When I'm ready to buy something like an MP3 player, a digital camera, or, heaven forbid, a big purchase like a car, I research the product to death, poring through Consumer Reports and checking online reviews, ad nauseum. Then I throw up my hands when I realize that no one product has all the features I want at a price I'm willing to pay. Indecision call stall the purchase for months.
This same principle applies when I'm looking at online services, search engines and other KM products. Hmm, I like the interface on this one, but the relevancy ranking of the other. I get close to nirvana, then my hopes are dashed.
Ali Shahidi and Denise Grigst at Alschuler Grossman Stein & Kahan LLP, a Los Angeles law firm of about 100 attorneys, don't let such things get to them. Alschuler has the distinction of having not just one, not just two, but three different KM products. It all started out with Lexis TotalSearch, then they later added Real Practice and West KM.
Why all 3? At Alschuler, Lexis and Westlaw usage is split about 50-50. So Lexis Totalsearch solved only part of the problem, leaving Westlaw users without the same benefits as those who used Lexis. (This was in the early days when access to Lexis Totalsearch was exclusively available via Lexis.com.) So they purchased West KM. This was fine for the litigators, but the transactional attorneys weren't about to hop onto Lexis or Westlaw to run an internal document search. So Real Practice was introduced to meet the needs of the transactional group.
The bottomline is, just like digital cameras, no product does it all.
(Ali and Denise presented at the AALL KM Workshop on Saturday.)
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