More on ILTACON 2016—Tips and Tricks for Implementing an Expertise Location System at a Law Firm

By Julie Bozzell, Chief Research and Knowledge Services Officer, Hogan Lovells

Finding who knows what or has experience doing XYZ quickly in most law firms today is not as simple as we’d like it to be.  At ILTACON in August, I participated in a panel  titled “Finding a Needle in a Haystack with 21st Century Expertise Systems.”   Other panelists included Kate Cain, Director of Market Intelligence at Sidley Austin LLP; Marybeth Corbett, Director of Knowledge Asset Services at WilmerHale; and Joshua Fireman of Fireman & Company.

Our session included discussion of expertise v. experience, expertise systems and solutions, why firms need expertise location tools, and the fun range of challenges that exist with implementing any such solution in a law firm.  I emphasized to the audience the expertise librarians can bring to these projects based on their experience with, and love of, developing and managing controlled vocabularies and taxonomies.  Along with that, librarians and information professionals have a deep passion for searching and for refining search tools to better meet our discovery needs.

ILTACON Session Description:

Expertise location systems are ubiquitous at law firms of all sizes and are key solutions that help with everything from responding to client proposals to finding the right attorney to help with a particular matter. An effective expertise location tool can be a differentiator for law firms, yet they are tricky because of the need to pull together multiple sources of information while providing clear answers. People from the trenches will share their experiences of implementing various solutions and tips and tricks to keep in mind when you’re evaluating a new solution.

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More on ILTACON 2016—Social Collaboration Tools as an E-mail Alternative

Emily Florio’s post on attending ILTACON mentioned some of the private law librarians and information professionals that presented.  Katherine Lowry, Director of Practice Services at BakerHostetler, participated as a panelist for the session, “The Social Collaboration Tools Making a Meal Out of Email”.  The session focused on social collaboration tools, such as Slack, ThreadKM, Yammer, and Beezy, that law firms are using to facilitate collaboration and to help stem the endless stream of e-mail messages.

Katherine contributed to the panel by discussing BakerHostetler’s use of Yammer, and described the roll-out and adoption process.  According to Katherine, “[I]t was a great panel filled with a diverse set of products supporting social networks in the legal industry”, and she’s happy to see “social networks gaining even more momentum”.  She recommended the recap of the presentation written by Sameena Kluck, a Strategic Account Executive for Thomson Reuters and Westlaw.

The session’s moderator was Patrick DiDomenico, Chief Knowledge Officer at Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart.  Other panelists included Ginevra Saylor, National Director of Knowledge Management at Dentons; Raul Taveras, Manager of Litigation Technology Solutions at Fish & Richardson P.C., and Cindy Thurston Bare, Director of Knowledge Management at Orrick.

ILTACON: An Opportunity for Information Professionals

By Emily R. Florio, Director of Library Services at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP

From August 28 through September 1, ILTACON, the International Legal Technology Association’s annual conference, took over National Harbor, Maryland.  The conference filled the immediate area with close to 200 educational sessions, presented by more than 350 speakers, on topics such as information management, business management, applications/desktop and technology operations.  Just from this small sampling of topics that are of interest to ILTACON attendees, it is clear that there are opportunities for law librarians and information professionals to be involved with creating and attending programming during this event.

Law Librarians Expand Into Tech and ILTA

Deborah Panella is Director of Library & Knowledge Services at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, and Information Management Track Team Coordinator for ILTA 2013.

The ILTA annual conference is now underway with a record number of attendees, a growing number of whom are from the law library community (including representatives from AALL). The International Legal Technology Association brings together law firm and corporate law department professionals from a wide variety of career tracks and disciplines, and members come from around the globe.

After the Evolution: Promoting the Value of Law Librarians

Submitted: Emily R. Florio, Manager of Libraries & Library Information Systems, Fish & Richardson (florio@fr.com).

On Thursday April 25th, 2013 LLAGNY (Law Library Association of Greater New York), ILTA (International Legal Technology Association) and SLA (Special Libraries Association)’s New York chapter sponsored After the Evolution, an educational event and networking reception. This strategic initiative and program built upon the LLSDC (Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, D.C.) Showcase, a grassroots approach to communicating the value that law librarians bring to their firms, particularly lawyers, the “C” Suite and other firm administration. Several non-DC librarians from AALL’s Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section attended the DC event and helped bring it to NY with future plans for Boston, Chicago and hopefully beyond the East Coast. The objective of this ongoing project is to aggressively promote the management value of law librarians to the target community of law firm leaders. Participating librarians promoted their diverse management skills to administration, technology and marketing professionals rather than to our traditional audience of peers. This concept recognizes that library management is an insightful component of firm management strategy and that our contributions are vital to the overall operation and success of the firm.