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they discovered that the real question to be answered was not the one the client had identified and that the right answer had very little to do with technology.

Livio’s advice was to take the time to analyze properly what was really going on in your firm from a process, behavior and cultural perspective.  Next, identify a range of possible solutions and see if there aren’t grassroots, low-key, tiny spend ways of testing some of these solutions in a variety of safe-fail pilots. Then, finally, make your choice.

After all, we rarely need to find and reuse every item in the DMS.  We’re usually just looking for “something good” and would be glad to accept a document recommended by a trusted source in our network.

Since a lot of people live in their inbox, we should be looking at ways to interact with a company's wiki, blogs, forums, social network and even microblogging engine using an email client. I specifically say 'email client', by which I mean not the 'email inbox'. The inbox should be for private information only. All other content (e.g. updates from blogs, wikis, newsletters, RSS feeds) should be received in different folders within the email client.

There have been some interesting developments, but I would expect to see more in the near future:

All these examples are related to email in one way or another. However, transition strategies go well beyond email. In general, it is important to keep in mind:

"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."