LegalTech New York ended yesterday addressing key issues such as legal project management, e-discovery, creating efficiencies and excellence for clients, and the technologies that are shaping the legal industry.

One of the last sessions of the day included Steve Fletcher, chief information officer, Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP, and Meredith Williams, director of knowledge management, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell Berkowitz PC presenting their work in SharePoint during the session SharePoint Collaboration Across Your Team.

Steve briefly recaps the session:

 During the session Meredith showcased the adoption and need for client extranets through a case study in which her firm was able to win a new client because of their unique offering. The value the extranet provided by creating new efficiencies and transparency helped the client to become one of their top 30, and they received $7 million of work in one year alone. They also created a huge value-add by mapping their clients’ systems and giving them the ability to collaborate through wikis on issues, updates and other matters.

Whether creating an intranet or extranet, Steve and Meredith offered this advice:

KEEP IT FRESH:

– Consult with practice groups and teams
– Post news and events EVERY DAY
– Make it the ONLY place for employee information
– It should be the central location for financial information, customer relationship management, business development and work product

DESIGN AND DEPLOYMENT IDEAS:

– Interview people or create pilot groups to aid in design
– Get marketing and business development teams involved early and often
– Create a launch campaign
– Get top level buy in
– Present as much as possible to gain and keep adoption
– Create a marketing plan
– Offer learning sessions and entice staff to attend with free CLEs or lunch

KEY LESSONS LEARNED AND PITFALLS TO AVOID:

– Get the right people at the table for the planning discussion
– Test groups: USE THEM
– Test and retest before you go live
– Don’t force adoption, pull readers in with relevant information that’s quick and easy to find

Another tip that Steve offered, “take the people who are early adopters and build them what they want, they will drive larger adoption from the firm by showcasing to others what is possible.”

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