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The next session at the Ark KM Conference saw Mark Young, Managing Partner, and John S. Gillies, Director of Practice Support, at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP address development of a KM strategy.

He indicated that he often hears partners claim they could get more work in the door if they had more time; KM offered them more time, and hence more opportunity for more business.

He also feels that KM provides an opportunity to demonstrate greater value to clients.

"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."

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.

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.

Innerhalb von nur 3 Monaten wurde MindServer Legal bei Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP als kanzleiweites Knowledge Management- und Retrieval-System eingeführt. Die Lösung greift unter dem internen Namen "KnowledgeSearch" auf sämtliche Datenbestände der Kanzlei zu und verbindet so die allgemeine Dokumentenverwaltung, eine KM-Bibliothek, ein Managementsystem, das gesamte Intranet sowie externe Quellen wie z.B. Rechtsdatenbanken.

"Im Legal-Bereich verfügen wir über eine einzigartige Expertise und die Auszeichnung belegt, das wir wissen, was unsere Kunden wollen und dies auch konsequent umsetzen."

Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP hat darüberhinaus noch den Preis als "Best Knowledge Management und Information Team of the Year" - auch für den Einsatz von MindServer Legal.

Handshake Software delivers rich integration with the major line of business systems used in the Professional Services and Legal Industries providing a quick start to creating dynamic Portals using Microsoft SharePoint Server. Only Handshake Software provides Matter-Centric, Client-Centric, Practice-Centric, Professional-Centric views, as well as others, of all the firm’s information including Elite, ADERANT, Juris, Interwoven, Open Text, West KM, InterAction, Javelan, Keystone, LawBase and many others. Firms can easily modify the provided Handshake Software Web Part Skins without requiring a .Net programmer.

why law firms need to invest more time in developing a sound information infrastructure before adding the latest and greatest technology.