I do not recall seeing many articles about knowledge management in the legal market outside of legal trade publications. So it seems noteworthy that Toronto’s Globe and Mail has a lengthy article today about legal KM.
Knowledge management crucial tool for law firms (4/12/04, p. B12) notes that
“Facing an increasingly competitive market, a drive to specialization and a need to operate globally, major law firms must share knowledge more effectively than ever before. So they are turning to knowledge management — a combination of technology for organizing knowledge and techniques for using it better.”
The article then explains how most large law firms have some type of KM program in place and goes on to explore how several firms are approaching KM. Legal KM professionals probably will not learn anything new from this article but will perhaps be pleased to see that KM as a topic is now considered newsworthy. Even the general computer trade press has limited coverage in my experience; my post KM Update in Information Week of September 4, 2004 reflects the most recent significant coverage I have seen in the tech press.
Personally, I was pleased to see that my clients ii3, Inc. and Hummingbird are specifically mentioned.
In the “never rains, it pours” department, Federal Computer Week has not one, but three related articles on KM today: Plug-and-play expertise – Army help-desk portal taps knowledge management tools to solve staff problems, Pieces of the KM Puzzle, and Knowledge vs. content management.