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iManage Universal Search Implementation

Purpose

A large West Coast AmLaw 100 firm was looking for assistance in finding a replacement for their existing Enterprise Search product. The Firm's existing search solution had provided its users with fast accurate search results for several years. However, it was not scalable and its user interface did not meet the needs of the Firm's search strategy. Because the Firm had grown accustomed to leveraging their existing search product throughout their legal practice workflow, the Firm's Knowledge Management Team knew that the replacement search solution had to be a very strong product. It needed to provide a best-in-class interface, be able to scale to support an unlimited amount of data, interface with multiple legal specific applications and be supported by a company that could show a track record of continued growth and had strong capital position in the industry.

Business Drivers

As part of the project's initial requirements definition effort, eSentio interviewed key project Stakeholders. We were able to identify the Enhancement of Practice Management, Risk Mitigation and the desire to Increase Operational Efficiency as the project's primary business drivers. In addition, the criticality of providing a solution which met the high demands of a user base which is accustomed to a level of functionality from their existing search solution, was greatly emphasized. As a result the following were identified:

Enhancing Practice Management

The Firm is focused on implementing technologies that assist its professionals with gaining access to practice- and matter-related work product with increasing speed, accuracy and efficiency. Minimizing the time it takes to find and retrieve practice-related content will give Firm professionals more time to focus on better client service and strengthening the Attorney – Client relationship.

Risk Mitigation

The Firm is responding to increasing requests to release/destroy files, apply legal holds, respond to subpoenas, apply retention to client/matter-specific data and other compliance needs. As matter-specific data resides in multiple repositories, it is becoming increasingly challenging to identify and locate all matter-related materials.

Increase in operational efficiency

The Firm is under pressure to "do more with less." There is billable time being spent asking "I know I saved this but I can't remember where." An enhanced search solution will form a more solid foundation on and from which to build a platform to drive Work-Product re-use.

No reduction in functionality from the existing search product

Since IUS will be replacing the Firm's current SharePoint search, it was critical that IUS provide, at a minimum, the same functionality as the Firm's existing search solution, including search performance.

Scope

Working directly with the Firm's Chief Knowledge Officer, eSentio facilitated a requirements analysis and product selection process. As a result, the Firm chose to leverage Autonomy's iManage Universal Search (IUS) product for their next generation enterprise search strategy. Given eSentio's recent experience with multiple deployments of IUS, the Firm engaged us to assist with refining their search requirements, vendor software negotiations, the user interface design and development, application and integration testing. In addition, the Firm wanted to combine its existing Westlaw metadata and citation information into the search results set of the IUS interface. This additional project initiative would allow the firm to combine results from two disparate data sources into the single IUS User Interface.

Project Methodology

The Firm adopted eSentio's recommendation of performing the project in two phases. The goal of Phase 1 was to provide a more powerful tool for its users to search for and find information residing in the Firm's iManage Document Management System ("DMS"), SharePoint and WestKM databases. The IUS solution had to meet (or exceed) current search functionality (including search performance) and its UI design should be simple, requiring minimal end-user training. Each additional project phase would include the indexing of additional content repositories. This phased approached was employed for two primary reasons: (a) to allow for back-end analysis and additional design as more repositories are added (and the IUS search technology/functionality improves), and (b) to gradually introduce the end-users to the features of IUS and to refine the messaging and training of this tool. The new search interface would be designed to the Firm's current web search product which resided in SharePoint. As such, the IUS Web interface was inserted into the Firm's SharePoint Intranet. However, a standalone IUS interface was available to be deployed for specialized uses at a later date.

Project Execution

eSentio worked on several parallel efforts during the execution of this project. First off, the integration of the WestKM data into the IUS search results set was a new initiative for both West, a Thomson Reuters business, and Autonomy. eSentio worked with Autonomy, West and the Firm to develop the initial requirements for the IUS / WestKM connector. In addition, the Firm worked with Autonomy to tune and optimize the IUS search query results to ensure the system performed within the well-defined performance criteria which had been defined as part of the initial project's deliverables. The Firm leveraged the WorkSite IDOL Connector to index its iManage WorkSite data. For its integration with SharePoint, the Firm used the IDOL SharePoint connector to fetch firm directory "People" information from specific SharePoint list(s). Based on the Firm's design requirements, several additional modifications to the "out-of-the-box" IUS interface were required.

Project Results

The Firm was successful in accomplishing the "Phase I" goals of the project prior to deploying the application to an internal Pilot Group. The project went into Pilot with a limited end-user deployment in early November, 2011. At the time this Use Case was published, initial feedback from the Pilot Group was very promising. The Firm's IUS Pilot will continue through January of 2012. At that time, the Firm plans to deploy IUS as its SharePoint Enterprise Search solution, firm-wide.