Beyond the ToC: Evolving current awareness services through collaboration by Marisa Bendeich, Blake Dawson

• Legal professionals are supposed to stay up to date with changes to legislation, new cases, commentary and industry and client news.
• Often have information overload and email stress.
• Libraries have opportunity to provide CA (current awareness) services to minimise risk.
• A 2008 evaluation concluded that their lawyer's CA needs were not being adequately met. 
• Results from the survey indicated:

generic ToC aren't useful

concerns re timeliness and length of alerts

bite-sized chunks of info and group-specific info of more value

different roles and PGs had varying CA needs - grads need overall CA - partners need CA on specialist area and/or clients.

There was much duplicaton and repackaging of library provided CA  - lack of synergy with KM - no clear distinction between library CA and marketing CA

Need to make is easier to sign up for CA services

More one-on-one interviews with PGs

• Additionally, a re-brand launched by the firm in 2007 meant that we needed to align our services to represent the firm's goals of demonstrating commercial acumen and excellence with rapport.
• This led to a project to redesign the firms' approach to current awareness.
• The stages of the project included:  Analysis -> solution -> implementation.
• Analysis of existing sources of current awareness and how these services are delivered.
• Creating a Solution, including offering delivery options for different groups and different needs eg. immediate need for new legislation.
• Identifying potential solutions for CA, scoping external vendors and provide personalised delivery options
• Implementation of the service including successfully managing collaboration between legal and Shared Services teams eg, marketing, to provide one source of Current Awareness:

Library provide info.

Legal experts provide commentary.

Marketing provide client focus (and even delivery channel).

• The aim of the project was to make the firm's Current Awareness proactive and strategic.
• Lack of synergy between KM and library, collaborate and add value to remedy this.
• Poynton 2008, importance of collaboration.  It is crucial for the library to collaborate with KM and marketing.
• Strategy: identify weaknesses and manage them, don't try to be all things to all people - communicate what you promise to deliver, offer alternative solutions, promote our expertise.
• CA should be proactive and strategic - work one-on-one when the packaged solution won't meet the lawyers particular needs.
• 5 CA streams:

New cases

new journal articles

govt and industry developments

client news

legislative amendment and changes

• Previously only reported cases were used, which is too slow, so case updates needed to get unreported cases
• CA packages - tangible and visible product - shows our skills and expertise, carries firm and library branding.
• sign up information made very clear.  packages have both opt-in and opt-out features.
• Packages minimise confusion, a good way of dealing with lateral recruits. Packages can be handed to news lawyers at induction.
• A Current Awareness guide details what packages are offered and what info is covered in each one.
• Current Awareness package examples:

Journals package for Tax group.

Legalisation package for climate change group.

Case alert for construction delivered twice per week or daily, with commentary.

Journals alert monthly

Summary of new reported cases

• For needs outside the Current Awareness packages provided, tailored solutions to individual needs are offered.
• Delivery is via email, as lawyers prefer email delivery.  Delivery of CA in a medium that would require lawyers to check something else was undesirable.
• Using email is also a risk management issue.  It is integrated with document management system to archive all CA alerts. 
• Email can be accessed by Blackberries and iphones.  Often lawyers like to access CA when they're on the move or in transit.
• RSS - Users surveyed didn't know what it was, said they forgot to check their reader, would prefer an email anyway.
• Also not all publishers support RSS.
• RSS has most scope for Intranet deliver - can feed into Intranet page - (eg. PG or client homepage), providing second tier for CA 
• Or info can go onto wiki for further internal collaboration.
• 3rd party CA products.  May have a lot of value for smaller firms and libraries, but don't offer the customisation which Blakes needed.
• In summary, the purpose of CA is to minimise the gap between the information which people want and the information they get stuck with.

Questions

• Q.  How do you put together the packages?
• Compiled manually by library staff.  Copy and Paste in Word more or less.
• Q.  How do you achieve timeliness of the alerts when you have to rely on legal staff to provide commentary?
• Precedent lawyers and paralegals write the commentary; Lawyers pick out the important cases to highlight; Filtering is done collaborating with KM or practice groups.
• This collaboration is "managed" and some groups are easier to get on board than others.
• There were difficulties getting assistance from KM.  Get buy-in by leveraging our ability to provide KM with information.
• Q. What cost per lawyer for new CA service - not quantified
• Blackberry links: they work better in iPhones, HTML always looks bad in blackberries.
• Tension re using authoritative sources and currency of information - it's been an issue of managing expectations.
• Q.  Do the alerts go out to clients?
• I was not able to ask this question, but I gather that if you have just one source of Current awareness, then the one service should go out or be tailored to go out to clients.  At any rate Marketing would repackage the info accordingly.