’ KM team, electronic communications, promotional materials, launch packs, and presentations to all staff involving local managing partners, regional coordinators and wherever possible, the international knowhow manager.

InterLovells and Knowledge+ were launched to the Asia region in September 2007 and we now have in excess of 3,200 users internationally. The global roll-out is due to complete in December 2007. There are now over 250 content publishers across the business and in excess of 12,000 items published directly to the system. In August, there were over 300,000 unique user visits. Throughout 2007, we have found that our usage figures consistently outnumber the users that we have formally rolled out to, indicating that users are forwarding links and sharing the portal with colleagues and demonstrating the perceived value of InterLovells resources. We have also seen the number of visits per user steadily increase each month.

Content development streams

In parallel with the launches to Lovells’ offices, there have been a number of ‘streams’ of content development activity led by the KM team and supported by regional coordinators and content owners for each community. These include the development of a number of InterLovells content views.

Firm-wide view

The firm-wide view contains information relevant to the entire Lovells community including information about the business, its clients, firm-wide events, values, press releases, news feeds, guides and manuals. This is the default home page for all communities within Lovells and promotes international knowledge sharing and communication.

Office views

Office views support the local community by providing access to office policies, information about events and new starters in the office, sports and social events, visitor information (eg local maps, hotel information, etc) and promoting jurisdiction capabilities through an ‘About Us’ section. Local managing partners, office managers and other key local staff were involved in the development of office sites.

International business support area views

International business support area views (incorporating data from existing content repositories) include both ‘outward’ facing content (for users outside the department) such as organisational charts, newsletters and service information and ‘internal’ content, such as best-practice manuals, which are also captured to facilitate the smooth running of support departments internationally.

Practice area views

Practice area views are a key aspect of InterLovells and are the subject of ongoing development. Practice views include practice area news, key practice materials including core know-how from Knowledge+, information about the international team, training, legal updates and newsletters, etc. An ongoing programme of content development and migration is being managed by the KM team, in consultation with a number of interested parties internationally.

Promotion

The InterLovells programme has involved significant promotional activity, both within and outside of the business. At key stages of the project, announcements were made in both the global and local bulletins in order to ensure that stakeholders and other interested parties were kept abreast of developments including the proposed roll-out schedule. The KM team, supported by business development, developed branded electronic communications with links to core materials, which were used to support launches to offices and other communities.

Promotional materials were placed on staff canteen tables at staff Christmas lunches in 2006 and branded placemats were used in the London office staff restaurant to coincide with the London office launch. Branded pens, booklets containing enduser guides and support materials, quick reference cards and posters in coffee areas were also used to support the launch and internal branding exercise.

InterLovells was shortlisted for the Legal Technology Awards 2007 ‘Technology Implementation of the Year’ and has been nominated for the British Legal Awards ‘Best Use of Technology’ award.

Successes

We believe that we have adopted a flexible and highly innovative approach to the InterLovells roll-out, which has resulted in a very successful implementation. Some of the key implementation innovations include:

• Specifying functionality to enable each user to see by default only relevant content through office location filters.
• Creating a business taxonomy and legal classification system to support the management of data in a number of jurisdictions and across a number of Lovells systems.
• Streamlined publisher training processes which are led by content owners and supported by technology training team and a community view containing frequently asked questions and other key resources.

Knowledge management

Encouraging international communication and collaboration on knowledge and other business initiatives.

Supporting Lovells’ wider corporate social responsibilities, including charitable and pro bono work, commitment to diversity and community based initiatives;

• Integrating with Knowledge+, containing core legal know-how.
• Appointing ‘regional coordinators’ and embedding InterLovells key roles across the business.
• Developing a user survey to enable feedback to be captured and requirements built into a ‘Quick Wins’ programme and future development needs.
• E-learning tools and guides (also in German and French) produced by the Know-how team and regional coordinators.
• The range of promotional materials used to support the rollout and office launches.
• Incorporating newsfeeds to support community requirements.
• Usage reporting defined at user and document level to inform further content development and promotional decisions.

Conclusion

InterLovells has been delivered successfully by a committed and dedicated team in accordance with an aggressive roll-out schedule.

It has been a significant and successful organisational change management project whereby the KM team worked to support communities across all functions of the global organisation. Lovells has moved away from traditional ways of accessing information, challenging cross-team and international approaches to working and significantly increasing the visibility of information to business users. We have received a very positive reception from the Lovells user base and provided support for Lovells’ broader strategic initiatives. InterLovells is a key and increasingly preferred method of communication and a platform from which to review and assess how certain types of information are managed, disseminated and used across the firm, eg newsletters, legal updates and images. We are now embarking on the first editorial programme to highlight firm-wide initiatives, eg pro bono activities, showcasing the work of various departments and highlighting regional capabilities.

According to Philippe Thomas, Lovells’ Paris managing partner: ‘InterLovells is a very promising tool that will, in the months and years to come, make itself invaluable by ensuring that all types of information are shared throughout the firm. This will inevitably contribute to the firm’s success and, amongst staff, increase the sense of belonging to one firmwide team.’

Justin Harness is the international know-how manager at Lovells.