Earlier this year, Stephen McGarry published an ebook, Leaders in Legal Business, with short essays by many legal market thought leaders. I was honored to write the chapter on legal knowledge management.
That chapter is 2000+ words, so longer than I like for a blog post. To read my article click here (link to page on this site). By way of preview, here are the section headings:
- KM definitions and benefits
- Documents, precedents, and Professional Support Lawyers (PSL)
- Finding experienced colleagues turns out to more valuable than finding documents
- Smart enterprise search solves document and experience challenges
- The rebirth of Intranets as practice portals
- Specialized content and tools to enhance legal KM
- Even with technology, law firms and law departments need dedicated staff
- The recent expansion of KM to Legal Project Management and more
- Opportunity lost? Collaboration and social media
- Information governance, records management, and KM
- Developing a KM Plan – a bulleted checklist
My relatively short chapter can hardly do justice to the rich history, present, and future of legal knowledge management. For an excellent deeper dive, I highly recommend a recently published book: Knowledge Management for Lawyers (landing page to order) by Patrick DiDomenico, published by the ABA in 2015. I had the privilege or reading a draft and highly recommend it. As I wrote for the landing page (click “view more”):
“Patrick does a masterful job of communicating what knowledge management means for law firms today. He provides an excellent background and detailed information on what KM is, how to ‘do it,’ and what benefits management can expect. The book is a great resource for both those new to the field and those with many years of experience. I particularly appreciate the practical advice about how to communicate the benefits and work with lawyers to make them comfortable with KM. Patrick is a leader in KM and this book shows why.”