The Burges Salmon KM System

The Background

Burges Salmon LLP is consistently ranked amongst the UK's most successful commercial law firms.  Their national and international client base ranges from private individuals to government departments and FTSE 100 companies including Barclays, The Crown Estate, BAE Systems, Bank of Scotland, The Ministry of Defence and FirstGroup.  With 72 partners and a total of more than 600 employees based at a single site in Bristol, Burges Salmon offers a cohesive, communicative environment which results in strong working relationships right across the firm and an enhanced service for their clients.

Knowledge and consistently high quality advice is at the core of Burges Salmon's business and ability to compete with the best.  Their knowledge management strategy is to embed systems and processes and promote awareness, to maximise use of the firm's accumulated knowledge and expertise.

The Challenge

Burges Salmon has always benefited from a wide range of high quality internal and external legal information and knowledge resources including: a Precedent database, a Know How database, an online Library Catalogue and desktop access to online external resources such as Practical Law Company, LexisNexis Butterworths, Lawtel and Westlaw.  However these resources were available to lawyers on disparate applications and were developed piecemeal, so there was little in the way of consistent functionality.  Search capability was variable between applications and not as effective as it could be.  Users needed more training to find and locate resources quickly and there was a need to simplify and improve the existing systems.Prior to the new knowledge management system tender process, user feedback on the existing systems included a requirement to be able to search across all internal and external resources at once and a request for a simple 'Google style' front end.  It was initially envisaged that any new knowledge management system was likely to be searching around 1.5m documents.  However, following the inclusion of iManage live documents at the request of lawyers in fast moving areas, the new system currently searches around 7.8m documents.

As law firms deal with sensitive information, there was also a requirement to preserve all existing iManage document security, and the new product needed to integrate fully with the existing Interwoven document management system as well as with other internal applications.

The Selection Process

Burges Salmon undertook a competitive tender process including market leading legal knowledge management system providers as well as local solution providers, to assess the full range of products on the market.  The project team developed an unbiased scorecard for assessing a variety of tender response criteria.  Pitted against other leading legal knowledge management systems, GateWest's 'University-in-a-box' (UIB), a non-legal sector product which harnesses the power of Autonomy's enterprise search software, consistently came out on top in all areas including: functionality, flexibility and added value.

The Solution

University-in-a-Box (UIB) is GateWest New Media's knowledge and learning portal powered by Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer..  (IDOL) technology.  Autonomy's IDOL infrastructure layer allows computers to harness the full richness of human information, forming a conceptual and contextual understanding of any piece of electronic data, including unstructured information, be it text, email, voice or video.  Through automating the management, processing and delivery of all information, from internal and external sources, Autonomy's software powers the full spectrum of mission-critical enterprise applications including information access technology, pan-enterprise search, information governance, end-to-end eDiscovery and archiving, video and audio analysis, and is recognized by industry analysts as the clear leader in enterprise search.

Burges Salmon's Document Management System consists of: Interwoven WorkSite 8.2, which encompasses the overall suite of products.  Interwoven DeskSite 8.2 is used on the client machines.  Interwoven is an integrated application suite that combines document management, email management and mobility access in a single solution on a scalable and secure platform.

Burges Salmon's legacy knowhow system consisted of a number of SQL databases that contain metadata about documents and pointers to hard copy knowhow and also linked to the Interwoven Document Management System to deliver precedents and knowhow across the firm.  The implementation of GateWest's UIB has drawn these disparate elements together so that they can be searched using a single interface.

The Deployment

Burges Salmon's final knowledge management solution is a flexible and tailored deployment of the UIB tool, with the majority of functionality ready to use straight 'out of the box'.  The Burges Salmon system has nine different Dept/Unit knowledge zones which allow for interactive communication and serve cross departmental requirements for legal, client and business information.  Each department home page contains different collections of key documents, news channels, announcements, website hotlinks and a link to the powerful concept search element of the UIB tool.

Further Burges Salmon bespoking of UIB included a link to an automatic submissions form for the firm's know how and access to the legacy Know How and Precedent taxonomies.  Pre and post search filters were also developed to help refine search results and an additional Title Search facility was provided to allow for keyword searching, to ease the transition to the new system and to support behaviour change.

The Success Factors

Close cooperation and communication with Knowledge Management Partners, Professional Support Lawyers and trial groups, helped keep stakeholders engaged and interested throughout the selection process and provided the Knowledge Management team with continuous feedback for the refinement of the final solution.  The expertise of Burges Salmon's internal IT team on knowledge management systems and legal knowledge issues was also crucial to the success of the project. Roll out of the new system was by tailored training sessions, demonstrating departmental specific searches, and the Knowledge Management team floor walked following launch, to help ensure a smooth transition.

The benefits of the new system are illustrated by the overwhelmingly positive feedback from lawyers so far, highlighting time saved and how they can now find materials they didn't even know they had:-

"More in hope than expectation I typed in 'Presumption against retrospective legislation'.   The second most relevant document contained just what I wanted."

"I have just had a fantastic result on the know how system.  We were trying to track down a document that had been drafted at some time in the past and managed to pull it up on the 1st search!"

"…it certainly makes any other knowledge management systems I have used seem antiquated!"

"It's the best  ******  system we've had in years!"

Training on the new system was minimal, due to its intuitive and user friendly layout and interest in the system has also reinvigorated knowledge management activity within the departments.  Many are now revisiting their know how and precedent collections and making new submissions.  Burges Salmon has also been able to raise the level of support for the delivery of high quality professional services to its clients, using the responsive research capability of UIB.

Selecting GateWest's UIB has had the additional benefit of maximising the value of Burges Salmon's existing investment in Autonomy.

The Burges Salmon Knowledge Management team look forward to future development of the new Knowledge Management System and working alongside GateWest to deliver all the extra features that come available 'out of the box' with this powerful product.

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