Simmons & Simmons Goes Live With Recommind

International firm Simmons & Simmons has successfully deployed the Recommind MindServer Enterprise Search application this month across 20 offices worldwide.

Those of you who were at the Janders Dean Law Firm Knowledge Management conference in Sydney earlier in the year will recall our keynote speaker David Fitch (Director of Knowledge Management for Simmons & Simmons) discussing this as an upcoming initiative.

In the official Recommind press release, David states "In a law firm of our size, it's critical that we can take control of the huge volume of information stored across our systems. It's the knowledge these systems contain that sets us apart from our competition."

"The Recommind solution is proving to be as user-friendly and effective as we'd hoped and it's been simple to roll this out across our global offices without having to make huge investments in training and with no major upheaval to our staff. Through the implementation of Recommind MindServer, we're expecting to significantly reduce the amount of time lawyers spend searching for information and thereby gain a quick return on our investment."

Janders Dean send our best wishes to the team at Simmons & Simmons as they move forward with this - we're looking forward to hearing more from David exclusively on this. You rock!

APAC Law Firm LinkedIn Groups Started

An increasing number of our LinkedIn contacts have started to utilise the application more after a short break - primarily given the advanced feature set associated with 'Groups' and the 'Discussion Forum' functionality has been released.

The wonderful Peter Campbell (CIO) has established an APAC specific Legal Technology Group this week, and we strongly recommend membership to it. Click this link to join.

The group consists of IT Directors, CIO's and technology department personnel from law firms that operate in Australia/Asia Pacific. It is a forum for sharing ideas on common issues facing people in Legal Technology. A similar group was established around the same time this week and for the same purpose; however after close collaboration with Miles, Peter, and Simon this has now been removed so that we can consolidate/combine these and avoid confusion.

Membership is open primarily to people who are in these roles (or have been in them) in law firms. Both Peter and Miles Ashcroft of Freehills will manage this group moving forward, and members are encouraged to utilise the discussion forums and networking features.

In addition to this group, an APAC Law Firm Knowledge Management Group has been created here. Simon Gilchrist of Gilbert+Tobin will be taking responsibility for this - particularly relevant for Simon to do so given the new and innovative knowledge intensive leadership role that the firm have entrusted to him. This group is to focus on the more traditional Knowledge Management fields; however cross over into technologies topics will no doubt occur. Charles carried a recent posting on the international versions here.

We encourage you to join both of these local APAC groups - we also suggest you join the international versions of these here (for Knowledge Management) and here (for IT). Each group takes about twenty seconds to join and requires no additional information from you. Peter, Simon, Miles and all those involved in the groups understand the value of these, and you can be sure that membership will be a positive experience for all.

So that is four groups we recommend you sign up to as soon as possible - the power of these groups comes from the size of the membership and utilisation of the discussion features - the APAC market is known for its positive collaboration and sharing across firms and peers, so get out there and enjoy.

Friday's Cocktail Leadership

Well good morning (or afternoon) everyone, and welcome to Friday! Yet another busy week for the team at Janders Dean, but we still have all our teeth.

This week we say a special Romper Room Magic Mirror hello to the Freehills team who have been busy rolling out their matter centric Interwoven design with the help of the team from Alphawest, while also being busy little beavers planning out their next fun event. The teams in KM and IS are doing excellent work together under pressure, and we're awe struck. Rock on.

Hello to our new client team in Beijing who are exceptionally busy planning out the next few weeks and collating materials!

What a massive first birthday party we had - thanks to every one of our lovely clients and pals for an excellent evening of celebrations. Sorry that Sparky couldn't be there...we're all looking forward to our next fun client event when we have an evening with Ferran Adria from elBulli. Yum!

We also say hi to the ReedSmith crew, and thank Guru Tom for his mention on the blog, and his ILTA List recommendation of the Janders Dean team. Speaking of ILTA, welcome home to the APAC law firm representatives.

This year's events witnessed a massive concentration on the Knowledge Management space, and some great sessions on SharePoint, Office 2007, Enterprise Search, and Web2.0 technologies. It is interesting to see (in our opinion) that the Web2.0 presentation content and discussion forums indicated that the US may still be slightly behind the UK and the APAC region on their analysis of this area.

For copies of any of the ILTA 2008 presentations, simply go to this link and check them out. A massive range of resources to review - and if you are not a member yet, you should be. Janders Dean was proud this year to bring you the first Knowledge Management for Law Firms conference in Sydney, and we were happy to have ILTA there to spread the good word.

What are you up to this weekend?

If you are playing ball games, have you ever thought about what happened when the ball you were playing with in the back yard went over the neighbour's fence (or roof if it was a big hit) and was subsequently lost? No? Haven't thought about that for a while huh...OK....well imagine you were from another planet or universe (oh come on...play along) and then think about the fact that you might be really really big....now what would happen if you smashed it hard and your ball went flying then? Answer here.

Anyway...we're off at the end of an exhausting week now to grab some well deserved cocktails...and we'll see you later on with some news. Be good. Oh by the way...why don't you treat yourself to a spa day this weekend? Go on, you know you deserve it. Wrap it up!

A last thought....Christmas is 15 weeks away. A special delivery from Korea is only 2 weeks away. Bleasdale's 30th is 3 weeks away....and Golden Week is just around the corner!

P.S. We've noticed that our "posting hosting" for the blog is a little out of whack recently, so a few of you may have received some strange old versions this morning at a weird time - apologies for that, but hey, you were just happy to hear from us right?

Janders Dean Celebrates!

Break out the fairy bread and party hats....we're turning 1!

Hard to believe that we've only been going for such a short period of time we know...but this month marks our first birthday and what a fantastic year it has been.

After establishing a presence in the Asia Pacific market last year, we have quickly built a great client base which includes global leaders such as Freehills, Blake Dawson, Gilbert+Tobin, Deacons, Sparke Helmore, ReedSmith and others - including a recent client addition of one of the largest and most successful law firms in China.

Over the twelve months, we were also fortunate enough to gain Bevan Read as a leader at Janders Dean, with his skills and expertise bringing even more mojo to our offering.

In addition to our consulting services, during this first year we also worked to introduce the Janders Dean Law Firm Knowledge Management conference to the world, with the first event being held in Sydney during May 2008. Speakers included international representatives from Recommind, Headshift, and global firm Simmons & Simmons - in addition to KM leaders from the local market from firms such as Freehills and Blake Dawson, and partners from Gilbert+Tobin. The feedback from this event was fantastic, as was the level of attendance, and yep - we'll look at potentially replicating it again.

The year has also seen us lend support to a number of charities on behalf of our clients, including CanTeen, The CP Foundation, Medecins Sans Frontieres, The Australian Royal Flying Doctor’s Service, Committee Assist and many others.

...and yes...we travelled the globe, with multiple stints in the UK and the US to work with our international client base and to participate in various leadership conferences. The London trips were always the most valuable, simply because of the invaluable time spent with Sparky.

Although we feel that we've had a great first year, we certainly didn't do it alone. Massive thanks must go to Justin and Bevan's respective partners (Sparky and Bugs) and our children for their ongoing support and patience with our hectic schedules and travel absences. Thanks also to irreplaceable close friends such as Tony & Jen, our wonderfully supportive, trusting and honest clients (who we adore and consider part of the Janders Dean Family), and of course the makers of Bombay Sapphire gin.

The plans for the next year are always bigger and (most importantly) better. At the heart of Janders Dean though is the fact that we'll continue to provide honest and trusted independent consulting services in our fields of expertise to wonderful clients who "get it".

*** Join the party and help us celebrate - this week's Friday Cocktail Leadership drinks are special as they are to celebrate our birthday, and for us to say thank you to all of you. We'll all be at Zeta in Sydney with our friends and clients from 5pm onwards into the evening. Please join us if you're able! No pin the tail on the donkey though...but that does remind us of a funny story we heard about almost getting trampled by these creatures...oh if only we were there! ***

ReedSmith Rocks

We are pleased to offer our best wishes to the team at Janders Dean client site ReedSmith for their win at this year's ILTA conference Interwoven and Baker Robbins Matter Centric Design Awards.

Lisa Gianakos, Tom Baldwin, and the entire gang there deserve this gong (and indeed probably more given the scale, complexity and challenges). Well done and bravo...in the words of Janders Dean...you rock.

Gilbert+Tobin Reach ILTA MCC Awards Finals

Congratulations have to be passed across to the Gilbert+Tobin e-File project team who last night made the short list of finalists for the 2008 Interwoven & Baker Robbins Matter Centric Design Awards held at the ILTA conference in Texas.

Congratulations also to entire ReedSmith team (including Janders Dean's best pals Tom Baldwin and Lisa Gianakos) for winning overall.

Open to all Interwoven MCC projects across the globe each year, a short list of less than ten finalists are selected. These firms are then allowed a five minute presentation to explain their designs, which is followed by a live judging session at the ILTA conference before the winners are announced.

After being invited to provide MCC subject matter experience and lawyer behaviour expertise to Gilbert+Tobin on this project, Janders Dean developed an original folder design for discussion and presented this to the project team where we then facilitated the design component of the project.

Janders Dean established the basis for the Gilbert+Tobin matter centric folder structure using a philosophy of absolute simplicity for go-live. Having worked on one of the largest MCC projects in history at Freshfields while with BRCo, we had seen the potential for project delays and change management issues which could be caused when a firm tried to perfect a folder design prior to go-live.

Our approach was to encourage Gilbert+Tobin to start with a simple and intuitive design, observe the behaviours and requirements of lawyers who utilised the matter centric environment and MS Outlook integration post go-live, and use this proven and factual behaviour as the basis to deliver enhancements post go-live which would be acceptable and fit with the behaviours - to continually "enhance" the user experience based on user behaviours, rather than trying to force a design onto users based on "predictions" on how lawyers worked or (far worse a scenario) how the project team may "want" them to work or think that they should be working within the new environment.

In addition to this, we encouraged the firm to learn from all other MCC projects that had gone before them (which clearly demonstrates a reduction in the number of folders pushed out at go-live over time), and to start their project by collecting and collating useful pre-MCC metrics around usability and behaviours which could be referred back to post-MCC to prove points (rather than getting drowned in anecdotal feedback).

The temptation was always there to use the advanced features of Interwoven to "wow" the lawyers with a day one design which looked sexy or forced them to behave in a certain fashion; however the project team was always steered back to the starting point of simplicity by Janders Dean.

Although Janders Dean contributed to the design and dictated the team stick to plan, all credit for the successful implementation and hence serious kudos goes to the whole eFile team of Simon Gilchrist, Judy Meek, Tracey Vitnell, Mandy Caldow, Jane Hogan and many others too numerous to name.

Search Gets Serious: LexisNexis and Interwoven Combine

ILTA never fails to impress with the "BIG" announcements from various vendors each year - and the first one out of the gate this week from ILTA '08 in Texas could be more interesting than we've seen in a while. We've only just digested this, so no real comments just yet until we ponder....hmmmm....(that is the sound of us pondering).

***** Industry Leaders Combine Strengths in Enterprise Search, Document Management, and Legal Content and Analysis for Streamlined Workflow Approach To Knowledge Management *****

DALLAS, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ILTA 2008 CONFERENCE

Interwoven, Inc. (Nasdaq: IWOV), a global leader in content management solutions, today announced it has entered into an agreement with globalbusiness information solutions provider LexisNexis to integrate and launchLexis(R) Search Advantage, a new search enrichment offering, with Interwoven Universal Search.

The integration of Lexis Search Advantage with Interwoven Universal Search will combine the market leading enterprise search solution for professional service firms with content and services from LexisNexis(R) to provide law firm attorneys a single destination to efficiently find and leverage internal workproduct and trusted content from LexisNexis. Lexis Search Advantage is available immediately in the U.S. market by LexisNexis.

The agreement supports a growing demand in the legal industry fortechnology providers to combine expertise to offer more integrated and powerful solutions to help attorneys streamline workflow and productivity. Lawyers today must use a multitude of technology solutions to perform daily functions with little-to-no integration or context between the technologies.This results in a productivity drain that negatively impacts firm profits andcan harm client satisfaction due to the inconsistent application of firm best practices.

"To compete and win on a global scale, today's law firms requirestreamlined technology solutions," said Mike Walsh, CEO U.S. Legal Markets,LexisNexis.

"The integrated product offering by LexisNexis and Interwoven is aperfect example of two respected market leaders delivering enhanced workflow capabilities to improve productivity, increase profitability, and stimulate growth."The combination of the market leading Interwoven Universal Search solution with the new Lexis(R) Search Advantage solution provides law firms with a powerful asset that unifies and integrates access to content across multiple internal and LexisNexis sources, to provide a unique and comprehensive search environment. The benefits to law firms include:

* Significant streamlined workflow in a more intuitive and efficient manner, driving higher levels of client service and improved profitability

* Richer contextual search capability with simultaneous searching of allinternal documents and LexisNexis services at http://www.lexis.com. LexisNexis research solutions are used daily by lawyers and relied on as the most authoritative, comprehensive collection of legal, news and business, and riskand analytics content available anywhere

* Integration of real-time Shepard's Signal(TM) indicators in internal documents instantly allow attorneys to confirm if a case law citation is strong, accurate, and on point. This eliminates several manual steps that lawyers must take to examine current legal validity of a citation

* Powerful enterprise search technology and Web 2.0-based user experienceand navigation to drive a tailored and comprehensive search experience

* Documents within a firm's content repositories are enriched with additional metadata to enable enhanced identification and improved access to relevant external documents

"This alliance exemplifies the thought leadership Interwoven and LexisNexis have in the legal industry and demonstrates Interwoven's commitment to help solve the complex information management challenges of law firms," said Joe Cowan, CEO at Interwoven. "Customers want their top technology providers to work closely together to drive increased efficiencies, reduce risk, and provide better leverage of their investments. By working together with LexisNexis, we can make a big difference to a fundamental aspect of a lawfirm's operation."