Full-service EMEA law firm transforms the knowledge experience with iManage Insight+

When a global law firm’s EMEA region upgraded its document management to iManage Work 10, its dedicated knowledge management (KM) team saw an opportunity to transform how it sourced, managed, and made the firm’s know-how available to users. To deliver on this vision, the EMEA team brought in iManage implementation partner Fireman, an Epiq Company, to deploy iManage Insight+, a knowledge search and management solution native to the iManage Cloud platform. Firm leadership, lawyers, and knowledge management professionals all contributed to aligning the solution’s features and functionality to lawyers’ knowledge use cases. Following a six-month implementation period, lawyers and support staff enjoy enhanced search results and improved access to curated knowledge sets, while the organization’s collective intelligence is firmly grounded in the cloud with an exciting roadmap for the future.

The business challenge

Modernize the internal knowledge search and management system

While the firm operates on a global scale, its regional practices have the autonomy to tailor how they work to suit the local market. That means that although there’s a standard knowledge work platform, different regions — and even practice groups within those regions — have varying needs and requirements.

The firm’s EMEA offices have a dedicated knowledge management team responsible for curating high-quality internal documents to provide lawyers with fast access to the best information.

“The knowledge management team includes experienced knowledge lawyers who support a specific practice group or sector, as well as knowledge management professionals focusing on our knowledge systems and processes,” explains the region’s Head of Knowledge. “The knowledge lawyers provide training, draft templates, respond to queries, and research developments in their practice area so the rest of the legal team can focus on live cases.”

This innovative approach means legal teams in EMEA are always at the cutting edge of the law; lawyers have a curated library of historical documents and templates to help them get work done quickly. To keep all this critical data in order, the firm developed an in-house platform that centralized staff profiles, matters, knowledge, and deal folders. They built the system on premises and integrated it with their document management system, which was, at the time, a legacy on-premises version of iManage.

The solution

Launch a cloud-native solution (in just six months!)

The firm held a global workshop to decide on the best approach to a better way forward and engaged a partner to support the initiative. Fireman assessed the firm’s current KM program and toolset and developed a series of recommendations to mobilize a refreshed knowledge strategy.

“We looked at best-in-class products that could provide the functionality we had built for our previous system,” the Head of Knowledge recalls. “It was important to find a cloud-native platform, and we wanted to keep our environment lean, leveraging relationships with existing vendors if possible.”

After seeing demos, the team decided that iManage Insight+ was the right solution to replace the previous system’s “knowledge” feature.

“We decided to take an incremental approach rather than rolling out a complete global solution in one go,” explains the Head of Knowledge. “My team took ownership of replacing the knowledge and search feature for our EMEA region. We’ll pass our learnings on to other regions when it’s live, and they’ll be able to build on that and tailor the platform to their unique requirements if they so choose.”

Transform use and management of the firm’s know-how

Rethinking the curation and management of knowledge included reevaluating the way content is sourced and submitted. It also meant delving into how it is assessed, classified, published, reviewed, and updated — or archived. The Insight+ environment improves the firm’s search capabilities, workflow, and governance. It empowers the KM team to align its activities to curate knowledge collections more effectively. The improved tools and features enable lawyers and KM professionals to proactively monitor and manage their content relative to the lawyers and practices they support.

Tailor to meet the curation needs of knowledge management lawyers

High levels of collaboration between the EMEA Knowledge team, Fireman, and iManage ensured the project benefitted from subject matter expertise and shared accountability. A team of 30 people from across the three companies actively participated in all project workstreams. Monthly discussions of the roadmap kept things on track. Executive sponsorship from two partners at the firm and nominated user champions from each practice group helped to streamline change management. 

iManage Insight+ went live for the knowledge team after six months and launched for all EMEA users one month later, completing the initiative both on time and under budget.

“Throughout the project, we maintained clear communication, set achievable goals, received regular budget updates, and stayed close to our timeline,” said the Head of Knowledge. “Any scope changes were thoroughly analyzed before being accepted.” 

Project workstreams included taxonomy, workflow, and migration. Invitations to sign up for any workstreams that interested them helped maintain people’s enthusiasm and cadence for the project. About 130 user testers provided feedback on the platform to ensure it was tailored to meet their needs. 

“We only needed to pivot from our roadmap a couple of times based on user feedback,” says the Head of Knowledge. For example, staff love the way folders are set up in iManage Work 10 so the team replicated that to make it easy for them to find templates in Insight+. They created a custom single-page web app and integrated it with Insight+ to retain that user interface.