Will 2013 be the year of centralised matter management?

What are you going to focus on in the coming year? For the knowledge department at White & Case, 2013 is going to be the year of the matter. And we are not alone.

In an annual survey of KM leaders of large law firms (which will be posted soon here), it became apparent that process improvement, alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) / budgeting / legal process management (LPM) and matter management (among collaboration and search) are the industry’s top priorities. Furthermore, process improvement and AFAs / budgeting / LPM were the categories we spent more effort on in 2012 than we expected.

Historically, knowledge management has been document-centric – creating and collecting documents, filing, profiling and retrieving them – but now we’ve got the ability to manage our knowledge around matters.

While matters are our ‘product’– the service unit that we sell our clients – the legal industry has never before developed a holistic, automated approach to managing matters. Yes, we have partial solutions to managing aspects of matters, including conflicts databases, new business intake workflows, client relationship management (CRM) systems, document management systems (DMSs), billing systems and the like, but we don’t have a single overarching system to manage matters from start to finish.

The benefits of managing matters through a consistent methodology are obvious: reduced risks and greater efficiency, speed and transparency throughout the matter lifecycle. So, why haven’t we in the legal industry come up with this system yet?

There are two reasons: first, because we’ve been able to get along without it. We are a group of highly skilled people who surround ourselves with other highly skilled people, and we can and do tackle tough problems as they come up without the manual. 

The second reason is that, until recently, creating this overarching system was impossible to do. With so many variable elements, we were unable to track and manage everything.

But, by now harnessing our access to growing computing power and our ability to integrate information from different systems, we can do it.

Our foundation is based on three elements:

1. a matter page – a single site that provides access to all matter-related information (we use Recommind’s Decisiv Search module for matters and expertise as the aggregating platform, but other portal platforms can do);
2. a workflow engine – a tool to manage assignments throughout the systems (consider extending the functionality of your existing new business intake system); and
3. plumbing – a data integrator which integrates with and flows information between the different systems (such as IntApp).

These are some of the systems that you should consider integrating:

1. a matter financial dashboard built over a financial data warehouse;
2. an electronic matter file – a collection of documents and emails saved in the DMS, including closing binder collections of final deal documents and your docket collection of court documents and events;
3. matter pathways – a step-by-step guide for junior lawyers on how to run a matter;
4. a work allocation tool, including a lawyer availability indicator;
5. a CRM system – a shared address book, which also stores parties related to each matter;
6. a matter profiling system, which is also used to store post-action review insights;
7. a matter team manager who provides the responsible partner the ability to control and manage the matter team; and
8. news alerts – an aggregate collection of news related to the client and matter.

By connecting all the dots, we can provide our lawyers with simple access to matter information throughout its lifecycle, allowing them to compare related matters for pricing and business development and focus ourselves on the matter at hand: better matter management.