Ann Halpern
is director of practice and organisational management at Norton Rose. In this role, she has responsibility for leading the multinational firm’s drive for efficiency and innovative
Norton Rose Group (Norton Rose) is a diverse, multi-jurisdictional legal practice with over 1,000 lawyers and 900 support staff, distributed across offices in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
With a wide range of industries, languages, cultures and types of legal work all being offered in an integrated manner, the ability to cultivate and manage knowledge is critical to the success of the business. The lawyers expect information to be available when needed and even the most traditional of partners is aware of the “Google” effect – the expectation among end-users that they will be able to retrieve information quickly, simply, effectively and accurately.
In 2006, a knowledge strategy was agreed to address the need to replace the existing IT systems that provided knowledge capture and search functions. The legacy system, while cutting-edge at its launch several years ago, was by this time only semi-functional and ready for retirement. Lawyers had practically ceased to use the ancient search system and content was only grudgingly submitted to know-how lawyers to be contributed to the library of know-how.
This meant that new information was not being shared and that existing knowledge was not being used. The massive investment in creating and maintaining this library was being wasted and the goodwill of the lawyers was being lost. Even the professional know-how lawyers, whose role is to support the fee-earning teams and help manage the collective memory of transactions, practice notes, bibles, cases and precedents were struggling to use the ancient system. This was expensive, impractical and doing nothing to minimize risk.
Indexing versus federation
A serious problem needed a comprehensive solution and many months of requirements analysis, supplier reviews and pilot studies finally resulted in the choice of FAST Search and Transfer (FAST) being chosen as the provider of a new search engine.
The company’s enterprise search platform became the basis of an enhanced search solution, which we dubbed NavigatoR (with the capital N and R reflecting the firm’s name, Norton Rose).
An equal effort, meanwhile, was expended to ensure that the information could be found as easily as possible.
It was decided that a large internal search index would be created, which would store all the documents to be searched, as opposed to using a “federated” search, where a single query is passed to lots of different search engines.
The federated approach has benefits for IT departments as it’s normally cheaper to install and no additional information storage is required. However, an index enables the search engine to perform more complex searches and to rank the results according to Norton Rose’s own criteria. With federation, by contrast, the results are presented based on the relative ranking of each individual search engine. The loss of control over result ranking, combined with the difficulty in applying a unifying taxonomy across a federated search, meant that a large search index would need to be created. Currently, this index is approaching one terabyte of space and contains 400,000 individual documents.
To make the system easy and effective to use, the screens for users were simplified, taking inspiration from Google’s famously minimalist design. In this way, a search across all sources of know-how documentation is as simple as typing words into a single box and pressing “Search”.
The results are carefully laid out to be clear and easy to understand at a glance. A guiding principle was agreed – “Search, then Zoom”. The FAST search engine provides “filters”, which (like the taxonomy) are keys into the data, categorising the results and providing control over which sub-sets of the results are most useful. This is the “zoom” feature and it means that a user can be confident that a search query that presents a huge number of results can quickly be cut down to only the relevant documents.
The alternative to “Search, then Zoom” requires the user to anticipate the classification of the results before they have performed any search; it distracts from the goal of finding information quickly and requires more effort at the start. It also risks eliminating relevant information because the user has chosen to apply certain filters before they have seen results.
A whole new look and feel
The full lifecycle of knowledge was re-examined and systems were enhanced to support the collection, categorization, storage and retrieval of know-how. For example, the FAST system would receive information extracted, cleaned and re-loaded from the old search engine.
However, the IT department also built a series of web-based tools to upload new documents and to classify and manage the information once it was in the system.
As well as looking at internal information, the know-how lawyers and business sponsors wanted to include other, less traditional sources of knowledge, including external sources and a selection of internal databases.
External sources of information were also brought into the FAST system, including indexes of the Practical Law Company (PLC) database of legal know-how; the notoriously difficult-to-use Financial Services Authority website; and “Europa”, the European Union’s online legislation and publications resource (see Figure 1, below).
Figure. 1 NavigatoR searches both internal and external information sources
With PLC, an arrangement was agreed whereby Norton Rose would receive a feed of PLC’s information and taxonomy, which was then mapped against the Norton Rose taxonomy.
Reactions at Norton Rose
"NavigatoR’s a really marvellous new research tool. It’s been designed in response to the wishes and needs of the lawyers here at Norton Rose. It enables us, at the touch of a button, to access legal know-how that’s up to date and relevant very quickly indeed, and that helps us to provide a more effective, up to date and efficient service to our clients."
Michael Grenfell, partner
"I found it fantastic when I needed to know about the rules on financial promotions. I was looking for a specific memo that I knew had been produced internally, as well as a PLC article – and found both really easily. It’s just so helpful to be able to get your hands on both internal and external know-how with just one search."
Caroline Riddy, associate
A lot of time was spent ensuring that the strength of the Norton Rose taxonomy could be leveraged across all the know-how in the new system. The fact that PLC content was mapped against the internal taxonomy meant that search results could be described using a single, well-understood list of terms and concepts, which simplified training and the search process.
For example, a “litigation” filter applied to the search would bring back any results from the internal Norton Rose know-how database and also from PLC, where the matter type was classified as “litigation”.
Last, but not least, the international offices of Norton Rose are finally able to access a truly global KM tool. The FAST index automatically detects the languages used in documents, so users can now search in their own language.
Each document also offers a web preview, with search terms highlighted on the page, so relevancy can quickly be checked without downloading the full document. This has improved the accessibility in international offices and reduced the need to transfer large files over the network.
Time for feedback
The NavigatoR system went live in February 2007 to all users across the Norton Rose Group internationally, through the intranet. In the weeks leading up to launch, many hours of work from a team that crossed departmental boundaries were spent to ensure that data was migrated, classified and tested.
Feedback on the sources of data and the interface had been used continuously to improve the design and ensure that the correct information would be available, but it was not known whether users would adopt the new system and whether the search engine’s ranking algorithm would prove itself by returning relevant results.
The team that had been put together for the project, with individuals with a range of legal, KM and IT skills, waited with anticipation.
The results, however, exceeded expectations; lawyers were almost entirely enthusiastic and complimentary – some were even moved to tell colleagues how good the system was.
A survey conducted a few weeks after the launch date produced an amazing result – 98% of respondents said that the new system met or exceeded their expectation, a previously unheard-of success.
Minor criticisms were quickly addressed, often through training. Feedback suggested further development, such as other sources to be added in the future. Negative comments were typically aimed at the supporting IT infrastructure, not the core search engine itself.
Internal recognition of the navigator brand is high within Norton Rose, as it is the very embodiment of one of our core values, namely, "knowledge is core to our business".
Acceptance and benefits
Internal recognition of the brand NavigatoR is high as it is the very embodiment of one of our values, namely “knowledge is core to our business”.
NavigatoR reflects our approach to servicing the needs of our clients – fast, lean and friendly – and it reflects the attributes of our talent – proactive, professional, productive team players.
KM projects can be notoriously hard to cost-justify, but statistics and measures from the new system have shown a huge increase in searches and document retrievals compared to the old system. Over 35,000 individual searches were performed in April and May last year, which means more searches are carried out in each day than were performed in the old system in a month. There is a 20-fold increase in the use of knowledge systems within Norton Rose – a huge leap in the quantity of information that is shared.
We have calculated with analysis of before-and-after scenarios that we have made a cost saving of £500,000 per year in saved resources previously used to search for and analyze results.
In addition, far more information is now being submitted to the internal knowledge databases, as lawyers are more aware and more willing to contribute to the knowledge and success of their colleagues. The authors of each document are displayed and this feeds into annual performance reviews. Contributors are now far more visible and feel increasingly valued.
Finally, the success of this project has fostered a sense of trust and respect that will be carried into future projects. There is now a group of IT, client support and legal staff who have worked together to deliver a recognized success and have the confidence that they can build on this in other initiatives.
