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Introduction
Clients and Projects
Site Design Philosophy
Integration with Business Systems
Basic Site
Other Topics
Bells and Whistles
We create intranet sites for corporate legal departments.
A legal site can answer frequently asked questions, enhance a legal compliance program (e.g., Antitrust Compliance), share forms, provide training, and guide employees to lawyers and other legal resources.
Most corporate counsel lack the time and technical expertise to design and build their own sites. We provide cost-effective, timely solutions.
Any web designer can take a client’s material and turn it into a site. We add value because we understand law, how legal departments function within corporations, and how intranets work. (See About Us for details.)
Not only can we collect and organize existing client content, we can provide new content on almost any legal topic.
We work with in-house and outside technologists to manage site design and html coding.
We believe that we are the ONLY firm which combines our legal and technical expertise.
Our automation and intranet clients include Hewlett-Packard, Intuit, Philips Semiconductors, Synopsys, and Quantum.
We have created:
- an interactive OEM agreement,
- on-line antitrust compliance programs,
- content on numerous topics (see Basic Site and Other Topics),
- a complete turn-key legal site including hundreds of pages of information and
resources, and
- analysis and re-design of existing sites.
A link to a sample site can be provided upon request.
A good legal intranet site improves client service and provides faster turnaround, greater consistency, and twenty-four-hour-a-day access. It allows a company to use its legal resources more effectively: by giving clients training, access to standard forms, and answers to frequently-asked questions, the site can free attorneys to deal with more complex and specialized issues.
The architecture of a site can be as important as the content. If users get lost, they may give up and not return the next time they have legal questions. Elements which make a site easier to use include internal and external links, navigation buttons, site maps, introduction/summary screens, pop up details, and eye-friendly colors, typography and layout.
We can help redesign an existing site, by adding navigational aids and improving aesthetics, and can also design a new site from the ground up.
Also, no site can be successful unless those who need it know that it exists, so we can also suggest site promotion strategies.
Integration with Business Systems
Although a "stand alone" site can be useful, a legal intranet site can be even more valuable when integrated into existing (or newly improved) business systems.
For example, creation of a contracts page can lead a company to reevaluate the entire contracting process, with consideration of contract law basics, standardization of forms, negotiation fallback positions, document generation, signature authority, and tracking of amendments and renewal dates.
Such integration requires a review of how legal services are delivered, a survey of internal clients (and possibly external customers), identifying logjams and inconsistencies, brainstorming solutions, and designing new processes which incorporate the intranet site.
We can help by bringing a fresh perspective, and by uncovering issues that internal clients might be reluctant to share with their lawyers.
A basic legal intranet site could provide information on the following topics:
- Confidential Information
- Antitrust
- Employment
- Intellectual Property
- Contracts
- Dispute Resolution
- Contacts (within and outside the legal department)
Contact information would include the name, phone number, and email address of the attorney responsible for each product group, topic, and/or geographical area, and might include photos and biographical information on the attorneys. Outside contacts could include the HR Department, Contracts Administration, Corporate Security, and Stock Administration.
A basic site would also include downloadable versions of forms, such as NDAs.
Other topics could be added based on a company’s special needs and concerns. These additional topics might include:
- International – including international trade and antitrust,
country-specific legal issues, and foreign language versions of information and forms
- Product Liability
- Business Torts
- A "Lawyer Only" section (password protected), with sample forms, internal memos, briefs, links to legal research sites and outside law firm sites, etc.
Site enhancements might include:
A program like HotDocs can be used to create intelligent documents. An "intelligent" document is more than a form or template. It asks questions, then creates a custom document based on the answers. Intelligent documents allow users to craft situation-specific solutions within allowed parameters.
Thinking through and writing down all of the available alternatives can be time-consuming. Thus, automation is probably cost-effective when a contract form is used at least 20 times per year and where variations are more than trivial (e.g., beyond changing names and dates) but not so complex that every such agreement is substantially unique.
While information can be communicated in plain text form (as on this website), users may be more likely to absorb and remember information if a site accommodates multiple learning styles (visual, auditory, etc.). Users will also be more willing to learn if learning is fun.
Example of training tools and toys are quizzes (which may be built into arcade-style video games), PowerPoint presentations, and audio/video presentations (lecture style or dramatized).
When a user completes a training session, the site may generate a certificate of completion. This can be printed out for the user’s personnel file, sent via email to a central location, or recorded in a database.
The site can be the entry point for existing or specially-created databases.
Some possible database applications follow:
-
Contracts: In order to download a standard contract, users
would be required to fill in the name of the other party, the date the deal is expected to
be signed, and whatever else is pertinent. This information could be used to follow up on
contracts in process, to assure that agreements are not signed without appropriate
approvals and that signed deals are entered into a database for tracking financial impact,
renewal dates, licensing relationships, etc.
-
Trademarks and Patents: All company trademarks could be on-line, and
searchable by product line, name, country of use, etc. Permissions to use other
companies’ trademarks could be included, along with pertinent restrictions. The same
could be done for patents.
The site should be updated so that, at a minimum, organization charts and contact names are current. The site should also be updated whenever there is a significant change in the law.
Reports of new judicial decisions can be interesting and informative. For example, news that an executive has been sentenced to prison for price fixing can lend urgency to a discussion of antitrust issues.
Each topical heading within the site can include legal news, updated monthly or whenever news happens. Also, an emailed topical bulletin, with hotlinks to details on the intranet, can help bring people to the site.
Posting a new joke, cartoon, or weird legal trivia item daily can also help attract visitors.
"Fun stuff" is anything that lures people to the site or makes their use of it more enjoyable.
Fun stuff may include cartoons and animations, sound effects, lawyer jokes, contests, quizzes and games (see Tools and Toys, above), and links to sites with information on personal legal concerns (family law, real estate, etc.).
Following are links to other websites with information about legal intranets:
Law Journal Extra Intranet Center
(see article entitled "Intranet: A Lawyer's Personal Internet")
The Law Technology Practice Center
ABA Law Practice Management: Primer on Intranet Technology
Sun Microsystems: Intranets for Legal Departments
©Copyright 1999 by Lauri Donahue
This site created by:
Better
Business Webs
Webmaster: Cheryl
Leff