LegalTech West Coast opened today: Steve Harmon of Cisco Systems gives keynote address, tells crowd – “how we leverage technology”

LegalTech West started today in Los Angeles and Steve Harmon, director of legal services at Cisco Systems, discussed the processes and technologies developed by Cisco to support its in-house legal department and outside counsel.  His speech, titled “Maintaining Efficiency, Controls and Quality through Automation”, was all about leveraging technology.

“In this challenging economic environment, it’s more important than ever to properly allocate resources along the ‘core vs. context’ continuum,” said Harmon.  “My goal is to offer insight into the processes we follow at Cisco in making these allocation decisions.”

Harmon manages Cisco’s Legal Technology Solutions team, chartered with developing and maintaining systems and process that support the efficiency and accuracy of all legal functions at Cisco. These systems and processes include contract management, export compliance, regulatory compliance, legal knowledge management, Web-based resources and file room operations.

He also continues to practice law for Cisco as an adjunct member of Cisco’s licensing team where he focuses his practice on intellectual property issues with a specific emphasis on matters including privacy, standards setting organizations and sponsored research programs.

His business development experience includes work as a former member of Cisco’s Strategic Alliances organization where he led the global alliance team responsible for Cisco’s relationship with Hewlett Packard. Prior to joining Cisco, Harmon was director, strategic alliances for Novell and a member of Novell’s Strategic Investments team. He holds a B.S. degree in Business Management (Information Systems emphasis) and a J.D. degree, both from Brigham Young University.

Technology can refine business processes and make business models more efficient. For instance, Cisco Systems is a top provider of IP-related networking equipment, but Cisco doesn’t operate a single manufacturing plant.  Cisco relies on a handful of contract manufacturers for the bulk of its production. A single enterprise extranet connects manufacturers and distributors. By creating electronic links instead of physical ones, Cisco is able to reduce the number of steps necessary to obtain and fulfill customer orders.

Technology can also improve the ability of companies to manage process knowledge. Cisco provides the data collected by its customer service department to equipment designers and manufacturers. Through this process, Cisco’s been able to trouble shoot, identify design and marketing flaws and correct them. “Companies can slice and dice data to create insight,” noted Harmon.

His key point was that we need to eliminate “silo’d sources of information” .  With that structure there is no ability to scale.  What is needed is collaboration.   He pushed a tool that captures emails into a forum.   In the forum, for example, a question can be proposed and answers collected from all the people in the forum.  The question can be stated in such a way that nothing is revealed that is privileged or confidential (commmon legal questions that are non-proprietary).  He specifically  mentioned ORX (On Ramp Exchange) as such a tool.  It provides moderated collaboration and can be a repository for email communications. It eases problems related to storage, retention, and risk management.  Also, it can be internal, with a client, with peer departments, and/or with an outside firm.  There was even a videotaped testimonial from Applied Discovery.

We have been attending all of the Kroll Ontrack Litigation Technology Workshops and the E-Discovery tracks.  We’ll have more to report later tonight and tomorrow.