Experience Management – Case Studies in Tackling a Difficult Challenge

Experience Management – Case Studies in Tackling a Difficult Challenge
ILTA August 25, 2008 1:00 pm

By the way, David Hobbie is also live blogging at Caselines.

These are my notes from the program.  [Since I am taking paper-free notes and because there is free Wi-Fi here, I thought that I’d add the notes to the blog.  Disclaimer: my notes are rough, so forgive the typos.]

See the ILTA site for the speaker line up

Kate Cain, Stan Wasylyk, Doug Cornelius

Kate Cain – Project Manager at Winston & Strawn

• Assess the current environment.  What is available today, what’s missing?
• Who is currently providing the experience reporting?  Who’s asking?
• How are they using the info?
• Which reports are used?
• How is the information used?
• What are the business needs?  Let that answer drive the solution.
• Constructing a framework – a rough draft; identify themes within the firm.
• Validate Assumptions -

Stan Wasylyk – Foley Lardner

• Rightness – getting the right people with the right skills working for the right clients on the right assignments
• Goal – improve productivity
• Use talent across the organization
• Facilitating diversity efforts; boost morale
• Challenges:
  • existing info resources in many different places
  • no tool to show who is available to do work (utlization indicator)
  • difficult to find people based on skills
• Used Maven PSA (off the shelf database product)
  • mapped data about people, skills, clients, matters, etc.
  • info is organized by tabs
  • maintained skills map – rated people’s level of experience with various areas of law
• Example of how it works
  • finds the appropriate people, determines experience level and indicates their availability.
  • application has a fielded search interface.
  • radio button show availability for next 8 weeks.
  • radio button shows skill map.
• Lessons learned
  • hard to change lawyer behavior
  • sponsorship of senior management is key to success
  • operating layer of management – challenge to get these people involved (people, process and change management are key)

Doug Cornelius – Attorney and KM at Goodwin Procter

• iStaff system
  • Doug walked us through GP’s iStaff system
  • shows who is available and allows assignments
  • shows pending assignments
  • everyone seems to like the system
• Experience Search
  • uses the existing firm bios to feed the system
  • put all information on to one page: general, bio, and background.
  • works well for unique requests, but not so well for general inquires.
  • don’t yet have a rating system, like Foley

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