IT @ Morrison & Foerster: Lessons Learned from Retail.
Many
knowledge management professionals say that KM is 80% process and 20%
technology. Perhaps true but if honored, requires often unrealistic
cultural changes. A new article about work at Morrison & Foerster
illustrates how applying modern software creatively can achieve
important KM goals.
IT @ Morrison & Foerster: Lessons Learned from Retail (free registration required)
in Law Technology News (December 2005) describes how MoFo provides
“relevant search results in a fast and easy way.” Three key insights
drove the work at the firm:
1. Attorneys need context to use precedents
2. Attorneys use precedents to find experienced lawyers
3. Attorneys demand simple and relevant systems
To
meet these needs, the firm wanted a system to “identify hidden and
explicit contextual information from multiple sources and automatically
make inferences..” MoFo selected a federated search system and supports
drawing valuable inferences by collecting more detailed information
about matters and by profiling documents automatically.
Oz
has demonstrated this system to other large law firms and the consensus
is that this is one of the most innovative approaches today. (I am not
disinterested however because I helped Oz Benamram, the practice
resources attorney at MoFo, write this article.)
[Strategic Legal Technology]