Integration In the Cloud

I returned from a forum sponsored by The International Legal Technology Association (“ILTA”) on Enterprise Search last fall in Chicago armed with examples of what three global firms were implementing for their people-finder, intranets and search platforms. In the consumer market, these aspects make up the fastest-growing online networks. We wanted to implement a similar platform for our firm and clients. We looked at how Google searches across billions of pieces of information daily, and how Facebook shares information person-to-person in subtle intuitive ways so effectively that it crosses all borders. What if one could combine these two within an organization and leverage the knowledge-sharing aspects?

It was recently pointed out to me that the combination of Google Buzz, Profiler and facial recognition with Picasa could immediately give an organization our size a social media concept from which we could work. It turned out to be the answer I was looking for.

Consumer Markets: The
Decentralized Approach to Knowledge Sharing

Armed with this path forward, we faced the challenge of integrating this approach into our firm's culture and processes. Although our organization is small (12 offices, all in California), we face the same issues as large firms, especially as it relates to connectivity consistency with our managing attorneys, associates and clients. How can we provide a clear and consistent message to our clients and communicate as effectively as possible lacking face-to-face contact? When I worked in the corporate world, it was quite common to work extremely closely with a team and clients that I didn't meet for years. Those organizations had information management and websites put in place that would bridge this gap, and still make connectivity between tens of thousands of employees relatively seamless. I learned that the larger the organization, the more important it is to have a seamless sites experience, for the outside customer, the internal organization and the immediate team. When building our path forward with B&B, we tried to mirror those lessons. Clearly, I thought, a centralized approach to knowledge-sharing would be the best way. I was wrong.

It's the decentralized approach to knowledge-sharing that's driving the success of Facebook and Twitter. These are media built purely for connecting people with people, and people with information. So how can a decentralized approach to knowledge-sharing be implemented effectively without leading to regime change and uprising within a law firm? The answer for B&B is in the collaborative nature of Google Sites for the Enterprise, bridged with a host of products I'm convinced will change the face of how we approach business for the better.

It Isn't About the Cloud, It's About the Intranet

Google is B&B's intranet, period. So while firms look at e-mail, document management, automation, SharePoint-like features, enterprise search and business-intelligence apps, I look at making all of these solutions work through Google Apps. All of our business is run through a single sign-on “secure” intranet. (“Secure” is a relative term, of course, and a topic unto itself.) Our main challenge in integrating our firm's culture into these processes and making it successful is integrating these products into our collaborative intranet.

Another challenge is integrating third-party business intelligence tools into this collaborative platform. Evolving platforms are where the industry is moving, however it hasn't yet completely arrived. While there are a host of excellent third-party business intelligence solutions available, their drawback is in traditional static product upgrades (i.e., buy our latest version, while we work on the latest and greatest version that you'll need to buy again, available in three years). Rather than be trapped by third-party tools that do not evolve on a monthly basis, I'm trying ' with mixed success ' to bridge third-party business intelligence into our environment. The challenge is to maintain the integrity of a new way of thinking about how we share information.

Reshaping the Approach To
Information Within the Enterprise

Many businesses still run on a platform where they want to see where their information is stored. I prefer Google's method of information sharing. You don't care where it is, you just search for it. Social media sites allow users to focus a community into a specific area. Our knowledge management library is being built off this same concept, as is the document management platform the firm is putting together and our sites-sharing and automation. We're creating a forum of practice experts into a medium where they can all comment and focus within their area of expertise.

The most difficult and groundbreaking path forward for us is in sharing these same processes with our clients. In creating our extranets, will we give our clients the opportunity to comment in forums, like our approaches to the case, and hone in on areas of focus they'd like to target? What challenges will this place on alternate fee agreements and the billable hour as the medium moves toward this level of transparency? This is the level of integration our firm is looking to achieve as we look to the immediate future.

Social Media Application Q&As

As B&B introduced and integrated Google Apps into our business, we developed what is internally referred to as the social media integration technology litmus test. For firms that might be considering a similar move, here are some “Q&As,” taken directly from B&B's first-hand experience.

Question: Will the applications you're investigating integrate with your cloud-hosted collaboration system as seamlessly as apps with your preferred social media technology?

Answer: As Google applies social media-driven technology within its interface, it's constantly evolving to stay ahead of its competition. The Google Apps marketplace provides an opportunity for vendors to integrate and innovate. Our answer at B&B is yes, but the timeline and logistics in integrating third-party legal vendors is a challenge.

Question: Are these applications as intuitive to use as social media applications?

Answer: As development and support resources are outsourced to Google, our users' main focus is on change management when applying our firm to the Google front-end interface, and vice versa. Weekly training on the platform within our departments and practice groups ensure easy adaptation to intuitive use.

Question: Will these applications allow both a centralized and decentralized approach to change management?

Answer: Yes, and it is one of our great challenges: How to effectively implement change management and maintain responsibility within our environment using such an intuitive, transparent interface in knowledge sharing, both internally and externally.

Question: Are vendors behind these applications placing themselves competitively to ensure long-term innovation in the collaborative cloud and the legal vertical?

Answer: Yes, Google is competing with social media-driven technology in the consumer market, and with Microsoft and others in the Enterprise market. This creates a platform for the firm to utilize that is collaborative, efficient, knowledge-sharing and forward thinking.

Conclusion

The evolving collaborative platform creates unique benefits and challenges to the legal industry. At B&B, we're experiencing the challenges that a first mover faces integrating within this medium, primarily in third-party integration. In some ways, the evolving collaborative platform innovates so quickly and intuitively that adaptation occurs faster and easier than anticipated. In other ways, the collaborative platform still needs the integration of third-party legal players to make it a fully seamless transition for larger law firms to consider a move. These platform integrations are inevitable, but stretch out far longer now than they will once all of the players are in motion.

Is there risk in balancing these time frames? Sure, but no organization can fully evolve forward without risk. Our cost/benefit analysis clearly illustrates the benefits our organization and clients face in integrating with evolving collaborative cloud platforms now. In my opinion, integrating with social media-driven collaborative cloud technology is something consumers, businesses and the legal industry will continue to embrace, come to terms with, and negotiate through in the years to come.

One of the greatest challenges any organization can face is the integration of evolving technology into its culture, practice and processes. At Bradford & Barthel (“B&B”), our main challenges in this regard have focused on the adaptation of Google Apps within our environment and business model.

With no clear roadmap to follow other than initiatives for change management, we looked at social media-driven technology and the way knowledge is shared on those sites.

Social Media: Integration And Knowledge-Sharing At Your Fingertips

I returned from a forum sponsored by The International Legal Technology Association (“ILTA”) on Enterprise Search last fall in Chicago armed with examples of what three global firms were implementing for their people-finder, intranets and search platforms. In the consumer market, these aspects make up the fastest-growing online networks. We wanted to implement a similar platform for our firm and clients. We looked at how Google searches across billions of pieces of information daily, and how Facebook shares information person-to-person in subtle intuitive ways so effectively that it crosses all borders. What if one could combine these two within an organization and leverage the knowledge-sharing aspects?

It was recently pointed out to me that the combination of Google Buzz, Profiler and facial recognition with Picasa could immediately give an organization our size a social media concept from which we could work. It turned out to be the answer I was looking for.

Consumer Markets: The
Decentralized Approach to Knowledge Sharing

Armed with this path forward, we faced the challenge of integrating this approach into our firm's culture and processes. Although our organization is small (12 offices, all in California), we face the same issues as large firms, especially as it relates to connectivity consistency with our managing attorneys, associates and clients. How can we provide a clear and consistent message to our clients and communicate as effectively as possible lacking face-to-face contact? When I worked in the corporate world, it was quite common to work extremely closely with a team and clients that I didn't meet for years. Those organizations had information management and websites put in place that would bridge this gap, and still make connectivity between tens of thousands of employees relatively seamless. I learned that the larger the organization, the more important it is to have a seamless sites experience, for the outside customer, the internal organization and the immediate team. When building our path forward with B&B, we tried to mirror those lessons. Clearly, I thought, a centralized approach to knowledge-sharing would be the best way. I was wrong.

It's the decentralized approach to knowledge-sharing that's driving the success of Facebook and Twitter. These are media built purely for connecting people with people, and people with information. So how can a decentralized approach to knowledge-sharing be implemented effectively without leading to regime change and uprising within a law firm? The answer for B&B is in the collaborative nature of Google Sites for the Enterprise, bridged with a host of products I'm convinced will change the face of how we approach business for the better.

It Isn't About the Cloud, It's About the Intranet

Google is B&B's intranet, period. So while firms look at e-mail, document management, automation, SharePoint-like features, enterprise search and business-intelligence apps, I look at making all of these solutions work through Google Apps. All of our business is run through a single sign-on “secure” intranet. (“Secure” is a relative term, of course, and a topic unto itself.) Our main challenge in integrating our firm's culture into these processes and making it successful is integrating these products into our collaborative intranet.

Another challenge is integrating third-party business intelligence tools into this collaborative platform. Evolving platforms are where the industry is moving, however it hasn't yet completely arrived. While there are a host of excellent third-party business intelligence solutions available, their drawback is in traditional static product upgrades (i.e., buy our latest version, while we work on the latest and greatest version that you'll need to buy again, available in three years). Rather than be trapped by third-party tools that do not evolve on a monthly basis, I'm trying ' with mixed success ' to bridge third-party business intelligence into our environment. The challenge is to maintain the integrity of a new way of thinking about how we share information.

Reshaping the Approach To
Information Within the Enterprise

Many businesses still run on a platform where they want to see where their information is stored. I prefer Google's method of information sharing. You don't care where it is, you just search for it. Social media sites allow users to focus a community into a specific area. Our knowledge management library is being built off this same concept, as is the document management platform the firm is putting together and our sites-sharing and automation. We're creating a forum of practice experts into a medium where they can all comment and focus within their area of expertise.

The most difficult and groundbreaking path forward for us is in sharing these same processes with our clients. In creating our extranets, will we give our clients the opportunity to comment in forums, like our approaches to the case, and hone in on areas of focus they'd like to target? What challenges will this place on alternate fee agreements and the billable hour as the medium moves toward this level of transparency? This is the level of integration our firm is looking to achieve as we look to the immediate future.

Social Media Application Q&As

As B&B introduced and integrated Google Apps into our business, we developed what is internally referred to as the social media integration technology litmus test. For firms that might be considering a similar move, here are some “Q&As,” taken directly from B&B's first-hand experience.

Question: Will the applications you're investigating integrate with your cloud-hosted collaboration system as seamlessly as apps with your preferred social media technology?

Answer: As Google applies social media-driven technology within its interface, it's constantly evolving to stay ahead of its competition. The Google Apps marketplace provides an opportunity for vendors to integrate and innovate. Our answer at B&B is yes, but the timeline and logistics in integrating third-party legal vendors is a challenge.

Question: Are these applications as intuitive to use as social media applications?

Answer: As development and support resources are outsourced to Google, our users' main focus is on change management when applying our firm to the Google front-end interface, and vice versa. Weekly training on the platform within our departments and practice groups ensure easy adaptation to intuitive use.

Question: Will these applications allow both a centralized and decentralized approach to change management?

Answer: Yes, and it is one of our great challenges: How to effectively implement change management and maintain responsibility within our environment using such an intuitive, transparent interface in knowledge sharing, both internally and externally.

Question: Are vendors behind these applications placing themselves competitively to ensure long-term innovation in the collaborative cloud and the legal vertical?

Answer: Yes, Google is competing with social media-driven technology in the consumer market, and with Microsoft and others in the Enterprise market. This creates a platform for the firm to utilize that is collaborative, efficient, knowledge-sharing and forward thinking.

Conclusion

The evolving collaborative platform creates unique benefits and challenges to the legal industry. At B&B, we're experiencing the challenges that a first mover faces integrating within this medium, primarily in third-party integration. In some ways, the evolving collaborative platform innovates so quickly and intuitively that adaptation occurs faster and easier than anticipated. In other ways, the collaborative platform still needs the integration of third-party legal players to make it a fully seamless transition for larger law firms to consider a move. These platform integrations are inevitable, but stretch out far longer now than they will once all of the players are in motion.

Is there risk in balancing these time frames? Sure, but no organization can fully evolve forward without risk. Our cost/benefit analysis clearly illustrates the benefits our organization and clients face in integrating with evolving collaborative cloud platforms now. In my opinion, integrating with social media-driven collaborative cloud technology is something consumers, businesses and the legal industry will continue to embrace, come to terms with, and negotiate through in the years to come.