New Business Intake: Laying the Foundation for the Data-Driven Firm

Meredith Williams-Range Chief Knowledge and Client Value Officer

Judy Berman Director, Global New Business Intake

and Information Management

Shearman & Sterling is a global law firm with approximately 900 lawyers in 23 offices around the world. The

firm serves corporations, major financial institutions, emerging growth companies, governments and state-

owned enterprises, executing financial and other transactions and providing legal advice and industry insight

enabling them to navigate the challenges of today and achieve their future ambitions.

Shearman & Sterling decided to migrate its new business intake (NBI) system to Intapp Intake, after Intapp

announced its acquisition of The Frayman Group (TFG) in 2014.

The firm had been one of the very early adopters of Compliguard Flow, the NBI workflow application devel-

oped by TFG. Shearman & Sterling recognized the importance of investing in technology that was more

broadly adopted with a clear development roadmap for the future.

In 2016, Shearman & Sterling launched an RFP process to identify a consulting partner who could best assist

with the design and implementation of a new NBI system, as well as migration from its legacy system.

“Our workflow is really intense,” says Judy Berman, Director of Global New Business Intake and Information

Management at Shearman & Sterling. “We knew it was going to be challenging to implement a new system

that could address all of our complex requirements.”

Shearman & Sterling’s approach to NBI required an unusually large number of business policies to be config-

ured as rules within their workflows. For example, the firm had established different steps to follow for part-

ner review and approvals, depending on geographical jurisdiction as well as practice group.

As part of its rigorous approach to risk management, Shearman & Sterling also requires Know Your Client

(KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks for all clients globally, regardless of where they are based.

This policy provides consistency, reduces risks, and makes it easier to take on additional matters more

efficiently in the future.

After looking at three consulting services vendors, Shearman & Sterling decided to partner with InOutsource.

“We were super impressed with InOutsource. It was clear that they were very knowledgeable about all the

issues we were facing and had the right experience and expertise to guide us on this journey. And we were

confident from the start that we would develop a good working relationship.”

Ready for an NBI Upgrade

2

An “Intense” Workflow

Rather than simply replace its existing workflow, the Shearman & Sterling NBI team decided to take the op-

portunity to make improvements to create a better intake process.

“We thought through every step of the process: Is this something we

should keep? Or should we re-engineer it?” explains Berman. “We tried

not to simply rebuild what we already had, but looked for ways

to improve the process and make it more efficient.”

The InOutsource team’s expertise in NBI and best practices across

leading law firms was valuable to Shearman & Sterling.

“InOutsource took the time to listen and understand what we were try-

ing to achieve, so that they could advise us on the best possible route

to take,” says Berman. “We also appreciated their willingness to rein us

in and help us stay focused. Sometimes what makes sense in theory

doesn’t necessarily work in practice. It was a really interesting learning

experience, and a successful collaboration based on mutual trust.”

The implementation of Intapp Intake took place during a time when there were several important organiza-

tional changes unfolding within Shearman & Sterling.

Significantly, the firm was transitioning from a decentralized conflicts clearance model to a more centralized

one. In parallel with the Intapp implementation, the firm expanded its conflicts team, hiring several dedicated

conflicts lawyers, training them, and introducing new business processes. Addressing these staffing and or-

ganizational issues prior to launching a new system helped to the lay the groundwork for a smooth rollout.

“Our Conflicts & Ethics Committee was supportive of the change to a more centralized clearance model. Of

course, the transition had an impact on how we evolved our approach to intake,” says Berman. “InOutsource

was flexible in adapting to our organizational changes and helping us anticipate the implications of further

changes to our processes.”

Rethinking Processes

An Organizations Navigating a Broader Transition

3

“We tried not to simply

rebuild what we already

had, but looked for ways to

improve the process and

make it more efficient.”

— Judy Berman

Mid-way through the project, Shearman & Sterling brought on board a new Chief Knowledge and Client Value

Officer, Meredith Williams-Range.

“Meredith hit the ground running and championed our efforts from the start. She also introduced an

exciting vision for the integral role that NBI could play in laying the foundation for firm-wide data analytics

in the future,” explains Berman.

From a knowledge management point of view, new client and new matter inception offered a critical

opportunity to capture valuable data, as the firm moved toward a more data-driven approach to client

service delivery.

“This new vision lead us to further rethink our processes— so we made sure we were collecting the right in-

formation at the right time, updating it and governing it,” says Berman. “InOutsource was right there with us,

supporting the change with brilliant new ideas for how we could collect, categorize and manage the infor-

mation we needed.”

The firm decided to adjust the target go-live date to allow additional changes to the new workflow. Under the

leadership of Williams-Range, the Shearman & Sterling team conducted extensive user interviews and testing

with various practice groups to understand how the intake process could be enhanced even further — both

to address the firm’s business objectives and to improve the lawyers’ experience.

The firm-wide rollout of Intapp Intake six months later was a major success. The project management team at

Shearman & Sterling managed this phase according to the firm’s change management process, ensuring that

documentation, testing and internal approvals were completed in a timely manner.

Prior to going live, the team executed a pilot of the conflicts attorney program with six lawyers who were

taking on a high volume of client work.

“The lawyers started telling their peers, ‘The new system is amazing! Get yourself on it now.’ So there was a lot

of internal buzz by the time we were ready to roll out the system firm-wide. And once we were ready, we

simply cut over and went live — the big bang approach — and it went without a hitch.”

“InOutsource was on call and available for our team every step of the way,” Berman adds.

4

Textbook Change Management

InOutsource director of operations Eric Mosca observes that there were several notable “big wins” and

achievements in Shearman & Sterling’s implementation of Intapp Intake.

One of the innovations is the ability for lawyers to request preliminary

conflicts checks for potential new clients and new matters.

The preliminary checks provide the business development team with

an early indication of whether or not it makes sense to continue pur-

suing a prospective client or matter.

Another innovation was the way that the workflow was designed to

make the system as “partner-friendly” as possible, including a better

mobile experience.

Mosca explains, “The NBI process at Shearman & Sterling has been

designed to incorporate senior partner approvals as efficiently as pos-

sible — with easy-to-read digest emails that quickly highlight the most

critical considerations they need to be aware of before making a deci-

sion. The whole process is designed to loop partners in, while making

the best use of their time and cutting down on possible bottlenecks.”

“An added benefit is the way in which the firm enforces confidentiality

as part of the review process. For highly sensitive matters involving

M&A for example, we’ve worked with Shearman & Sterling to build

industry notifications that alert all partners about potential new mat-

ters without exposing any identifying information which they don’t

need to know.”

Judy Berman points out that Shearman & Sterling has also re-

engineered its intake process using a two-phased approach that al-

lows requesting partners to get the new client matter numbers as

quickly as possible, while ensuring that the firm still captures all the

data it requires.

5

Big Wins

“The lawyers started telling

their peers, ‘The new system

is amazing! Get yourself on it

now.’ So there was a lot of

internal buzz by the time we

were ready to roll out the

system firm-wide.

And once we were ready, we

simply cut over and went

live — the big bang ap-

proach — and it went with-

out a hitch.”

— Judy Berman

“The intake process now provides the foundation for a more data-driven approach to firm initiatives. That

means we need to get as much information as we can up front. At the same time, we don ’t want our need for

more data to slow down client work. And from a knowledge management point of view, we know asking for

too much information up front could result in a lot of bad data being entered for expediency,” she explains.

“We now have a workflow in place that allows lawyers to start work on a new matter after providing a baseline

of information. There are a limited number of questions they must answer to start work. The workflow then

automatically loops back with them for additional information such as billing and industry information, which

will feed into our business analytics. Upon receipt of that information, we can commence with billing.”

Following deployment, InOutsource has engaged with Shearman & Sterling in delivering a series of

knowledge transfer sessions with technical and managerial staff.

Berman explains, “During the implementation, we had a core group of

10 people who were closely involved with various aspects of NBI from

a conflicts, IT and project management point of view. As we got closer

to going live, we brought in the training team and started to expand

the number of staff who would be using, updating and maintaining

the system.”

Now that the new intake management system is live, Shearman &

Sterling plans to eventually migrate its conflicts management from

LegalKEY to Intapp Conflicts.

“We’ve worked with InOutsource to ensure that we’ll be able to bridge

smoothly to a new conflicts management system in the future,” she

adds. “We fully expect that their expertise in law firm risk management

will be extremely helpful to us as we take on our next project.”

“The InOutsource team is fabulous — a joy to work with — and I can’t

say enough good things about how unbelievably smart and amazing

each team member has been throughout our journey.”

Williams-Range concurs that the Intapp Intake implementation was a success, also in the context of Shear-

man & Sterling’s broader mandate to drive efficiency across the organization and make better use of data.

6

Next Steps

“The NBI team at Shearman

& Sterling has set a great ex-

ample in driving this cross-

functional initiative. I’ve been

impressed by the collabora-

tion between our internal

teams and InOutsource, and

how nimble they have been

in operationalizing our new

data strategy.”

— Meredith Williams-Range

“Redesigning our systems and processes around new business intake has been a major step forward. The

NBI team at Shearman & Sterling has set a great example in driving this cross-functional initiative. I’ve been

impressed by the collaboration between our internal teams and InOutsource, and how nimble they have

been in operationalizing our new data strategy,” says Williams-Range.

“Our lawyers, senior management and staff are much happier with the new process, which fits more naturally

in the way they work while making it easier for them to provide our operations and finance teams with the

client matter information they need. Most importantly, our clients benefit from faster response times — and

over time, they’ll also benefit from richer analytical insights based on the data we collect,” she adds.

Industry-leading global consulting firm InOutsource is dedicated to resolving the unique challenges

faced by law firms. InOutsource empowers clients to streamline processes and improve performance.

The company encourages firms to transform data assets into actionable insights to uncover oppor-

tunity. With a focus on information governance, InOutsource reduces risk and enables its clients to

leverage information to drive strategy. For information visit: www.inoutsource.com