Implementing Taxonomies

There are numerous taxonomies available in the legal area and firms can either use an existing taxonomy; develop their own or expand an existing model.  Indeed larger firms, or those covering diverse areas of law, may need multiple taxonomies being applied to the same document repositories.  The taxonomies may be updated periodically and firms may even want to allow subject matter experts to manage individual sub-nodes.  Further complexity can be added to the process as specific libraries, such as the in-house precedents, may be classified manually by PSL's, classified by a external firms or bought from an on-line subscription service.  General Know How may exist within an intranet, database system or Document Management System and matter centric documents, which could have further value in their own right, are held in multiple libraries within document and content management systems
In order to affectively manage a taxonomy the system should:

• Allow multiple repositories to be indexed into a single system

• Allow multiple taxonomies to be applied to all repositories

• Allow manual indexing against the taxonomy

• Provide a system for automatic indexing against taxonomies

• Allow users to manage sub-nodes within a taxonomy

• Automatically re-index when taxonomies are updated

• Integrate with external taxonomies
  

How taxonomies work in Sysero

As well as providing a search and research tool for documents held in DMS, Intranet, E-mail and database systems, Sysero can be pre- loaded with external taxonomies and index specific repositories against these taxonomies using rules and clues (aka synonyms). Once the automated process has classified the repository, a further administration function can be used by KM staff and PSL’s to refine the categorisation manually. This function is ideal for large know how databases by reducing dramatically the amount of professional time to categorise documents.

Sysero can take taxonomies from any source and with some manipulation these can be added to the system.  Maintenance of the taxonomy can then be performed using the administration functions within the application.  The concept of Folksonomies, where subject matter experts own their nodes in the taxonomy, can be applied using Sysero.  This is particularly relevant in a law firm  where some of the fee earners may be leading experts in their field of law.  Security can be set on specific sub-nodes to allow an individual to edit a single node and all it's sub-nodes.  By right clicking a sub node, a user with the relevant rights can edit the existing clues list (synonyms), and add or delete sub-nodes.  When the indexing process is next run (typically overnight), the new details are applied against the entire repository.

When a node is created, it is given a relevance threshold.  This value is arbitrary and used in conjunction with the clues.  A node can have an unlimited number of clues which can be words, exact phrases or stemmed phrases.  Each clue is given a score such that if a documents total score exceeds the Relevance Threshold the document is then classified under the node.