Category: Knowledge Management

What’s hot in legal knowledge management? What would KM managers not do again? And what legal KM topics are of most interest now? KM professionals at about 50 large US, UK, and Canadian law firms answered these questions in a recent survey in advance of...

A new report on knowledge management from the UK highlights KM best practices, barriers, and outcomes.  The February 2011 report, The Knowledge Imperative (14-page PDF), is by OMC Partners, a “a management consultancy that works with leading legal and professional services clients to reduce costs...

In my prior post, Knowledge Management Reincarnated, I argued that KM is expanding beyond its core remit today because KM professionals span multiple disciplines, think laterally, and can handle complex problems that fall outside the boundaries of other support functions. Three experienced KM professionals wrote...

Last week in KM is Dead – Long Live KM, I suggested that large law firms have moved beyond traditional knowledge management to legal project management (LPM), alternative fee arrangements (AFA), and other endeavors. I also said I would offer a theory for the shift...

Knowledge management may not be dead but it certainly has changed.  Absent today are previously dominant “pure” or “traditional” legal KM topics such as precedents, forms, work product retrieval, experience location, taxonomies, and the role of practice support lawyers. Instead, knowledge managers now discuss alternative...

American Lawyer magazine has just released its 2010 large law firm library survey. The results are interesting but not surprising.  Law Librarian Survey 2010: More Bang, Less Bucks writes-up the results and has links to survey data (free registration required). Almost one-half of the 86...

What is the state of the practice support lawyer (professional support lawyer or PSL) among US large law firms?  I have not heard PSLs discussed much lately. So at a recent knowledge management meeting, I asked each attendee to report his or her firm’s number...

Mary Abraham’s recent blog post Librarians vs Knowledge Managers? created a bit of controversy over the role of both. At the risk of adding fuel to the fire…  In her post, Mary reports and comments on librarian Morgan Wilson’s post reflection on KM and libraries...