Yesterday I discussed Generic Problems, which make up the day-to-day of law firm life for a good many people.

Dealing with these problems in a systematised way often involves a piece of software.  When software is needed, the firm’s IT Director (lets call him Bob) is often the first point of call. Keep in mind however that Bob not only has to deliver a system to solve your generic problem, but also has to deal with his own generic problems.

“How dare he?!?!” you might ask.

Well, Bob has a duty of care to keep budgets low so that the Partners’ children can go to Oxford. Bob can’t do that if he treats every new system as a unique instance. He needs a way of delivering generic IT requirements in a consistent and cost-effective manner. Below I’ve listed some of the characteristics of generic IT systems:

• Simple to deploy
• Respect security & confidentiality requirements
• Function on firm hardware
• Utilise the firm’s taxonomy
• Be simple to use

To the extent that Sharepoint helps deliver these requirements without having to write any code, it makes a firm more efficient, contains cost and ensures little Henry won’t have to slum it at Cambridge. Using Sharepoint saves the firm from figuring out “how” to implement security for any given system because delivering security requirements becomes generic. The project team can then focus on:

1. what the business requirements are;
2. how Sharepoint maps to those requirements; and
3. what gaps exist between Sharepoint functionality and the business requirements.

Take for example a firm that is looking to build an expertise tracking system. Traditionally this would have involved a developer finding some space on a server somewhere, grabbing some database space, then working through global deployment issues. When it comes time to do an upgrade the process will be complicated and similarly bespoke. With Sharepoint the approach is known in advance.

Further, as a platform, Sharepoint ticks some important boxes.

• its scalable
• its upgradeable
• its distributed (important for remote offices)

For a Knowledge Management professional, the parallel should be clear. It’s stopping the firm from reinventing the wheel, and helping it learn from prior projects.

What’s not to like?

But is Sharepoint worthwhile?

I would say that it’s probably “good enough” to support a great many requirements. Most applications needed to run a law firm are not terribly complex, and while people like bells and whistles, the reality of bespoke software development in small companies (and sometimes large companies) is that once a system is finished it is unlikely to be upgraded for a long period of time.

What it does well

• managing lists
• managing tasks
• managing simple work flows
• managing documents
• connecting systems

What it doesn’t do well

• wikis
• relational data
• deliver to your exact requirements.

One problem is people’s expectations. If your requirements can mostly be met through the use of a generic tool, is it unacceptable to ask the business for a bit of compromise? Hardly.  If the business case warrants it, Sharepoint is extremely customisable, you merely have to have the willingness and the developers to do so.

On Expectations

Sharepoint out of the box is not sufficient to solve the needs of most firms, in the same way that a vanilla wiki / blog / search engine is not sufficient.

Is it sold as a one-stop-show? Yup.

Is that wrongheaded? Definitely

Sharepoint is a tool like any other. In order to be effective with it, you need to understand what it is capable of and how to use it. When a specific requirement appears that cannot be delivered in an elegant way, customisation is almost always possible and appropriate.  Moreover, just as a swiss army knife is useful in a number of situations, it has neither the best knife, saw, bottle opener or toothpick.

From time to time a firm will encounter generic problems which are so important / specific that they will warrant specialised software. Examples would include Document Management, legal research tools & Billing. Alternatively, there may be other tools (like wikis) which can be used to substantially better effect, especially if highly structured data is not required.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 4:20 am and is filed under KM, Law firms, Sharepoint. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.