Records, knowledge and document management form today’s information management triple play.  While most law firms acknowledge there are benefits from the unification, few actually tackle the challenge of combining them.  Any strategy that purports to address the creation, preservation, reuse and protection of information assets but does not attempt to address knowledge, document and records management in a unified manner is missing a competitive opportunity. 

Key Challenges
Developing a unified strategy for the lifecycle management of information assets faces formidable challenges.  The greatest ones include:

• An ongoing proliferation of incompatible technologies, which in turn generate ever-increasing volumes of discrete information objects that may or may not have lasting intellectual value to a firm. 
  
• Application development efforts designed and managed on a project-by-project basis, driving further separation among these three critical disciplines. 
  
• A general complacency toward initiatives that are not perceived to have a near-term impact on a firm’s clientele.
  
• Deeply engrained working practices of lawyers.
  Information assets, typically defined as a set of data elements and/or objects that are subsequently configured and correlated in document, knowledge and records management systems, ultimately shape the thinking, and perhaps even the behavior, of lawyers as they utilize existing firm information to service a client need.  To apply technology and shifting working practices in a unified, strategic direction, a firm’s leadership must establish a baseline of how and when knowledge, document and records management should be drawn upon to serve the requirements of lawyers and their support staff.  This requires participation by the firm’s information asset stakeholders from each of the firm’s practice areas, knowledge and records managers, librarians, and electronic publishers.

Types of Information
Generally, the information a firm must manage can be broken down into three categories:

• Documents that are work in process, being created throughout the course of a matter.  This might include drafts of documents that evolve into a final document.  These final documents usually become official records; however, not all documents rise to the level of a being a record. 
• Records are those materials that are evidence of business transactions or document the official position of a firm.  Records typically come from the work in process documents described above or, alternatively, from external sources. 
  
  Precedents are materials used within the context of a specific client engagement that a firm will retain for repurposing due to the subject matter expertise required to generate the document, or the time it takes to generate these documents from scratch.

Tools and Strategies to Manage Information
With most information now being created or received in electronic format, the approach used by firms to manage information must change.  This process can no longer be the responsibility of administrative support personnel working in the background.  Information management must now be the direct responsibility of the firm’s knowledge workers.  Done correctly it can improve a firm’s competitive advantage by leveraging its information assets in new ways. 
System tools used to manage information assets can be grouped into one of three categories: Document Management, Records Management and Knowledge Management.  These three system categories have similar capabilities as well as competing, and even sometimes conflicting, objectives. 

Records Management
Records Management Systems — the focus of this issue of Peer to Peer — have  been in place for years.  They are used to manage a firm’s evidence of business transactions and compliance activities.  These systems have historically been used to manage hardcopy record collections and the folders and boxes that house them.  Recent advances have introduced the ability to manage electronic records such as e-mail, electronic files (documents) and images.  RMS’s also track the circulation of physical objects, including tracking folders into boxes for lower-cost offsite storage.  RMS’s are not intended to replace DMS’s which have version tracking capabilities.

Among the most important RMS functions is the capability to define retention disposition rules for records.  Once a retention rule is assigned to an object (physical or electronic) in an RMS, the system can generate disposition reports to obtain authorization for record destruction and control the actual destruction of electronic records.  Systematic records disposition helps to ensure that a firm maintains compliance with its risk management policies.

Document Management
Document Management Systems (DMS) have also long been used to manage the creation of documents.  These systems are effective for classifying documents based on key attributes such as client and matter ID, author, creation date, and document type.  DMS’s also provide version control so that one can track how a document changes throughout the edit cycle.  Ideally once a document is officially issued, the document should be “declared” as a record and moved into or linked to a records management system (RMS). 

Knowledge Management
Knowledge Management Systems (KMS), unlike DMS or RMS, are not widely identifiable as discrete applications.  Rather, knowledge management is accomplished through the innovative application of technology, modifications in firm culture and revamped working practices.  The types of information that a firm chooses to identify and capture as “knowledge” can vary widely from precedents to information about specific lawyer subject expertise and client experience.  The underlying requirements for retaining knowledge information is that it has value to the firm and that in having ready access to this knowledge, employees can increase productivity by proactively leveraging the firm’s previous work product. 

A successful knowledge management system results in an increase of a law firm’s most valued resource — time — so that the firm can deliver high-value work product more quickly without requiring an increase in knowledge workers or support staff. 

Convergence of Systems
In recent years, software developers have begun to integrate the capabilities of these systems into cohesive applications either through internal development or competitive acquisition.   Many of these vendors identify themselves as “content management” companies.  We predict that DM and RM system functionality will continue to merge, and it is likely that it will include explicit KM functionality.

Importance of an Enterprise Strategy
Information is the key to success for law firms.  Organizations that can effectively capture, preserve, reuse and protect their information assets are positioned for greater success.  Information repositories have long been managed in a silo fashion, limiting the value that the information can yield for the firm.  In today’s competitive environment leading firms recognize this and are investing in a firmwide information strategy, thereby putting their information assets to work for their clientele.

About our authors

Terrence J. Coan is a CRM with Baker Robbins & Company, with more than 20 years experience in records and information management.  He can be reached at  tcoan@brco.com.

Stacie  Capshaw is a CRM with Baker Robbins & Company, with more than 15 years of experience creating solutions for critical business initiatives through the strategic application of information technologies and redesign of business processes.  She can be reached at scapshaw@brco.com.