The June 2003 issue of Corporate Legal Times, in an article titled Legal Departments Struggle to Harvest Internal Knowledge (p. 12), reports on a knowledge management study conducted by the Legal Technology Institute at the University of Florida School of Law. Only 48% of 130 law departments responding have initiated KM programs and less than 20% have KM budgets. Of those departments with KM initiatives, only 18% think there are sufficient resources to achieve KM goals.
In my opinion, law departments would benefit by investing more in KM. The economics of the billable hour mean that law firms have limited incentives to improve effectiveness and efficiency. Law departments, however, have incentives to do more with less. In all likelihood, investing in KM would pay off for corporate counsel. [I confess that I am not disinterested. I have teamed with the Legal Research Center to offer a KM Assessment for in-house counsel.]