Alaw firm’s portal can be many things. It can be the platform for firm communications, a

window into all the various tools and applications lawyers need, or a glorified bulletin board. But a good portal starts with vision.

Through a series of mergers, Reed Smith LLP had grown tremendously, almost quadrupling in size from 2003 to 2009, with approximately 40 per cent of the firm’s now nearly 1,600 lawyers outside the United States. Greg Jordan

(Reed Smith’s global managing partner) knew the firm needed something better than its legacy, home-grown intranet to provide the central point of firm communications and news. He had a vision for the portal and was eager to see it come to life. As Greg put it, he wanted it to be “… like The Wall Street Journal; if I don’t read it every couple of days, I feel like I’m missing something.” Along with providing a more robust solution for firm communications, the firm needed its intranet to provide a better way for lawyers to access

information and to mine knowledge from the new global platform of lawyers that had been created. Reed Smith was keen to solve these core challenges with the portal project. Our team began the redesign in Spring 2008. Most projects of this sort take at least 12 months, but we were on a more aggressive timetable.

The journey beginsAt the inception of our project we had written a high-level list of project requirements and had hired

Business intelligence

By Tom Baldwin, chief knowledge officer, Reed Smith LLP

Granting spaceReed Smith wanted its new, award-winning intranet to drive greater firm-wide usage through screen appearances that were carefully tailored to an individual’s priorities.

Case study: Reed Smith LLP

www.mpmagazine.com 23

This article was first published in Managing Partner, Volume 12, Issue 8.

a consultant, Justin North at Janders Dean International, to help us gather and document requirements. In addition, we spent time formulating personas. As we wanted the portal to look and act differently based on who was accessing it, we needed to build personas based on role (partner, associate, paralegals, secretary, and so on), practice group and location. The end result helped us to determine which features and tools would be dynamically presented to the user based on the intersection of those three factors, without the user having to do anything. We interviewed more than 100 lawyers and staff from across the globe to define our requirements and personas. To help get excitement and awareness going, we also held a firm-wide contest for the name of the portal. 'ouRSpace' was the winner.

During our persona design meetings, people expressed frustration with the old intranet, in particular that much of what was displayed on the home page wasn’t meaningful to them. We discussed the use of a MySite (a site where users can customize their own screen displays) to address this issue, but while helpful on the surface, few people indicated that they would take advantage of it. So in order to provide relevant information and a ‘custom’ experience, we wanted ouRSpace to rely heavily on targeting content to users based on their role, practice and office; ensuring that what people were presented with on the home page would be deemed

important to them and would drive continued usage.

During the process, and based on our requirements, we then determined that the best technology for us to use was Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, commonly known as MOSS (or just SharePoint 2007). MOSS was already part of our license agreement with Microsoft. It was a technology platform that would be easy for the IT development staff to learn quickly, and virtually every vendor of legal software had built integration projects using MOSS. We also knew we wanted to use Recommind for our enterprise search and expertise location needs. The firm had a need for more robust video-playing capabilities, so we also decided to have a video player included in ouRSpace using Microsoft’s Silverlight video-streaming technology. We also

determined we wanted to have a bespoke interface built for MOSS; one that would simplify the way people navigated the site and maximize the space available for content. Consequently, our concept was a rather radical departure from the native design of MOSS, completely eliminating the left navigation bar and creating one master horizontal navigation bar. This would make navigation much simpler for users, as they would only have one place to go. Moreover, it would free up space on each site page to deliver additional content.

The persona design and requirements-gathering process took several months. Along the way it

became clear we also wanted a few additional things that hadn’t been built yet for the legal industry. We knew our project was going to be innovative, but challenging to complete within the timeframe. By August 2008 we had completed a request for proposal, however, and sent it out to two niche vendors that were specialists in implementing MOSS for law firms. This is a crucial point. There has been a lot of speculation that firms can easily implement MOSS without outside help, and this is simply not the case. Even having been part of the first law firm implementation of MOSS in the world at my last firm, and possessing a lot of prior experience with portals, I felt we still needed the help of an outside vendor. (If you decide to go without a vendor, it’s certainly possible to have a functioning portal, but it’s not likely to meet all your needs.)

In September 2008 we decided to engage XMLAW, now part of Thomson Reuters, to help assist us with our portal project. On top of the core vision we had for ouRSpace, we wanted to really simplify the user experience, while at the same time to provide a portal with an unprecedented level of technological sophistication. We felt XMLAW had the right blend of people, experience and technology to help make our vision a reality.

October 2008 then signaled the beginning of the project, and we targeted a global go-live date within five months, by February 2009. While XMLAW provided the core tools, a team of developers and project management, it did also pull in a few other groups to help. We worked with Monochrome Design, based in London, to assist us with the user interface design, and with Dot Net Solutions, also in London, to help with the Silverlight video player. By the time we were finished, ouRSpace would shake up the industry and present features never before seen in a law firm portal.

Case study: Reed Smith LLP

In order to provide relevant information and a ‘custom’ experience, we wanted ouRSpace to rely heavily on targeting content to users based on their role, practice and office; ensuring that what people were presented with on the home page would be deemed important to them.

24 February 2010

One of the things we wanted to do was make existing content and tools easier to get to. The personas we had earlier developed helped to guide our efforts to deliver targeted tools and resources. Here’s a sampling of key features in ouRSpace:

The design has been fully

customized to remove out-of-the-box MOSS navigation. Custom interface includes use of .Net, Silverlight and Ajax. In Figure 1 you can see that we created a time zone calculation tool for all

our offices across the globe. This delivers targeted content to users based on the intersection of their practice group or administrative department; title (partner, associate, etc.); timekeeper status; and office;The ouRSpace home page (Figure

2), which is what users see when they log in. The ‘My Resources’ section shows different tabs based on user role. For instance, partners see firm level financials by default, associates see working timekeeper stats by default, and staff see frequently used tools related to travel schedules, course enrollment in the firm’s university program, and booked conference rooms. Within the management corner, blog entries are also targeted so that not everyone sees the same items;We replaced the native MOSS

search engine and integrated Recommind’s Mind Server Legal, which provides a robust search engine for locating work product and experience from Autonomy/iManage, WestKM documents, lawyer bios, experience and time notes, and SharePoint content.Recommind “Lawyer Experience

Search”, which has been one of our biggest ‘wow’ factors since the launch of ouRSpace. The search finds lawyers experienced with discrete legal and business issues, as well as lawyers who have appeared before a particular judge, arbitrator, mediator, or opposing counsel. Experience is derived from a variety of sources listed below in order of their weighting/rank (i.e., we rank documents as the most important source):

Documents in Digital File

(Autonomy/iManage);Time notes (i.e., how people

described the work they did when they were entering their time in DTE);

Case study: Reed Smith LLP

Figure 1. The time zone calculation tool.

Figure 2. The ouRSpace home page.

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Matter name and description

(for those instances in which the lawyer is either the responsible or billing lawyer);Lawyer bio (which already

combines standard bio language with a skills/experience database).

As we rely on multiple sources, the experience is continually evolving, based on the actual work a lawyer is doing and relies very little on bios, which are frequently dated and tend to over or underreport a lawyer’s actual experience. Because of our rapid growth and geographic footprint, being able to mine and retrieve experience across Reed Smith more easily was a huge business driver for us, and this system helps deliver that information.Single point of entry is integrated

with line of business applications

Case study: Reed Smith LLP

including Elite (through DataMagic for reporting), DTE, Interwoven, DataMagic, ProLaw and others;Greatly improved client/matter

search allows people to search, not just by client/matter name, number, status, originating office, etc., but also by practice area, industry, and fees billed (with ability to enter a range). With demand for fixed-fee and other alternative billing arrangements, this tool can assist us with budgeting as we can now find similar matters and the costs involved without any extra work or data collection by lawyers;Dynamic creation of aggregated

client/matter pages containing a financial snapshot, including projected and billable time; billing and collection information; cash receipts stats; RSS news feeds; top matters by fees generated; recent matters; documents from Interwoven; calendar entries from

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ProLaw (where appropriate), and so on;Provides access to the most

frequently used administrative content and tools (from HR, accounting, marketing, etc.), based on statistical analysis of the former intranet (as well as input from the requirements-gathering interviews);Firm directory, which allows

users to search on multiple criteria and links to bio/experience. The prototype was created for a visual firm directory that dynamically shows an organisation chart with reporting relationships to help people learn more about the firm’s structure;Significant use of streaming

video and blogs as “friendlier” ways of communicating to large constituencies. The firm has embraced video as a vehicle for delivering short messages. It has

A good portal starts with vision, is executed with the right expectations, and is viewed as an ever-changing system in need of ongoing care and

feeding to ensure maximum adoption.

of our lawyers have tried the Recommind search tool, but only 42 percent of the partners in a particular office for which we provided a demo recently had tried it. So instead of doing a generic demo of ouRSpace, we were able to focus our efforts on things we knew they weren’t using, but should be.

As it turned out, and as is the case with most portal projects, we gathered many more features and requests than we could fit into the project timeframe. This isn’t to say that these were bad ideas, but we had to prioritise them, communicate to everyone that we’d eventually get to them, and then follow through. Two of the biggest problems many firms encounter are where to draw the line, and then getting management support on that line. If we had tried to accommodate all the good requests we’d received during the requirements-gathering for our initial rollout, it would have been one and a half years of development work. By then, much of it would also no longer have been relevant. It’s better to go live with the essentials, and then iteratively add new functionality as you go. This gives your users an opportunity to see how the system actually works and give you feedback, rather than trying to dream up requirements without the benefit of having worked with the system. Taking this route will get you up and running sooner, with crisper requirements and users that are better informed.

Firm communications have changed because of ouRSpace. I was guardedly optimistic that the blogging feature

for firm management would take hold. Greg Jordan led the way by example and blogs religiously. That set the tone for the rest of the firm, and we now have blogs for almost everyone on the senior management team, many practice group leaders, several office managing partners, and leaders of various firm

initiatives like our diversity and inclusion team and women’s initiative. Everyone looks at those blogs regularly for firm news from management.

To be successful, you need to:

Understand your audience;

Dare to be different while still

remembering your core vision and requirements;Have support from

senior management;Be realistic about what you can

achieve and how quickly you can achieve it;Bring in the right outside

expertise, and;Never stop driving awareness

and adoption of the system. A good portal starts with vision, is executed with the right expectations, and is viewed as an ever-changing system in need of ongoing care and feeding to ensure maximum adoption.

Tom Baldwin is the chief knowledge officer at Reed Smith. He can be contacted at: tbaldwin@reedsmith.com

been used to announce major news and initiatives, for lawyer testimonials regarding firm technologies (including ouRSpace itself), and largely for lateral lawyers’ self-introduction. We routinely have lateral hires video a two-to-three-minute introduction of not just their experience, but also a little about themselves personally. These help to supplement the reduction in face-to-face meetings and provide a sense of global community – particularly when combined with blogs, which also include a headshot and help ‘put a face to a name’.Aggregates the various newsfeeds

and e-mail alerts lawyers get from Ozmosys, Westlaw, and other news sources to help reduce email clutter.

Getting it used tooWhile ouRSpace contains many great and new features, simply rolling it out didn’t guarantee our lawyers and staff would use it, however – nor that it would be viewed as meeting everyone’s needs right from the start.

While many were happy with ouRSpace, many also acknowledged that it was different from our old intranet and took getting used to. We provided high-level overviews, but we knew that wouldn’t be enough. With all the new features, we didn’t want to rely on lawyer’s intuition to figure it all out, but getting lawyers into training is not easy, so we had to be creative about our approach. One of the main ways we achieved this was by piggybacking on the existing monthly meetings of practice groups or offices. We began (and still conduct) 10-to-15-minute targeted sessions aimed at the group to which we are talking. We’ll typically analyse the usage of that group, and know those things that they may not be using or taking advantage of in advance. Analysing usage stats and having baselines to compare against is the key. For example, we know that across the firm, 94 per cent

28 February 2010

Case study: Reed Smith LLP

The firm has embraced video as a vehicle for delivering short messages. It has been used to announce major news and initiatives, for lawyer testimonials regarding firm technologies (including ouRSpace itself), and largely for lateral lawyers’ self introduction.