5th Annual Janders Dean Legal Knowledge & Innovation Conference

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the 5th Annual Janders Dean Legal Knowledge & Innovation Conference in Sydney.  I had been invited to participate in a panel discussion with an old friend, Katherine Ward, who I hadn't seen for many years as she resides now in Old Blighty, or, Flighty as my spell check insists.  Sydney is always a perfect host, warm after a long Melbourne winter, the conference venue was well positioned, perched on the Rooftop of Cockle Bay Wharf in Darling Park.

Day one began with a Keynote address on The Future of Law by Professor Richard Susskind.  This was a video link up, and a white shirted, occasionally pixelating Susskind addressed us from a basement in London, the walls as white as his shirt, in the very early hours of a London morning.  Having attended Boston AALL (American Association of Law Libraries) two months earlier and listened to Susskind deliver another Keynote [http://boston-calling.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/richard-susskind.html] I experienced a sense of déjà vu as I listened to the story of the Ice Hockey star, the challenges facing the legal industry, the decomposition of work streams, and sustaining v disruptive technologies.  The audience and presenters were different, they included Knowledge Directors and Managers, Technology and Innovation Specialists, Lawyers, Publishers, Legal Project Managers and Consultants, which isn't to say that a number of these people weren't also present in Boston, but the feel was more global and the audience targeted.  I enjoyed a more intimate experience and the chance to meet up with old friends and meet many new ones.  Richard's address was just as pertinent for either audience - play to where the puck is heading, and not where it's at - simple?

The first day also included a session on Lawyer Profiling by Justin North, Director of Janders Dean; a panel session by three lawyers archly titled You Think You Know Me? What Lawyers Really Want, Need and Value; and a thought provoking piece, Innovation in the Law - The Role of Technology by the editor of Legal Technology Insider, Charles Christian.  Day 2 really captured my imagination with some very different and creative approaches to mapping Knowledge processes, graphically, using arrows, tables, flow charts, squiggles and pictures.  I love visuals and there is nothing better in a presentation than examining a process articulated in a one slide diagram, it tells you a lot, to my mind, about the creator, the company it came from and the science of business process mapping.  Sam Dimond was the Keynote speaker on Day 2, Group Director of Knowledge at Norton Rose, he discussed the experience of merging law firms and formulating a truly global Knowledge Management solution.  US firm Seyfarth Shaw dove into their Legal Project Management Case Study which was fascinating, and Buzzword Biopsy by Stuart Barr of HighQ Solutions got us up to speed on IT trends to watch and adopt, as well as the ones to ignore.  I learnt the phrase Shadow IT - where people purchase software outside of their organisation, without approval creating an unsanctioned IT underworld, which sounded like the plot of a William Gibson novel.

After lunch nerves kicked in as Katharine Ward (Vodafone UK) and Justin Moses (Westpac) and I presented a panel discussion on The Views of Clients: The Hidden Power & Influence of Knowledge & Innovation.  No matter how much camomile tea I drink I still get stage fright, talk too fast for the first few minutes, forget to say half the insightful, thought provoking and very clever comments I had scribbled all over my note pad during the conference, and fail to pull off the seamless, witty and relaxed deliveries everyone else manages with aplomb.  Note to self: we are always our harshest critics.  The last paper of the conference was fun and inspiring, and, great to have a speaker in Knowledge Management but outside of law, Felicity McNish, from global architecture and design firm Woods Bagot.  This was a stimulating note to end on, and, what a great job to have.  Much kudos to Justin North and his team for putting on such an inspired agenda, and a really relaxed learning two days.