The real deal flow

On joining online forum Legal OnRamp, Swedish law firm Vinge recently provided all members of the group with an insight into its ‘Deal Tracker’ project to maximise relevant information-sharing activities. Allowing for more sophisticated trend analysis than before, the firm also finds the initiative has benefited business development.

By Ann Björk, deputy head of knowledge management, Vinge

Most leading commercial law firms have a main business focus on transaction-related legal services. Essentially, this means that the ‘core product’ a commercial law firm produces is the legal know-how relating to various kinds of deals. Therefore, knowledge about the firm’s accumulated deal experience is of the utmost importance, both from an internal-knowledge sharing and ‘know-who’ perspective and from an external marketing perspective.

To this end, the knowledge management (KM) group at Scandinavia-based law firm Vinge, launched a project in 2009 to improve and support the knowledge sharing of the firm’s deal experience – the ‘Deal Tracker’. It has been a huge success, providing a tool for more efficient deal reporting, and at the same time making it possible to better use the transaction information internally for business and trend analysis, as well as for procuring transaction knowledge and know-who information.

As the tool supports the core business of the firm, our vision for the further development of the Deal Tracker is now for it to truly leverage the experience within the firm, and thus make knowledge sharing an enabler for innovation and business development, giving the firm a strong competitive advantage.

How can you accomplish such a vision? How do you achieve success in the first stage, and how do you take that knowledge sharing further and turn it into a basis for delivering innovative solutions and finding new methods for providing legal services?

Internal knowledge sharing

When evaluating the need for a transaction-support tool at Vinge we initially identified two main objectives for the project:

The internal objective of collecting information about the deals in which the firm had been involved and making this information available and easily searchable (the knowledge-sharing aspect);
The external objective of facilitating the reporting of the firm’s deal involvement to Mergermarket and other media (the marketing aspect).

From a knowledge-sharing perspective all lawyers at Vinge now have easy access to detailed and structured transaction information, such as which deals the firm has been involved in and which business sectors the firm has experience of. The main benefit of this structured information is the acquisition of a thorough knowledge and insight into the firm’s core business. Basically it gets the firm ‘to know what the firm knows’ – both with regard to the accomplished expertise and knowledge in itself, and the knowledge about which individuals possess the most experience and are most suitable for solving a specific issue.

Taken together this will lead to the more efficient use and sharing of existing knowledge within the firm. As previous lessons learned, solutions reached, tactical negotiations and new ways of formulating legal structures can be better shared and taken advantage of by all lawyers, the firm's accumulated expertise level will be heightened. Further, by providing information on changes for different deal types and business sectors over time the Deal Tracker will serve not merely as a tool for internal knowledge sharing but also as a tool for business analysis.

Marketing and client services

Information about deal involvement has a very high marketing value for law firms, both in terms of direct client approaches for acquiring new assignments, and as general marketing. This information is often reported to Mergermarket and similar companies, the various league tables and rankings of which are regularly referred to by the media and are available for the inspection of clients.

Thus, by supporting the deal-reporting mechanism a number of external marketing benefits can be gained. Making the reporting easier and faster, and demanding less effort by the lawyers, this leads to time savings and an increased willingness to report deals, which will encourage the lawyers to be more frequent and accurate in reporting their deals, and ultimately enable the firm to have more deals reported. This will lead to higher rankings for the firm, as well as for the individual lawyers, in the league tables, and provide better marketing opportunities and competitive advantages. The facilitated reporting also provides more opportunities for the firm’s marketing department to be the first to publish information, and makes it possible to furnish the media with specific angles and desired interpretations.

We have also made several integrations with other business systems and measures to reduce the risk of mistakes and errors being made in deal reports and to increase the number of deals actually listed by Mergermarket. Due to the launch of this efficient reporting support tool in 2009 we could also correct errors made in reports, and thereby be sure that Vinge was ranked No. 1 in Mergermarket’s ranking for the Nordic market in 2008.

Another part of the external objective is the client-relationship aspect of course. Lawyers can find structured information about the client, previous deals involving the client or its competitors, general information about the business sector, and new solutions used in other transactions. Such initiated information about the client and the business sector, in combination with the firm’s accumulated experience from various deals, will provide a great opportunity for lawyers to show added value and trustworthiness to the client. To this end it supports the lawyers putting themselves in a favourable position, to gain a competitive advantage and link the client closer to the firm.

Process and system integration

Compared to other knowledge-management projects, there are also some inbuilt incentives in the deal reporting itself, which one otherwise seldom has the benefit of. When implementing the Deal Tracker we therefore focused on the support and benefit from the existing processes instead of turning it into a change-management project.

To begin with we made a profound analysis of how the Deal Tracker could be integrated with the firm’s existing processes and IT systems, and how it could acquire most business value and best capture the whole transaction matter process. This analysis resulted in the decision to implement an online reporting form, with connections to our other business systems, such as the financial system and the client repository. In this way we could provide the lawyers with a reporting form automatically pre-populated with extensive information (such as client name, deal type, business sector and the names of the lawyers involved) merely by asking for the matter number. Most other information in the reporting form is also easily selected from pre-determined lists, and practically no information has to be generated manually by the lawyers. We gain a huge time saving from this, where information already provided in other systems does not have to be stated again by the lawyer. There is also a reduced risk of mistakes and errors, with most information already provided or chosen from pre-determined lists.

We have also added extra processes and knowledge capture to the deal reporting, however, including automatic reminders and information going to all lawyers involved in a matter on which there are deal reports that have been initiated, forwarded or finalised. The lawyers can then easily follow up and remind colleagues that have not completed their tasks on time. This also increases the transparency of the deal reporting in general, and facilitates people other than the responsible partner taking action and doing the reporting without risking duplications. After the deal report has been finalised, an extra form for more extensive knowledge capturing and post-matter evaluation is automatically sent to the responsible lawyer.

Appealing presentation

One reason for the huge success of the project is also the way we present the information, however. Naturally there are many different ways of structuring and presenting information in a deal database, depending on the technical solutions (and limitations), the corporate culture at the law firm, the lawyers’ IT and search skills, and so on, but generally there are some ways to make the information more appealing and easily accessible for the lawyers. Without being too prejudiced, I believe it is fair to say that most lawyers are competitive by nature and enjoy being regarded as experts. I also believe it can be said that most lawyers are not the most advanced in terms of IT skills or advanced searching. Bearing this in mind, a good way of presenting the information in a deal database is by using ranking lists with easy visualisation, and by presenting the most interesting information in pre-determined reports in order to avoid searching for the most common information.

To facilitate the information procurement from the Deal Tracker we have also made the reporting form accessible solely from within. To trigger the lawyers’ competitive nature and further increase the willingness to report deals we have also structured the start page as a ranking list, with information on the top responsible partners – those who have secured the most deals and to the highest deal value. We then provide several pre-determined reports focusing on the most important information; for example deals per business sector or deal type. By providing several pre-determined reports you avoid the time spent on searches for the most common information. In addition thereto, however, we enable searching for specific terms or names in the reports and more advanced search possibilities, as well as a ‘search all’ possibility that gives the lawyers total freedom to search all the information they need.

Risk factors

When implementing a deal database, however, there are also some risk factors and potential pitfalls to be aware of. For example, there are always issues when structuring information and making it more visual and easily available, even though the information in a deal database will be most likely to consist of information already accessible to lawyers. When aggregating and presenting information in a more structured way it becomes much more explicit, which might give rise to adverse reactions and a desire to limit the access. This can be of particular concern when connections are made to other business systems, as has been the case with the Deal Tracker, exposing and making aggregated information from several different systems more transparent.

Such transparency might also cause concern about the risk of exposure of confidential client information, which is the most important risk to consider. To avoid this you must implement security measures, ensuring information from the system can never be published or sent externally without approval from the responsible partner. It is of utmost importance that the lawyers have confidence in the system and the handling of confidential and other client-related information, to feel secure enough to report all deals into the system.

As with all projects involving IT, there is also the risk of an over-technical focus, leading to mistakes in the implementation and less business usability. Any project focusing on business processes and business development should be managed by someone with an in-depth understanding of the business,
as the key to a successful development is that the business support tool fits the culture of the law firm and the way the lawyers work. A good principle to keep in mind when developing a business system is that it should be simple and intuitive: preferably so intuitive that it can be used without any training.

Supporting innovation

As a client turning to a reputable law firm, you expect to take advantage of the accumulated knowledge of the whole firm. A deal database is a tool to support this kind of knowledge sharing, but the vision for our Deal Tracker is that it will become much more than just a knowledge-sharing tool. As it supports the core business of the firm, our aim is that it will develop into a basis for delivering innovative solutions and finding new methods for providing legal services, thereby leveraging the experience at the firm and making the knowledge sharing an enabler for innovation and business development.

But how can you accomplish such a vision?

First, by collecting information in a deal database it will be easier for the lawyers to receive information on tactical negotiations, new innovative solutions and the formulation of legal structures, etc., which provides a good basis for innovation. A lawyer finding initiated information about the client and the business sector in question, in combination with the firm’s accumulated experience from various deals, will have a good basis for providing added value and new applicable knowledge to the clients. By providing this kind of knowledge the lawyers at the firm can become trusted advisors for the client, linking them closer to the firm by providing more value than any competitor.

Second, a deal database is a way of connecting the experts to one another internally, and helps the lawyers to find the person with the greatest expertise for each client issue and a basis for collaboration within the firm. By supporting such collaboration you can provide the firm with a tool to become a truly knowledge-sharing organisation, with constant interchange of experiences and new ideas for legal issues, as well as new ways of delivering the services. To this end, the deal database supports innovation, in relation to both legal aspects and business development.

Through this combined knowledge sharing and the possibility of receiving information about new ways of solving problems, market analysis, tactical negotiations and the formulation of legal structures, the lawyers will have a sound basis for providing innovative solutions. The lawyers will also have the opportunity to be made aware of new possibilities and new ways of delivering their services, thereby turning the deal database into an enabler for more business development and new methods for providing legal services.

Ann Björk is the deputy head of knowledge management at Vinge KB. She can be contacted at: ann.bjork@vinge.se