Will lawyers contribute to knowledge management efforts? In the US, the answer is probably not. Even among corporate counsel, where the billable hour does not create perverse incentives, lawyers do not contribute. 

Fellow blogger and law department consultant Rees Morrison writes (12/21/05) that law department Intranets “languish in a state of desuetude because lawyers, the custodians of substantive knowledge, can’t be bothered to contribute.”

I wrote an article a couple of years ago that compares manual and automated approaches. In the US market, manual efforts seem limited to practice groups; big institutional efforts typically do not work. I have also written why automated approaches are better.