Talking Data with Katy Snell and Alice Laird (Howard Kennedy) : Iron Carrot

Season 4 Episode 5

Welcome to Season 4 of the Law Firm Data Governance podcast. I’m CJ Anderson, founder of Iron Carrot, the law firm data governance specialist. I’m thrilled to have a new season of insights about working with information and data in law firms.

Data governance is the key to unlocking your law firm’s potential. But it’s not the only area of data activity that is important for your firm’s success. That’s why, in this fourth season, I’m pleased to share some information, questions, and top tips about the other areas you might want to consider.

Episode Transcript

CJ Anderson
Welcome to Season 4 of the Law Firm Data Governance podcast. I’m CJ Anderson, Founder of Iron Carrot, the law firm data governance specialists. I’m thrilled to have a new season of insights about working with information and data in law firms. Data governance is the key to unlocking your firm’s potential. But it’s not the only area of data activity that is important for your firm’s success.

That’s why, in this fourth season, I’m delighted to share some of my recent data conversations. My guests this season are thought leaders in their own areas. Each has a unique perspective on the importance of data to law firms. Join us as we talk about capturing, finding, using and governing data in ways that can add meaningful value to the firm’s strategy, operational processes, and everything in between.

This week, I’d like to welcome to the episode Katy Snell and Alice Laird from Howard Kennedy to talk to us about taxonomy and data in law firms. So welcome Katy and Alice. 

Katy Snell and Alice Laird
Thanks CJ!

CJ Anderson
So let’s start with you, Katy. What’s your current role and what can you tell me about your career journey working with data and law firms? 

Katy Snell
So my current job title is Knowledge Systems and Information Manager, but that really evolved after first doing a firm as their research librarian. I was brought in to kind of help boost the enquiry service, which was kind of something that came out of the merger of the two smaller firms when Howard Kennedy came into existence. Most of my previous roles have had some touch point with systems, which therefore have also involved data in some way. I worked as e-services Librarian at the Ministry of Justice, which is also where I first had sort of legal research experience. I then moved to the institute of chartered accountants, which was more inquiry service led, but I did once again end up getting involved in library management systems and CRM and then after that I decided to join Howard Kennedy because I wanted to go back to legal research. That was my first commercial law firm, but obviously having got the legal research skills at OJ and then the Business Research at ICW it this current role kind of combined all of my previous roles. 

CJ Anderson
Interesting journey in, in and out of law firms and with that research perspective and your experiences, how do you think data is viewed in law firms? 

Katy Snell
It’s tricky because I’ve only been in the one law firm, so it’s hard me to talk generically. But having said that, I’m part of lots of networks, have been lots of parts of collaboration groups. I’ve met lots of people across different firms and had these kinds of conversations. I think the importance is definitely growing and there seems to be more articles and focus on being data-driven. But you know how successful they are and how much it’s just buzzwords I think it’s quite difficult. Law firms are traditionally quite secretive, so I’m not sure if you can always get the full story of what’s going on in the background. There are definitely people doing it well, I’ve seen there are many great examples of people using things like power AI to bring data together centrally so it can be analysed. But I don’t think just practice completely, otherwise we probably wouldn’t continue to have all these collaboration groups to try and figure out all of these problems. I think it’s always an issue of time and resource. Data projects sometimes get pushed aside because they seem too tricky or maybe not as exciting as other things. But you know, I think it’s the foundation of knowledge. 

CJ Anderson
Really interesting answer and not to forget you, Alice. You’re also relatively new to law firm data. What’s your current role and how did you get there? 

Alice Laird
I’ve been at Howard Kennedy for one year now and it’s the first law firm that I worked for. My job title is Information and Metadata Manager, and it’s within the Knowledge team. It’s actually a new Howard Kennedy role to build and implement taxonomy at Howard Kennedy, and it’s combined with information inquiries and information resources or traditional kind of library information role.  I qualified as a librarian a long time ago, and my general career path has been in classification, cataloguing, inquiries, but then about eight years ago, I was seconded as project manager to ICAW that’s the Institute of Chartered Accountant in England and Wales where I used to work to a taxonomy project then which I’ll talk about in more detail later. Then last year, I moved to Howard Kennedy. I’ve actually known Katie and I’ve worked with her in the past at ICAW. The Howard Kennedy role sounded really appealing and interesting to me and combines my interests and previous experience. But it was also a great opportunity to start something new.  And in a new type of working environment and I had the specific skills and experience required. So yes, a year ago I moved. 

CJ Anderson
That’s brilliant, and taxonomies and an interesting one, can you just explain a little bit either of you about what is a taxonomy and why law firms need them? 

Alice Laird
I’ll kick off on that and then perhaps Katie can continue with some points later. A taxonomy, it’s often really difficult to define taxonomy, so I’ll have a shot at it. It’s a categorisation system, using consistent labels and descriptions for use in labelling content, often used for tagging and it can often be a hierarchical labouring labelling system, which it doesn’t need to be. I thought it might be useful to just say a few potential advantages and versatility for using one in a law firm. So just to pick a couple of examples, one of the things it can do is if you have your content well organised and labelled consistently, it can really improve analysis and the understanding of the work a firm does so. For example, you can see where the law firms work is efficient and profitable.  Another potential use is within a knowledge system. Again, if all the precedents, for example, are really well and accurately labelled, you can use search to locate all the precedents on a wide topic. But you can also home in and find something very specific. And finally, for example, when it’s time for directory submissions, if your cases are well labelled with taxonomy. So for example, maybe if you need to find some examples for your directory for a particular sector or particular types of work, you can find those quickly and accurately rather than having to track back through your memory and endless and place things in spreadsheets. Did you want to add anything, Katie? 

Katy Snell
I think it’s more a general note. I think in law firms I get the impression that interest in taxonomy has went away for a while because there was a sense that maybe other technology was going to solve those issues without having to do the hard work of creating one. But I think you know, it’s becoming clearer that taxonomies and the wider issue of data governance and data control like absolutely foundational to making these things work at the end of the day, you can’t leverage data that you can’t make sense of. 

CJ Anderson
That’s interesting and thank you for sharing that explanation of taxonomy it’s difficult to know how to explain it sometimes that was a great explanation and examples of how it comes together. Alice you mentioned the ICAW Taxonomy project. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and the lessons you learned there that law firms perhaps can benefit from? 

Alice Laird
Yeah, sure. The ICAW taxonomy involved really starting from scratch and building a taxonomy.  Alongside subject matter experts, particularly on tax and accountancy, the system that we use with Smartlogik Semaphore and we wanted something that could be used by people who for editing content but didn’t necessarily have a deep knowledge of the subject. So auto classification was really key for us. So we created auto classification rules. Once we built the taxonomy and then the taxonomy was implemented in systems of primarily the corporate website.  So that was really the project phase, getting all that up and running. And then we moved from the project phase to business as usual, cause the taxonomy was constantly changing. So it needed work on the taxonomy itself and also the rules and updating the rules and also testing.  The taxonomy every time the content management system was updated, which was actually quite often.  Just to pick out some, perhaps some lessons learned, I’m going to look at some successes and then some challenges. The auto classification I felt was a real success. It was really interesting to work on. The accuracy was good against the classification rules and it really improved overtime. So that was very satisfying to see. So as synonyms were added and the rules were refined, user classification results improved. And that meant that editors adding content to the content management system didn’t need to know a lot about the subject, and the tagging was really consistent.  Another success about it, it was really integral to how the website worked, so the content classified by the taxonomy was automatically added to relevant pages or website. So that meant that there wasn’t so much need for manual website updating and the content.  Was always up to date, so as soon as something was added, it went to the right place on the website, so I think.  My lesson learned from that is to really have a clear aim for the taxonomy, because we knew at the beginning we wanted to use it to update content on the website and to have that aim in mind just really made that aspect of it successful.  So with the challenges and technology is always a challenge. It was rewarding, but there was lots of trying and experimentation to work out sometimes why things didn’t work. We got some strange error message. We did have some really good expertise within the organisation and within our third-party supplier, so I think really the lesson learned from that is just to be patient because it’s not going to be right first time and you do need to keep the technical people on board. Another challenge was the change management. It was a very different way to doing things that the way that everyone had done them in the past. We certainly didn’t get that right all the time but again, I think the lesson learned for organisations and law firms is just to communicate and keep the stakeholders on board as much as you can. Finally, with the challenges with the taxonomy checking and governance, that was a really ongoing thing and the lesson learned. Yes, in some ways the taxonomy did make things more efficient, but it was also a new work stream. It made things better. But the new work stream needed support a resource constantly even after the project phase was finished. 

CJ Anderson
And those benefits and challenges sound like you had a great experience on the project that you could you brought with you to Howard Kennedy. Can you both tell me a little bit more about Howard Kennedy’s taxonomy journey? 

Katy Snell
Yes. So, I think a few years ago it became clear to me that one of the issues we had was around data. Various projects came up as part of the library or Knowledge team. We’d be asked to input in that and it just became clear to me that there wasn’t enough consistency in language across all of those systems and a consensus, I guess, which is what was needed. In the end, I think there are a number of factors that brought it together. I think enough projects came up at once, so you know, as I was suggesting it, something became here that was the solution. Also I think just generally it’s becoming a bit more of a hot topic like it’s being talked a bit more about in the legal sector. So all of those things I think started more senior stakeholders seeing that you know passes is something we want to think about. We weren’t really sure how to get started though so I went out to my professional association and said, anyone else who has started a taxonomy project, do you know anyone? Can you advise anyone? And of course, someone put me in touch with you, CJ. And I was very grateful for your advice. And obviously you came there and you helped us talk to our management committee about why this is something that we wanted to do. And then we change this sort of point of, well, who’s gonna lead the project? Because although you know, I have a background with some data systems sort of. Taxonomy side of things was not really my specialty. Mostly I led on the inquiries and research and systems side and so we talked about it said or do we know anybody who can help both from the library side because we’re a relatively small team, but also the experience of taxonomy. And I think my boss said you won’t find somebody’s got both of those roles. And I said it just so happens that that I know just the person. And you know, Alice came on board and you know that’s where we’ve been able to make much more progress. And then Alice has been working with some particular teams. You know, where those issues have come up a nd I think maybe she can talk a bit more about some examples of that. 

Alice Laird
Yes. When I started last year, very quickly the Business Development team were really keen to get on board with the taxonomy on the discussions and everything they’ve gone on before and the situation that they were facing with all sorts of outdated lists, little taxonomies in different systems describing similar concepts, but nothing kind of consistent or matching up with each other. They also had a very specific need for their credential spreadsheets, so they had lots of different spreadsheets using these different kind of vocabularies. And also they could see the potential for using the taxonomy or descriptions in other systems. So for example CRM matter descriptions. So they had already decided that they had some specific requirements for where they needed taxonomy, so they wanted some help with various categories of information, they wanted some help on lists of countries and jurisdictions, they wanted to relook at the different sectors and the descriptions of sectors that they had and could really see the potential for using those in the CRM as well. And also they had very specific requirements for work types. So I started working on those categories. We use their lists for the countries and jurisdictions we’ve worked together on creating a new sector list and I’m working with the fee earners to get this work types and using their expertise to get to work up the work types to add to the taxonomy with the helpful structure and consistent labelling the taxonomy bring. 

CJ Anderson
So can I just ask what is Nos Legal and why did you decide to use it? 

Katy Snell
So I mean, there’s a lot of different taxonomies already in existence. You don’t always need to start from scratch with a project like this. Nos Legal is the brainchild of Graham Johnston. He’s a Former Partner at Herbert Smith Freehills. It’s an open-source taxonomy project but there’s lots of different major law firms and technology companies supporting this work and there’s like a series of different working groups and it is looking to create sort of high-level taxonomy of legal terms across the industry to help with that kind of consistency. We became involved in the project in 2022 and it’s been really great to have collaboration with people in similar roles and other firms. They’re bringing things and really still reassured that they’re facing the same challenge. Specifically, I was part of the legal process and design group and that was looking more at ways of how you go about starting a project and then the process is required. And we’re taking that one step forward now and the continuation group, that’s a little more closely at the challenges around implementation and some of the things we’ll be looking at are like different business needs and how you meet those conflicting needs and also the issue of what kind of software you use to how to taxonomy and how you take that forward. 

Alice Laird
And a little bit about how the taxonomy is constructed, which I found really useful. It’s very specifically a very practical to sort of me, which is to describe the sort of work that law firms do, which really reflects what we’re trying to do and Howard Kennedy and I found that really useful, just kind of thinking behind how you can divide things up into the different categories and it’s been so useful having that full list of jurisdictions which are Nos Legal updates that we’ve been able to just take on board and use straight away. And I’ve also found it so useful going to the Nos Legal community and Brian Johnson in particular, just to sort of talk through some different classification and categorisation issues that we’re having. So it’s been really great.

CJ Anderson
Amazing. It’s great to hear there’s a community and a support mechanism around it and it’s always nice to hear about new standard taxonomies that we can all make use of. I want to pick up if I can on something you mentioned earlier and it’s about stakeholders and how do you get them to buy into your taxonomy project? 

Katy Snell
I like to joke that I want him down in the end. Using all those different factors, but I think now the thing is that stakeholders are on board. The next job is really selling it to the wider business. Obviously it helps to have someone like you come along CJ and sort from an objective perspective. It wasn’t just coming from me, this is something that’s affecting more of the legal industry and this is why it’s important to you. And also you know some of that just becomes obvious. I do think sometimes some projects just exceed because it’s at the right point in time, it’s the right people, the right set of circumstances maybe you know the right set things have gone wrong that mean you need to find something to fix those problems. And you know, I think some of all of those things are things that happened. We do our best to search everyone you know, whenever anything comes up that maybe mentions data or how we organise things as taxonomy is mentioned again and again. Some of the things that we’re doing are going to include holding some workshops to educate fee earners. And also get their views on the taxonomy we’re gonna send out a newsletter shortly and across the firms to talk about the project so far. And you know, we’re working with BB to kind of raise our profile across the firm and explain why the project is so important. 

CJ Anderson
Brilliant. Thank you. I’m going to be slightly cheeky and jump tracks. Because Katy, I know you have thoughts on this topic, but how do you think AI fits into this picture? 

Katy Snell
Yeah, I think I’ve developed a slight reputation as being able to be a cynic about AI, but I couldn’t be further from the truth. As I said, I’ve always had assistance roles and I’m actually really interested in the future technology. I am quite excited about the things like ChatGPT can do, but I maybe I’ve run a few people who wasn’t as surprised about it. I think maybe what did surprise me about the way that hype suddenly built was how you know, there’s been people who’ve been working on this kind of thing for years. And I said this the other day to a rather large vendor who I know are working on this and I said is it frustrating to you that you spent all this time in the background working on things towards AI depending on how you want to define that. But all of a sudden Chat GPT comes along and now the whole world is has an interest in it. I mean it’s someone’s been like slogging away on this for years and have always seen this as part of the. But again, I think a combination of factors made that happen. I think what people do need to understand though, is that for AI to really work, it does have to sit across structured data. Otherwise you do have those issues that come up around hallucinations. And, you know, possibly fitting into inaccurate information. You know, if it’s looking across the whole, the web people can anything up there as it doesn’t mean it’s coming from a reputable source. So structured data is really important and what’s the best way to put it? It’s structured data taxonomy. So that’s how I see it fitting together. 

CJ Anderson
So Alice, how do you see AI being able to help with classification? 

Alice Laird
I’m really excited about what AI can do to help with classification. As I’ve mentioned with the ICAW taxonomy project, a lot of the work that we did was around auto classification and that was really fun and really rewarding.  But it seems to me now Donna’s kind of looked a bit at what things like chat GP team can do with classification. There’s a lot of potential for AI to really help in this area because it’s so good at learning and analysing patterns, labelled examples and applying those to new data, which is kind of really what you want to do when you’re creating taxonomy. Also, there’s the potential for classifying images and spoken words, which is really difficult with an auto classification which is based on textual rules. So I’ve done some experiments of my own just looking at ChatGPT and how it works with just lists and information and how it can organise them and just that’s really exciting. And also I’m very interested in how providers are working to harness this technology. 

CJ Anderson
And now we’re coming to the end of our conversation because time, as always, is against us. So Alice, I’m going to ask, what’s your kind of final thought on law firm taxonomies? 

Alice Laird
As we’ve said before, I’m new to law firms and that side of taxonomy, but it seems to me there’s a lot of interesting developments and communities going on, there’s a lot of discussion about it, there’s a lot of chances to for people to compare their experiences. It’s also an opportunity to move away from individuals and silos to consistently label information across the firm that will really deliver improved data analysis and efficiencies and I think it’s important to remember that the technical side of it is really just one aspect. You can build the technology, build the taxonomy, but it’s the culture change and getting people to buy it, that’s really important. 

CJ Anderson
That’s great. Thank you. And Katy, what’s your final thought on data in law firms? 

Katy Snell
As you may have gathered, I think data is one of our most important assets because really that’s the building block for you know, creating knowledge and tracing analysis that can lead to an in-building strategy. I think it’s worth saying though that you know, even once you’ve created your perfect taxonomy like Alistair’s, it’s not a complete process it’s something needs ongoing maintenance so thinking around data governance, having people take ownership of that I think is just equally as important as well. 

CJ Anderson
Those are great points from both of you. Thank you so much for joining this episodem it’s been lovely to talk to you. 

Katy Snell and Alice Laird
Thanks you!

CJ Anderson
Thank you for joining me for this law firm data governance podcast episode. I had a great time chatting with Alice and Katy and learned a lot about the taxonomy process and it’s link to data governance. It was brilliant to hear a real example of the Nos Legal taxonomy being used at a law firm and Katy’s thoughts about AI was really insightful and interesting to hear a different perspective on law firm and AI for once. If you liked this episode please share, like and review it so that more law firm leaders can learn about data governance and how to manage data in law firms effectively. Don’t forget to subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any of this seasons data conversations with law firm thought leaders. Or you can head over to irconcarrot.com to get in touch with your questions and ideas for future episodes.