An update on the latest projects that enhance Field Fisher Waterhouse’s reputation as an innovator and early adopter of the latest technology.
It is almost a year since Field Fisher Waterhouse (FFW) became the first major law firm to establish a presence on Second Life. The launch of the firm’s virtual office attracted a tremendous amount of media attention, boosting FFW’s brand as an early adopter of cutting-edge technology. Although several other law firms have moved into Second Life, they have not attracted the same level of interest. ‘The fact that we were the first was a fantastic marketing opportunity,’ says Charlotte Bowditch, senior business development manager (corporate IP and technology). ‘In fact, for the first few months afterwards, when anyone else opened up an office on Second Life, we were mentioned too.’
Bowditch explains how Second Life boosts the firm’s brand. ‘We are a leading technology firm with significant strength in intellectual property and new media, and our virtual office gives us the opportunity to demonstrate our skills in these areas. The main type of business that we encounter in Second Life is around intellectual property infringement. So in business terms it makes perfect sense,’ she says. Unlike other businesses, recruitment is not the key focus of FFW’s virtual office, but Bowditch acknowledges that it certainly attracts people to the firm. ‘Although recruitment was not part of our original agenda, it has proved helpful in that respect, because it projects an image that is in line with how we see ourselves – as an innovative and forward thinking firm and an early adopter of the latest technology.’
A virtual platform for business development
Second Life represents an opportunity to conduct real business on a new virtual platform. ‘We saw that developments in technology were changing the way that people were doing business, enabling them to operate in a different space. It presented an ideal opportunity to expand our new media practice,’ says Bowditch. FFW was an early resident of Depo Business Park, owned by Depo Consulting, which specialises in virtual worlds and social media and helped FFW set up the office. Its neighbours now include BDO Stoy Hayward and BBC Film Network. Although the office set up was therefore relatively straightforward, and took just a few weeks, Bowditch acknowledges that early adoption – particularly when it comes to technology – involves a certain amount of business risk. ‘Who knows whether Second Life will exist in five years’ time? However, it was important to get into that space as the virtual market is still growing and evolving.’
FFW’s Second Life presence was the brainchild of technology and new media partner David Naylor. ‘A lot of his clients operate within virtual worlds,’ says Bowditch. ‘He’s also interested in it on a personal level. He saw the opportunity and was keen for the firm to invest the time and money in it.’ And FFW continues to benefit from the fact that it acted immediately on this innovative idea.
The office fulfils a number of useful functions, including supporting pro bono, recruitment and training. Naylor has spoken at several in-world conferences, and the firm is looking to host its own virtual events. Most importantly, it continues to generate significant business ‘The office is attracting high traffic,’ says Bowditch. ‘I went to see David Naylor today and he was in world, dealing with a trade mark infringement matter.’ As well as attracting Second Life clients who are looking for legal advice, FFW also gets queries from existing and potential clients who are considering establishing a Second Life presence and the firm continues to work with Depo on that front. As it has considerable expertise in e-commerce and new media law, its first-hand experience of operating in that space enables it to offer specialist advice to clients looking to explore online business channels and technologies.
Bowditch explains that work arises directly from Second Life. ‘For example, we act for Mind Candy, a virtual world platform developer, on the legal aspects associated with their business. We are also working with a Canadian law firm which is interested in setting up a Second Life office similar to ours,’ she says. The publicity associated with the launch has also attracted business – the firm is perceived globally as occupying that area of expertise. This is reinforced by the fact that Naylor regularly speaks at conferences – both in-world and in person. ‘This attracts a lot of interest that develops business in a number in many areas that we deal with rather than being totally focused on our Second Life presence.’
Second Life also reinforces the firm’s green credentials, simply because its global population and international audience does not have to travel to visit each other or attend in-world conferences. It therefore represents an additional communication tool that is totally flexible as there is no limit to the number of parties to a discussion or debate.
Given the nature of the firm’s work in intellectual property and new media, clients’ ability to visit the Second Life office anonymously (you can choose the appearance and the name of your avatar or online persona), and potential complications due to the fact that Second Life has its own currency (the Linden dollar), potential clients tend to visit the Second Life office with initial queries. When this develops into business, the matter tends to move out of Second Life into the conventional business environment to protect client confidentiality.
In-world training seminars
Bowditch emphasises the importance of keeping the firm’s virtual presence fresh and innovative ‘We are evolving our office so that it doesn’t become static in terms of content,’ she says. ‘We are also planning to move on from training particular clients and addressing in-world conferences and start hosting our own inworld seminars.’ Once again this will put FFW ahead of its Second Life peers. ‘What differentiates us from other law firms in Second Life is that our strategy is lawyer-led rather than IT-led,’ she adds. ‘Our presence is more than a recruitment and marketing exercise. David Naylor is in Second Life every day and that requires serious commitment and a lot of energy.’
According to IT director Paul Heywood, confidentiality is a key consideration when it comes to running in-world client seminars. ‘When you run a conventional seminar, you know who’s attending, but in Second Life, you cannot be certain that your competitors are not attending anonymously,’ he says. This is because people tend not to use their real names on Second Life – for example, David Naylor’s avatar is called Solomon Cortes – and their avatars’ appearances often differ considerably from their own.
This and other factors mean that in-world seminars would need to be the equivalent of open seminars that shared knowhow while protecting client confidentiality and the firm’s position in the market. Heywood and Bowditch agree that this would require the right technology. The benefits would include the ability to attend international seminars without leaving one’s desk. It would also add a new dimension to online training. Knowledge management director Jane Bradbury, who is also responsible for learning and development, observed that it might be a little difficult to accredit CPD training events in Second Life despite the fact that Naylor is currently president of the Second Life Bar Association, which comprises mainly US firms!
However, there is no denying that the virtual world is a significant influence on online training delivery. ‘There is a lot of talk in academic and training circles that in terms of technology, appearance and the whole user experience, the online training experience should replicate or at least match the applications that people use at home and expect to find in the workplace,’ says Bradbury. ‘Our challenge will be to make our online training as engaging as Second Life.’
KnowledgeSearch Google style
Recommind’s implementation of its MindServer technology to create ‘KnowledgeSearch’ at FFW won Technology Implementation of the Year at the 2008 Legal Technology Awards. This sophisticated conceptbased application enables staff to search, access and manage information across internal sources, including its main content repositories such as the document management and practice management systems as well as website, intranet and social software sites and external research sites. Its intuitive Google-style user interface complements Web 2.0 applications with the added advantage that users require little if any training.
KnowledgeSearch results are typically high recall in terms of volume, with impressive relevancy ranking and the ability for users to filter down search results extremely quickly. It also incorporates an automated expertise locator that requires no manual updating. ‘Expertise ranking is based on who has authored documents or conducted transactions,’ Bradbury explains. ‘Experience is also a key factor of expertise, so the system is weighted in favour of partners. As the firm is growing rapidly and expanding into Europe, it is increasingly important to establish who knows what and the software produces that information in a matter of seconds.’ She adds that, for lawyers, free text searching across very wide data sources represents a complete change from the traditional methods of retrieving legal documents: rather than being specific, the Google-type approach casts the net wide and then allows the user to narrow down the results.
The roll-out is now complete and the results so far are good. Bradbury is now looking at ways of utilising the system’s full potential. ‘I am interested in exploring some of the concept searching ideas, particularly around computer intelligence and machine learning, as I believe that we haven’t fully exploited the MindServer technology’s potential.’ She explains that when the application relevancy ranks search results it carries out both a metadata search and a full text search across documents. Within that full text search, the software applies an algorithm that calculates the relative relevancy of each document. ‘Although the relevancy rankings are very good, I believe that there is potential to make them even better,’ she adds.
Supporting expansion across Europe
A key benefit in this respect is that although English is the firm’s business language, KnowledgeSearch operates across different languages – Bradbury has personally tested it in French, German and with some Chinese characters. KnowledgeSearch is currently being rolled out to FFW’s Brussels office, with a view to improving knowledge sharing and collaboration between the firm’s international offices. However, she acknowledges that it will be interesting to find out whether people based in different offices use the technology in different ways.
In the last year FFW has opened offices in Brussels, Hamburg and Paris. These new offices have been tremendously successfully, attracting many lateral hires. The Brussels office has been first to integrate its systems with those in the UK operation and Hamburg and Paris are following that route. ‘The integration of our European offices enables access to information across national borders, which in turn improves communication across all of our offices and practice teams,’ says Heywood. ‘Much of this information we take for granted in London and Manchester but providing efficient access to, for example, our intranet, existing client and matter information and our Knowledge Banks is incredibly helpful to harness the collective experience and combined capabilities of all of our European offices. Getting this integration and collaboration right as we expand into new geographies is absolutely critical for us.’ This is particularly useful in terms of cross-border and international matters.
‘Our teams are always asking for access to knowhow and information that runs across territorial boundaries,’ adds Bradbury. ‘It is important for our lawyers to have access to the very latest information, particularly in practice areas like competition and EU as well as IP and trade mark issues that cover several different jurisdictions.’ Hence the longterm plan is to move towards pan-European integration.
Redesigning the intranet
Heywood and his team are also redesigning the firm’s intranet to reflect its pan-European approach. ‘Until recently, our intranet was very UK-oriented, so we’re looking to redesign it to acknowledge and support our international structure so that all our people can see what different practice areas are doing across the business as well as improving communication across the offices as we expand geographically,’ he says.
The intranet is also moving from static content to a model that allows users to customise their interface. ‘We are always exploring how we can adapt developing technologies to our needs,’ says Bradbury. ‘We are keeping an eye on external websites that have developed recently, such as the BBC site and the iGoogle interface. The idea will be to give people a degree of customisation so that fee-earners and others working in particular business groups and practice areas can pull in the information that they are interested in and obtain updates using RSS feeds, for example. We are also looking at how we can integrate blogs and social software.
Basically, we are trying to replicate people’s personal use of technology in a working environment. This means looking at developing technologies as well as adapting ideas from external websites and applications. A critical success factor is the ability to strike the right balance between push and pull. ‘In a busy environment where people don’t have a lot of time to search things out, information can be pushed to them via RSS feeds. We want to make it easy for users to subscribe and unsubscribe to different resources,’ says Heywood. Bowditch and Bradbury agree that it is crucial to make it easy for people to unsubscribe as their interests change, so that they are not burdened by too many subscriptions. ‘We are focusing on making our internal applications user friendly as we want people to have some control over their desktops rather than constantly pushing information to them,’ adds Bradbury.
Sector-based wikis
Sector-based wikis are another way of supporting the way people work across different practice areas and groups. Bradbury explains that industry sectors generally range across a number of the firm’s departments and practice areas, so FFW is working on establishing wikis and forums covering particular sectors to give people across the firm quick and easy access to the latest information as they require it. ‘We need to provide communication and knowledge sharing tools not only within particular groups, but within sectors,’ she says. ‘For example we have set up a blog on the Companies Acts. We also have different interest groups within the firm. We will shortly be setting up a blog for people who cycle to work and hope that will prove popular, as well as supporting our green credentials.’
Green ambitions
In line with the firm’s green ambitions, Heywood and his team are working on an e-filing project with the aim of reducing paper use, although they acknowledge that any law firm will struggle to switch to an entirely paperless operation. ‘Different practice groups are at various states of readiness for working in a less paper dependent way,’ he says. ‘We are presenting proposals to the board around firmwide policies for storing e-mails centrally, rather than printing and filing them locally. We are currently at the stage where people are storing them electronically, but they also still print them.’ He acknowledges that the challenge is a cultural one and requires a change in people’s behaviour.
‘We audit matters and make sure that everything is filed relatively quickly – perhaps at the end of the day or within a couple of days after they’ve been received,’ says Heywood. ‘The process starts with matter inception, which opens files in Elite and in Worksite. Then as the matter progresses we have to store all relevant documents and e-mails. At the moment it is a drag-and-drop process, but we are considering adding an automatic filing application – it’s a matter of finding the right product,’ says Heywood. He estimates that the project will save FFW around 30% of stored paper. ‘There’s also a specific need in litigation to keep physical documents, so there’s less opportunity to save paper in these areas than in technology and corporate, for example,’ he explains, adding that electronic filing also supports business continuity and file sharing across different locations, so long as the appropriate security measures are in place.
Speech recognition
FFW lawyers have used digital dictation for some time and the firm is now piloting speech recognition software that produces text from voice. This is another time-saving device. ‘Although the text typically requires some editing and formatting, it is still much quicker than having something typed and revised,’ says Heywood. ‘The software is supplied by SRC and interfaces with firm’s existing digital dictation system. It gradually learns your voice until it reaches about 97% accuracy. It also enables people to spend less time at their keyboards as they can dictate straight into their PCs.’ Bradbury adds that this is another example of machine learning leading to greater efficiency.
A learning culture
Learning is a theme that runs through FFW’s IT strategy and its culture – in particular, learning from external organisations and adapting the very latest trends to support the firm’s business as it expands internationally. The projects outlined in this case study fit together into a forward looking IT strategy that includes the early adoption of cutting-edge systems and applications to support the firm’s focus on technology and new media. Clearly this depends on attracting the right people, who are drawn to the firm by its creative use of technology and reputation for innovation, which is showcased in Second Life.
Field Fisher Waterhouse is a legal technology champion that received two awards at the 2008 Legal Technology Awards, winning KM/Information Team of the Year in the City/National firms category and Technology Implementation of the Year for its rollout of Recommind’s cutting-edge search technology.
Jane Bradbury is the knowledge management director, Paul Heywood is the IT director and Charlotte Bowditch is a senior business development manager (corporate IP & technology).