Editor’s note: First in a series.
The Litera Foundation knowledge management platform doesn’t just have customers. It has innovators — law firms continually using the system in new ways to enhance client value.
These ground-breaking firms were recently honored in Litera’s inaugural Foundation Innovation Awards, which recognized the creative ways firms are using this powerful tool.
Foundation’s simplicity and adaptability are at the core of these awards, which highlight the endless use cases Foundation customers are putting into practice.
Here, we look at a use case from one finalist firm.
A Virtuous Cycle
If a legal tech solution has a high degree of adaptability, customers can start small and gradually secure buy-in and expansion. Initial wins create a virtuous cycle, where success leads to growth, and this growth leads to more success.
A Cleary Gottlieb team that includes members of its Knowledge Management and Business Development groups has implemented such a cycle at that firm.
“Establishing oversight of our program across the firm’s global footprint was our biggest hurdle,” said Jeannine Zito, the firm’s Senior Manager of Knowledge Solutions. “We needed analytics to show us who should be involved and when, what strategies were working, and where we had gaps. Foundation helped us define the right data to measure our success, and that visibility created momentum for expansion.”
The Cleary team launched Foundation in 2020 across five practice areas, establishing a core infrastructure. From the launch onward, the types of data tracked continued to grow, and the firm’s reporting concepts continued to evolve.
Soon, the team introduced data visualization and other insights. Then the Cleary team used the system to produce “Health Reports,” which provide high-level metrics for firm leadership.
After the Health Reports were live for a year, they had sufficient data for longitudinal comparisons, revealing trends and further supporting data-driven decision-making. Now, the firm is incorporating user feedback and redesigning its reports to address ever-more sophisticated strategic goals.
Establishing measurable metrics to monitor program health while identifying areas for improvement — along with implementing real-time tracking of profile completion and data quality — were areas of emphasis throughout the initiative at Cleary.
The need to track when data was entered was particularly impactful, because it ensured that stakeholders continually updated Foundation. The resulting high-quality data, in turn, could be used by firm leadership to guide decision-making regarding firm operations and other areas.
Today, the fruits of this analytics initiative are evident throughout the firm.
The Foundation initiative has brought efficient knowledge sharing and intelligence-focused business development, made possible by improved access to precedents and insights across practice areas. These insights also enable evidence-based performance measurement.
The framework’s success demonstrates how technology can transform traditional legal operations into analytics-based, strategic initiatives.
And by demonstrating clear ROI to law firm leadership throughout the initiative, the Cleary team has ensured that this program will continue to expand and grow even more impactful and sophisticated in the years to come.
With so many unique use-cases for Foundation, it’s no wonder to see why it has such innovators. If you would like to learn more about Foundation and explore how it might help your firm transform your experience, pricing, and other precedent data, connect with the Litera team to request a detailed analysis of your marketing tech-stack!
This and other use cases will form the basis of a business of law eBook this year. You can pre-register for your copy by filling out the form below.
The post How Cleary Gottlieb Created A Virtuous Cycle With Tech appeared first on Above the Law.