Discover the five simple rules for getting law firm taxonomies right with Iron Carrot
Introduction
It’s not unusual for law firms to identify that it’s hard for users to find the information they need, especially when searching cross-functionally. They conclude that it would be better if everyone used the same language (a taxonomy) – or if there was some way to link all the different vocabularies (an ontology).
The answer is to start with firmwide taxonomy, but most firms have concerns about the effort and discipline required to create and adopt one. The most common questions are:
- Will it take months of analysis and training?
- Will fitting everything into neat containers destroy creativity?
Creating and implementing a taxonomy takes effort, but when done correctly, the benefits more than justify the time and resources. More than just labelling data and information or packaging it into neat boxes, it’s about understanding the underlying concepts that your taxonomy describes.
Why is a lack of taxonomy a problem
As firms grow and adopt specialised business services teams and technologies to help them, their language becomes increasingly specialised within these teams and becomes a barrier to cross-functional understanding.
This disconnected vocabulary is often a source of confusion and frustration for lawyers receiving different data reports with the same labels but which don’t make sense to them. A typical example I encounter is the challenge of the Finance team’s headcount report, which has a different FTE number than the HR team’s headcount report.
Each team is adamant that their number is correct and the other team’s number is wrong, and any conversations to try and resolve it become the immovable force versus the unstoppable object.
Of course, the reality is that they are both right within their own contexts. They’re just using different calculations to get to the FTE number, and these two numbers were never supposed to match – nobody thought anyone would be trying to compare or match up the two reports anyway!
The five simple rules for Success
A cross-functional approach to the firm’s language makes it easier for business services teams to manage and share data. It also makes it easier for lawyers and senior stakeholders to understand the dashboards and reports that they use. Which, in turn, increases their confidence in the firm’s data.
There are five simple rules for getting a law firm taxonomy right:
Rule 1: Don’t Use ‘Other’
If there is any law firm conversation that highlights, underscores and flashes big neon signs about data governance, it’s the one about the firm’s internal and external practice groups, industry sectors, and matter types.
It usually happens when there is a need to map or hierarchically link these (reference) lists in some way (i.e., in a taxonomy or semantic layer) – and that’s when it all starts to go wrong.
Finance, Conflicts, or Marketing will go into their bunkers and come up with their version of the mapping which doesn’t match anyone else’s. So, they take another look at the map and add ‘other’ to each list as a catch-all.
Other catch-alls (do you see what I did there…?) include ‘miscellaneous’, ‘unknown’, ‘TBD’, and of course, the law firm favourite, ‘intentionally blank’. Anytime someone adds ‘other’, they’re not having the business rules conversation with senior stakeholders. For example, should we even be doing the work if it’s not a core matter type?
This is where data governance helps sort this out:
- It ensures there is an accountable owner for each list and a forum for consulting the other list stakeholders.
- It defines the rules around how to use, add to, delete from, and merge lists so that you don’t end up with 10+ permutations of ‘other’ across the taxonomy.
- It ensures that each term has definitions and usages within each list so there is clarity in mapping.
- It stops lists and terms from being mapped into a taxonomy where there is no business use case for doing so.
- It helps the stakeholders document the rules for why things should and shouldn’t be on the list, and…
- It reinforces that you should never, ever, seriously (even if you think you need to) use words like ‘other’ in any list of industry sectors or matter types.
Rule 2: Each word must mean what everyone thinks it means
A big challenge in law firms is when different teams use the same word to represent different concepts.
On the legal side, ‘bond’ is a word that always drove me crazy when I worked in knowledge management. Across a big law firm’s many practice groups and service lines, a bond could be 1 of many things, such as:
- Bond – a financial instrument evidencing the issuer’s debt.
- Bond – a formal written agreement by which a person undertakes to perform a specific act.
- Bond – a construction guarantee.
- Bond – a type of insurance policy.
There are also many examples in business services, like headcount and department. The resulting confusion results in wasted time and effort trying to work with matching data sets that do not fit or match but should.
Having a firmwide shared language (as a Taxonomy with Definitions in a Business Glossary) helps clarify which version of the term is used in which context and by whom.
Rule 3: no buzzwords or shorthand acronyms
Within your data governance framework, a shared language’s most significant impact is how the members of each group work together, particularly within the community of data stewards.
A shared vocabulary builds the foundation for solid communication because everyone on the team understands what the other is saying. Buzzwords and shorthand acronyms are replaced with consistent terminology that everyone can understand. This helps the data stewards to understand goals, objectives, and expectations.
The shared vocabulary also increases efficiency and productivity because data stewards don’t lose time negotiating the details of the topic under discussion. It’s obvious which data concepts are being discussed, and this standard nomenclature helps people clearly and effectively get their points across.
Over time, shared experiences improve culture and camaraderie. For example, consider the inside jokes you share with your long-term friends. Having a firmwide vocabulary (a defined language) recreates this trust and understanding in the workplace.
Rule 4: what it’s called in your system doesn’t matter; it needs to be understood ‘in the wild’
A data glossary is a crucial deliverable in a data governance initiative. Because of that, alongside the terms and definitions, you should also capture the data owner and data steward for each term. As data governance in your firm matures, you might also add things like data quality rules, system, table, and field locations, and flagging issues for potential users of that data.
When you are creating a glossary for the data in your firm, you need to be pragmatic and recognise that it will be an iterative, ever-evolving document. In some cases, you will not be able to jump straight to a ‘firm-wide standard definition’.
What you can do, is identify terms with multiple different definitions and multiple different terms with the same definition. This doesn’t mean that you need to include the different labels for this term across all the firm’s systems. That’s for a data catalogue and not important to people outside of the core systems teams.
But be aware that sensible and valid business requirements may exist for the various definitions. Over time, in conversations involving data owners, data stewards, and users of the terms, you will be able to start with simple disambiguation and eventually reach as many standard terms as your firm will wear.
A critical part of data governance’s success is ensuring everyone understands the firm’s vocabulary – whether it is in a glossary, a taxonomy, or a semantic layer. And by everyone, I really do mean across the whole firm, regardless of team or role (and yes, this includes the lawyers and other client-facing teams).
Rule 5: Do it slowly and collectively, or not at all
Business glossaries and taxonomies exist to improve the business understanding of the data they produce and use. These should be created firm-wide. A data glossary is a vital part of a successful Data Governance framework.
There are lots of challenges that you’ll encounter when trying to create a firmwide taxonomy. From experience, you will never overcome these challenges if you try to do this without having the whole firm on board. Or at least a critical mass of representatives from all parts of the firm.
The common challenge are:
- To ensure that there is one version of the firm’s operating vocabulary is centrally held and used by all.
- To consult on and publicise changes or additions to this vocabulary.
- To develop and agree on a taxonomy that includes definitions, calculations, disambiguation, a hierarchy of terms, synonyms, and preferred terms.
- To reflect feedback from business services users and lawyers in constructing the vocabularies.
- To ensure database owners are made aware of the taxonomy and changes and additions to the vocabulary.
By planning your stakeholder engagement carefully and giving everyone a chance to contribute, you will end up taking more time to deliver results. However, the benefits of this approach far outweigh the cost of lost time.
Your stakeholders will be engaged and enthusiastic contributors from the very beginning of your taxonomy project. As this gets iterated, agreed upon, and published, these stakeholders will help you communicate and drive the successful adoption of the new taxonomy. Finally, they’ll self-nominate into the roles with accountabilities and responsibilities, which will take management of the taxonomy from a project to a business-as-usual activity.
Final thoughts
The lack of a coordinated firmwide language is one of the contributing factors to the creation of operational silos. One of the core pieces of ‘sorting out’ data governance is creating a successful and aligned taxonomy by identifying owners and creating the culture and mechanisms for good mapping conversations to happen.
Busy people often choose the first item in a drop-down list (or even just the entry they used last time) for convenience. Whatever taxonomy you implement must not take too many mental calories for these busy people to figure out. But you do need to implement a continuous education and feedback process for the various parts of the taxonomy where they are in use as drop-down lists. It’s important to help people understand why “making a better choice” has a positive impact on business outcomes.
How Iron Carrot can help
Innovative law firms have big goals for improving the client experience through data innovation.
Through our extensive law firm background, we have developed a unique data governance road-mapping approach to help law firm leaders launch the proper foundation for data governance.
If you want to chat confidentially about how Iron Carrot can help your firm with its Data Governance initiatives, send me a Direct Message via my Profile, or book a call via the Iron Carrot Limited website.
