At Paul Hastings we spent considerable amount of effort last year reviewing various search technologies, both in terms of "universal" search (that is finding information/data from a multitude of sources) and more targeted search solutions, such as West KM. This said, we found the problems that the various approaches are solving are different and thus we elected to pursue a two-prong strategy covering both types of knowledge searches detailed below.
1. DMS/Best Practice Database: I think we all understand the approach West KM takes, but perhaps a less known solution we evaluated was from a company called Practice Technologies was ultimately what our attorneys elected to pilot this winter/spring. Bottom line, our attorneys felt West KM's approach was too narrow and the reliance on citation did little to narrow down our most relevant work-product.
Instead, we felt the approach by Practice Technologies was broader and more comprehensive. Essentially, Practice Technologies assumes you have done a poor job of profiling your documents and reclassifies them based upon a rules-based engine. The focus being not only litigation orientated documents, but transaction documents as well. The reclassifying engine augments your already existing profile with substantive information such as jurisdiction, opposing counsel, type of document (motion to dismiss), etc. This data is rarely profiled, nor is it typically part of the profile.
An interesting aside, do a query on your DMS profiles and I think you'll find folks do a poor job of profiling, even if they tell you otherwise. Ultimately, our attorneys recognized it was becoming increasingly difficult to find on point work product, thus this project made sense to pursue. There's other integration points with this product, for example, procedure law (links to treatises, filing laws in CA, etc.).
2. Universal Search: This was a challenging area to evaluate. We probably interviewed upward of 10 companies. Bottom line in this area for us was a commitment to legal, the technology is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate. However, there will need to be integration points to various legal vendors and we did not want to have to pay for these (as would be the case with Autonomy, which also has a pricing model that needs to be reconsidered). We selected Recommind.
So, what has been learned? Unfortunately, we are early in the game. But item (1) above is resonating most with our attorneys. It's premature to give any kind of meaningful endorsement in that it's early, but the key is that the targeted type of applications (whether Practice Tech or West KM) solve obvious problems -- poor profiling of DMS documents and make the task of doing legal research less onerous. We are likely to adopt this product firm-wide the way it is going. Item (2) Universal Search has promise, but I believe the ROI is longer term in that it takes time to work with the data to achieve promising results.
If I had to choose one of the above, it would probably be item (1) and we would choose a less robust search engine, perhaps DT Search. However, the risk there would be falling behind in working with the search technology that looks promising.
Finally, we may have the resources to do some of this in-house, but I would never do so in that the investment/pace of change with this type of technology will be difficult to keep up with.
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