Business need: Enhance the efforts and effectiveness of business support teams
As a national provider of legal and regulatory services in the UK, the client is an ambitious and forward-thinking law firm, constantly improving existing processes and roles to support their growth.
With over 500 people, the firm’s business support teams are a vital resource. To enhance their efforts and empower them to focus effectively on the needs of their lawyers and clients, the partner responsible for knowledge and information services decided to seek guidance and fresh perspectives from information and knowledge management experts LAC Group to assess their processes and delivery mechanisms.
Business solution: Roadmap defining best processes, tools and project management
Our initial discussion with the client established the firm’s current information and knowledge needs and what they wanted to achieve with the review. Following this, we agreed to design a roadmap.
Gathering input through focus groups and one-to-one meetings with various stakeholders, including lawyers and support staff at all levels, we produced a report providing our recommendations. Our aim was to develop a realistic, sustainable action plan for the firm. This included practical steps such as implementing processes for budgeting, purchasing and monitoring costs to improve project management going forward.
We also shared best practice guidelines for workflow and processes that facilitate and enhance legal library and information teamwork. This ensured everyone understood how to request and deliver work with clearly defined timelines to clarify and simplify communication for all.
Business outcome: Improvements in employee productivity and satisfaction and cost savings to firm
The firm asked us to implement the main action points from the knowledge management roadmap, the majority of which we were able to do remotely to save time and resources. The primary outcomes include:
- Improved current awareness by implementing Manzama, a content aggregation tool.
- Development and delivery of business and company research to support marketing and business development work.
- Major update to the firm intranet to improve awareness of information resources and tools to achieve a better return on investment.
- New formal review, budgeting and approval process for purchasing new information resources.
- Tailored guidance on processes and resources for new hires and others to ensure they understand how to find everything from precedents to online services.
In addition, we supported a detailed review of practical guidance tools for the firm, helping to assess alternative products, collate feedback from a trial group and prepare a detailed feedback report leading to the purchase of new tools.
Following this, we worked closely with the external suppliers and internal training team to implement the new practical guidance tool, overseeing a seamless transition.
Cost savings included:
- Training with a new provider at a lower cost.
- Reduced duplication of hard copy resources and online subscriptions.
- Ongoing efficiencies that delivered an immediate benefit for the firm.
We estimate that the final savings will be well above the LAC consultancy cost.
Finally, the firm is benefiting from the new, core information service and associated budgets that we built, along with a service support team put in place for a year to work out any problems before fully handing over to the business support teams for the long term. Key individuals will take a knowledge management lead with the assurance that they have the right strategy and tools to match the ambitions of the firm going into the future.
