How is KM doing in the economic crisis? Are law firms taking advantage of other law firm departments to support KM (“baking KM into processes”)? I am the author of a just-released ILTA survey that answers these and other questions.
In June 2006, Chris Boyd, Senior Director of Professional Services at Wilson Sonsini, and I explored the idea of tapping into existing law firm processes in the June 2006 ILTA KM white paper. Three years and one economic crisis later, we thought it was timely to re-visit this topic. Rather than rely on anecdotal evidence of how law firms “power their KM windmills,” I thought that a survey would provide a better way to answer our fundamental question: Are law firms baking KM into their processes?
Today, ILTA released the survey results: Baking KM into Everyday Workflow: An Analysis of Knowledge Management Survey Data. The bad news is that law firms are not baking KM into processes as much as they could. The good news is that KM does not seem to be suffering unduly in these tough times.
As the author, I’m obviously not disinterested, but I think that anyone interested in legal KM will find the survey interesting reading. And I personally look forward to reading to the ILTA white paper released today, Knowledge Management: More than the Sum of Its Parts.