About West km

Welcome to West km, a knowledge management product that allows staff members at your legal organization to easily find and reuse your best work.

West km for Litigation integrates WestlawNext search technology, KeyCite, and KeySearch with your organization's internal documents, such as briefs, pleadings, and memos. You can view and search internal documents in the West km interface or simultaneously with a WestlawNext search.

West km for Transactions provides searching and drafting capabilities based on your organization's internal transactional documents, such as agreements, forms, and regulatory filings. Members of your organization can search by documents, clauses, and defined terms.

Litigation Features

In West km for Litigation, you can

• Search your organization's documents using search methods familiar to you from WestlawNext and using the KeySearch hierarchy of legal topics.
• Search your organization's documents and WestlawNext documents simultaneously on WestlawNext.
• Build and refine a citations list of your organization's documents.
• Link directly from a document to related internal documents and to content on WestlawNext.
• Filter the number of documents in a result to more easily pinpoint those that are the most pertinent.
• View notes and other feedback about your organization's documents that have been added by colleagues with annotator rights.
• With Drafting Assistant, use BriefTools to embed citation links and KeyCite status flags in word-processing documents, as well as easily search internal litigation documents while working in your word processor. For more information, see the West km in Drafting Assistant Quick Reference Guide.

Transactions Features

In West km for Transactions, you can

• Search your organization's transactional documents using search methods familiar to you from WestlawNext.
• Filter the number of documents in a result to more easily pinpoint those that are the most pertinent.
• View summary information to help you decide if a transactional document meets your needs.
• View notes and other feedback about your organization's documents that have been added by colleagues with annotator rights.
• With Drafting Assistant, easily find internal documents, clauses, and defined terms while working in your word processor. For more information, see the West km in Drafting Assistant Quick Reference Guide.

Working with Documents

Before you begin working in West km, it is helpful to understand the origins of documents and document metadata you will search and browse.

Files at your organization are stored in a file system or document management system (DMS) in their original format, such as Microsoft Word. From these locations, West km collects documents and document metadata to use in West km; for example, metadata from a DMS could include author, client ID, and date. During the document indexing process, West km analyzes these documents and extracts and tags significant content. For example, for litigation documents, metadata could include title, jurisdiction, court, attorney, and company.

For transactional documents, metadata could include title, attorneys, governing law, law firm, and parties.

Both these types of metadata make it easier for you to search and browse documents in West km.

Transactions Documents

In West km for Transactions, documents are also analyzed to create document, clause, and defined term content collections that you can search and browse.

• A document corresponds to the original file from your document management system. A document may contain multiple legal instruments, e.g., agreement, exhibit, annex, schedule. These are groupings of related clauses and defined terms.
• A clause is a group of words within a document describing a transactional category or relationship, e.g., partner liability or civil litigation. A clause may contain subclauses and parts referred to as clause text, e.g., breach, collateral, equipment lease, or lien.
• A defined term is a word or phrase that has a particular meaning in the context of the document, e.g., seller, borrower, foreign lender, or loan account.

Note that when you email or load a copy of a clause or defined term, you are actually emailing or loading the full document.

Notes and exemplar markings that have been added by a colleague with annotator rights are attached to the document. Exemplar markings are viewable from the document, as well as from all clauses and defined terms originating from the document.