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"Knowledge differentiates a law firm from its competitors," according to Gretta Rusanow of Curve Consulting, an attorney and knowledge management expert.

Knowledge Management specialists within firms work hard to set up and maintain KM technology, but without grassroots adoption, many KM initiatives languish from lack of use.  Placing the emphasis on technology, rather than user behavior, tends to distract from the real barrier to adoption: Attorneys and staff simply don't see enough individual value to take time away from urgent (and billable) day-to-day activities to complete additional tasks required by a separate knowledge management tool.

"Too often KM becomes a conversation about technology . . . if you want to converse with lawyers about value, talk about value instead of technology," said Toby Brown of Fulbright & Jaworski. "This focuses the dialogue on the benefits to the lawyers and not on the cost of any technology involved. Solve the problem, instead of offering technology."

Susskind, the man who brought us 'The Future of Law', has kept his readers frothing at the mouth with the release of a new book 'The End of Lawyer? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services'.

"What we're seeing courtesy of this dreadful economy is an acceleration of what many of us have anticipated in legal services. And that is the introduction of all manner of efficiencies, largely due to the impact of information technology."

And his take on social networking has appealed to his legal blogging elite. "I believe that some version of social networking will come to dominate the way professional services are delivered and will transform legal services," he said.

I think that Knowledge Management (KM) has become so overwhelmed with technology products that the individuals in KM have become ‘tech support’ rather than knowledge managers. Yesterday, I read two different articles that reinforced my conception of what I think is a major flaw in the idea of “Knowledge Management” within law firms.

Penny Edwards’ articles on Social Networking for the Legal Profession. Edwards mentions that the approach we take to capturing “knowledge” is a hold over of the 1990’s IT ‘centralized’, or as she put it in her book “Industrial Technology.”

In my opinion, this type of self-cataloging and attempt at creating a ultra-structured system creates a process that is: difficult to use; doesn’t fit the way that lawyers conduct their day-to-day work; gives a false sense of believing that the knowledge has been captured and can be easily recovered; leads to user frustration and “work around” methods; and results in expensive, underutilized software resources.

following session about wikis use in law firms, primarily for knowledge management. It was led by two experienced knowledge management professionals with major firms. They shared their experiences within their firms.

The first example was a Canadian law firm with 100 lawyers and 100 support staff. Prior to the wiki, documents were stored individually in folders on a shared drive with no consistency.

They were already using Domino so they choose the Domino wiki for their initial effort.

Recommind, a leading provider of enterprise search, automatic categorization and eDiscovery systems for enterprises and law firms, today announced that Shook, Hardy & Bacon, a top international law firm, has chosen Recommind's MindServer(TM) Legal platform to power its internal information retrieval system. The MindServer Legal platform enables Shook, Hardy & Bacon's partners, associates, analysts, and paralegals in nine offices around the world to more effectively search, access and manage information to support client objectives in a cost-effective manner.

"We selected Recommind's MindServer Legal platform because our lawyers, analysts, and legal staff found it intuitive to use, identifying not only relevant documents and files, but also the on-point expertise of individual lawyers and analysts in the firm," said John Anderson, CIO at Shook, Hardy & Bacon. "In comparison with other platforms, Recommind's platform was more effective and will take employees less time in the searching process, leaving more time for clients."

Shook, Hardy & Bacon has chosen to deploy the following MindServer Legal components: -- Enterprise Search, which utilizes powerful, concept-based search capabilities to connect relevant information in document management, records management, portal and e-mail systems and myriad other applications and databases with the attorneys that need it. -- Matters & Expertise which provides a comprehensive, firm-wide view of matters, deals, cases, and the vast array of expertise contained within a firm by tapping into a variety of information sources such as time and billing systems, CRM applications, intranets, internal firm databases and other information repositories.

Like many organisations, law firms have an odd relationship with information.

And because they know it's important they are loathe to delete anything (just in case)...

Multiple repositories and systems, multiple offices and locations, multiple content processes and procedures leads to an excess of information and knowledge - all of it potentially valuable, but much of it virtually impossible to actually find at the time a lawyer or information professional needs it.

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