The nominees are Thompson Coburn, Seyfarth Shaw and Pillsbury Winthrop.
[These are my notes from the International Legal Technology Association’s 2012 Conference 2012. Since I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error. Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]
NOTES:
- Thompson Coburn File Manager. They used SharePoint 2010 to replace their legacy records management system, provide email management, create matter team sites for every matter, and create a DMS-ready interface. They also wanted to use FAST inside AND outside SharePoint. They moved over 4 million files, 3 million of which were email in their records system.
- Seyfarth Shaw TeamSites. Their SharePoint focus is to support their market-leading Seyfarth Lean and project management efforts. This included comprehensive task management capabilities, self-serve provisiioning with limited IT or administrative involvement, and it needed to be “wickedly easy to use.” They built using SharePoint 2010, Telerik (he says it’s a great product), Microsoft .net and Recommind. They provide a list of maters with “stop light” reporting to show tasks are outstanding. They are able in this way to aggegate in one place each attorney’s data-specific information. They have one site of clients, one site for matters and one site for projects. While lots of webparts are available, they don’t display them fully until the user tries to use tha webpart to add content. This is how they limit webpart sprawl. Seyfarth launched Teamsites in four months. The work was done by a single developer. (Other law firms in the room want to hire him!)
- Pillsbury Winthrop’s Pulse. This project started as an intranet redesign effort. 93% of their sites are dynamic, they used unique interface and design elements, and super-fast search. Finally, they were careful to orient the the sites so that they are personalized. To begin user engagement early, they invited the firm to help name the internet. Engagement was high — they received 1700 entries. Through metadata, they provide a personalized view to each user. In addition, the user can tailor the page. However, while a lawyer can hide information on the weather or stock market, but cannot hide their timekeeper dashboard. They consulted with eSentio to figure out how to make all their sites dynamic. This means that adding a webpart to one site adds it to all other sites, as necessary. Their user profiles marry and display information from PeopleSoft and SharePoint My Site. The profiles include presence information via Lync. Their Marketing Department provided excellent graphic design.
Above and Beyond KM 