Pioneering international law firm taps into goldmine of enterprise knowledge with Insight+

Allens’ emphasis on efficiency and collaboration across practice groups has been a defining feature of the firm’s way of working, providing a strong foundation for ongoing innovation. With around 120 million documents in iManage Work 10, including a well-organized knowledge database, the firm looked to make its knowledge collection even more accessible by adopting native curation tools and advanced search capabilities. Using iManage Insight+, 1,350 legal staff across the firm now benefit from a high-value search experience that surfaces the right information in the right context at the right time, supporting faster, more informed decisions and stronger client outcomes. 

Allens is a leading international law firm headquartered in Australia. Founded more than 200 years ago, it has built enduring client relationships, with some extending back more than 170 years. Through its alliance with Linklaters, it has a network of 40 offices in 25 countries. With clients ranging from established leading companies to emerging entrants, Allens has played a pivotal role in shaping legislation and regulatory frameworks and has led transformative initiatives across industry and community issues.

The business challenge

Surface relevant insights with AI-powered search

Allens places a strong emphasis on efficiency, collaboration, and harnessing its 200+ years of unique enterprise knowledge to deliver the highest quality legal services. This requires investing in technologies that can scale with the firm’s growth and support its long-term vision. When the legacy document management system (DMS) no longer met the needs of the expanding enterprise, the firm moved decisively to find a lasting solution rather than a temporary fix.

As a long-standing iManage customer and an early adopter of the iManage Cloud, Allens continued building its reputation as a growth leader and was well-positioned to meet the knowledge work challenges that lay ahead.

Allens’ Knowledge Team manages a curated library of precedents and other key knowledge resources alongside iManage Work. After moving its extensive knowledge collection onto the platform, the volume continued to increase rapidly. The team integrated the knowledge database with Microsoft SharePoint to enable lawyers to browse as well as search the collection. However, this was only ever intended as an interim measure until a more sustainable solution could be found.”

“Our people were struggling to find the precedents they wanted quickly, and if you don’t give them a good user experience, they’ll start to look elsewhere,” explains Rachel O’Connor, Chief Knowledge Officer at Allens. “With the increasing appetite for AI, there was a risk of our lawyers taking the path of least resistance rather than following best practices to locate the most relevant template.” 

Enhancing the user experience is a continuous goal for the Allens executive team. “AI should make life easier for knowledge workers,” states Bill Tanner, Chief Information Officer, Allens. “We’ve already created an ecosystem of knowledge with multiple use cases, so we wanted a cloud-native AI search engine to make it actionable and ultimately improve the client experience.”

“We’d been using iManage search for years when we heard about iManage Insight+. Our people’s knowledge is one of our biggest differentiators, so we were excited by the promise of making critical information and documents even easier to find,” adds Justine Woodford, Allens’ Head of Knowledge.

The solution

Create an ecosystem of actionable knowledge

“We conducted an extensive market analysis and issued a detailed RFP when we replaced our DMS, and iManage came out on top,” says Tanner. He says the partnership has materially benefitted Allens in a multitude of ways over the years, “and then, just when we need more from our knowledge ecosystem, iManage introduces Insight+.”

Having analyzed how employees searched for content, the Knowledge Team at Allens worked closely with the iManage team to implement Insight+ optimally for people’s needs and best practices. The goal was to be in sync with their behavior rather than compel them to accommodate new workflows.

“We had an excellent experience working with iManage. They were impressed by the level of curation and taxonomy we already had in place, and they helped us refine our structure to get the best out of Insight+,” recalls Woodford.

The firm’s intranet features an icon that links our lawyers to Insight+ to support search and discovery. Users can “favorite” precedents and materials to appear on their landing page, where the Knowledge Team has pinned standard documents that should be useful to everyone.

To support change management, the team ran a campaign to raise awareness and provided training at practice group meetings. They were also on hand to answer colleagues’ questions and work together over a shared screen. Training was personalized to improve engagement with different practice groups and demonstrate the value of using Insight+.

“We looked for natural champions; lawyers who are good at using Insight+ and have influence over their peers. People are far more likely to use something when they see it helping other lawyers,” adds O’Connor.