Legal Knowledge Management: Insights and Practice EDITED BY HELEN ROCHE

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1 Legal Knowledge Management: Insights and Practice EDITED BY HELEN ROCHE PUBLISHED BY IN ASSOCIATION WITH

2 Contents Executive summary...vii About the authors...ix Part One: Legal knowledge management Expert analyses Driving knowledge management: From reaction to engagement... 3 By Mark Gould, Addleshaw Goddard A brief history... 3 Who is driving law firm KM?... 4 Disruption... 5 A more strategic approach?... 6 Engaged KM... 7 Tapping the adaptive potential of legal KM... 9 By Stephanie Abbott, Mayer Brown JSM Variation on a common theme... 9 Why have legal KM functions become so diverse? Geographically-driven differences Adaptable functions require adaptable people Increased competition The future of legal business and the role of legal KM How to use value-add services to differentiate your law firm By Matthew Whalley, Berwin Leighton Paisner Value-add services are business-as-usual for law firms Clients want firms to be more proactive and bring issues to their attention Clients value value-add for two things: Knowledge and efficiency Your client-facing KM structure should support effective value-add delivery Combining services can deliver extra benefit Changing one mind at a time: Influencing behaviour in legal KM projects By Christoph Schmaltz, thinknext, and Shimrit Janes, freelance consultant and writer Changing structures Changing technologies Changing behaviours III

3 Contents What are adequate change tactics? Key takeaways Now is the time for just-in-time learning within law firms: The role of KM By Norman Letalik, Borden Ladner Gervais What is the new normal in legal education? How do we attract and develop our talent? What is the role of KM in developing our talent? BLG U: The case for just-in-time learning at BLG How KM staff can help drive successful legal project management initiatives By Antony Smith, Legal Project Management Limited What is legal project management? How to start improving LPM capability Aligning LPM with law firm strategy Securing support of senior business owners and managers Break projects down Some tactical ideas for LPM implementation Law firms and KM in the digital age: The information revolution By Chris Bull, Kingsmead Square The role of knowledge management in the digital-age firm Information risk in the digital age firm Conclusion Evolutions in big data, velocity, and time: A legal KM perspective By Eric Hunter, Bradford & Barthel Time and velocity The future is now The Darwinian approach to time Evolving forward in time Part Two: Q&A and case studies Q&A interview: Legal KM and the importance of people With Steven J. Harper, adjunct professor at Northwestern University and former partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP Case study: Value added services Empty promises or real benefit? Using VAS to benefit clients and the business strategy at DLA Piper By Chris Green and Megan Jenkins, DLA Piper Introduction to the firm, client KM support, and its relevance to the firm s strategy Why do law firms offer services for free? Examples of VAS DLA Piper offers now and how we develop these to stay current IV

4 Legal Knowledge Management: Insights and Practice How the client KM team supports the firm Conclusion Case study: Osborne Clarke A forward-thinking approach to learning By Jessica Magnusson, Osborne Clarke What is Q3D? The programme How did we do against our goals? What does the future hold? Case study: An in-house perspective from the Vodafone Global Legal Function By Katharine Ward, Vodafone Global Legal Function Tools and technology How we work with law firms Keep it simple Getting people involved Thinking globally It s not all about technology Social media/networking/connecting people The challenges V

5 Executive summary WHILE THE legal profession faces continued challenges as it adapts to shifting market needs, legal knowledge management (KM) is also changing and evolving to support law firm and in-house requirements. The KM function can play a key role in an organisation s overall success and, as such, it is deserving of the increased attention it is getting in the legal sector. With recent suggestions that KM has helped in creating Big Law, and reports on how certain law firms are linking bonus schemes to KM efforts, it is worth taking a look at the main aspects of KM that can aid in the internal efficiency and continued success of legal teams. Legal KM has undoubtedly evolved. While there may be certain levels of consistency amongst the work processes and offerings of KM teams within law firms, KM overall is no longer just about knowledge sharing and repositories. While those factors undoubtedly remain important, new tasks have been added to the KM repertoire which include client engagement, relationship management, differentiation, research, training, professional development, legal project management, and developing collaborative tools and these are just some of the tasks that can fall within the remit of legal KM. This diversity in focus is mirrored in the range of titles given to those responsible for implementing KM within a law firm: director of knowledge and head of knowledge being the most obvious roles, but additional titles exist which relate to information services, learning and development, best practice, research and more, which give some clues as to the extent of legal knowledge management. The legal KM function is adaptable in large part because the people are capable of adapting a topic which is covered in detail by Stephanie Abbott in her article in this report. It is widely accepted that changes in KM have come about as a direct result of market pressures and the need for knowledge to be used and adapted to its greatest benefit. For law firms knowledge organisations at their core KM is increasingly driven by client requirements. Knowledge management can be used to the benefit of law firms to create new opportunities for growth and to create a deeper relationship with clients. Plus, as discussed by Mark Gould in his article in this report, a client-focused strategy will allow clients to express more clearly what knowledge support they would like for themselves. A number of contributions within this report discuss the link between KM and client needs. Examples are helpfully shared from both a law firm and in-house perspective on how to nurture the law firm/ client relationship through KM. Knowledge management and process improvement are naturally linked. Law firms today are expanding KM s role beyond traditional concepts to include aspects of professional development and legal project management and both of these are covered within this report. Expert advice and examples have been shared on how training and professional development VII

6 Executive summary can be delivered by the knowledge team for the internal benefit of the law firm, as well as externally for clients. The growing importance of legal project management is also detailed and a plan for legal project management implementation is provided. The aim of this report overall is to provide expert advice on legal KM and an analysis of some of the challenges and opportunities it presents. The articles and case studies provide insight and examples of the ways in which legal teams can use KM to their advantage and for the overall success of their law firm. In addition to the topics detailed above, expert advice is also provided on: The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The report provides sometimes differing views on law firm KM services and it should prove helpful when considering the evolution of your own firm's KM processes. Going forward, the law firms who are successful in their KM endeavours are those who will be better placed for success. How KM thought is evolving; How a law firm needs to use knowledge services in order to effectively differentiate in an increasingly competitive market; How people-centric KM really is, and the critical need to maintain a focus on the individuals involved; Changing behaviours in legal KM; Adaptability as the key differentiator in effective knowledge systems; and Knowledge management in the digital age (the information revolution ), and the importance of analytics. This report contains insights and case studies from respected KM experts in different countries. Contributions have been included from individuals at firms such as Addleshaw Goddard, Borden Ladner Gervais, Berwin Leighton Paisner, DLA Piper, Osborne Clarke, and Mayer Brown JSM, along with articles from industry experts who have experience both in working within law firms and as consultants to them. Insightful in-house case studies have also been included from Vodafone Legal and VIII

7 About the authors Stephanie Abbott has over 14 years of experience in professional service firms. After making the switch from legal practice, she has held senior roles concerned with organisational development and knowledge management. Her primary focus is on ensuring that these services deliver value to the business and are aligned with the firm's strategy. Stephanie has led strategic programmes within professional service organisations concerning knowledge, learning, and development. These have ranged from transforming the firm's written work product to shifting the culture around leadership and staff management. She has also consulted in the area of evaluating organisational change and development. Since 2011, Stephanie has been director of knowledge, learning & development at Mayer Brown JSM and is based in Hong Kong. Chris Bull is a founding executive director of professional services consultancy Kingsmead Square. His consulting career stretches back to the mid-90s, when his focus was large financial services change projects as part of Ernst & Young s market-leading consulting team. The last two and a half years have been spent advising a wide range of professional service firms, with an emphasis on the legal market, on operational change, and business management. Chris is a regular speaker and writer on all aspects of the management of professional firms. His speaking, writing, and advisory work draws on a long track record of senior roles in the sector. As well as spells with Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young, Chris was a member of the leadership team of law firm Osborne Clarke as the firm expanded rapidly and built a strong market position amongst the best UK firms. His roles there included chief executive, chief operating officer, and finance director over a hugely enjoyable 12-year period. As COO for Europe and the Americas at professional services outsourcing firm Integreon, he led the development of a legal and business process outsourcing offering that created a legal market leader. Kingsmead Square (founded in 2013 by Chris and former-barclays executive Louise Fleming) has rapidly built an impressive client base of some of the most innovative and fast-growing professional service firms and new entrants to the market, including a roster of the most high profile alternative business structures and a number of large law firms. Mark Gould has been head of knowledge management at Addleshaw Goddard LLP since 2006, prior to which he was a professional support lawyer in the firm's Competition and Commercial group. Mark is responsible for nurturing the right knowledge environment to allow the firm to work best for clients. This strategic role requires him to liaise closely with lawyers across the firm, with clients, and with other support service leaders. Mark on Twitter and blogs occasionally at IX

8 About the authors Chris Green is the client support officer within the knowledge management team for DLA Piper. He both leads and works as part of project teams to develop and improve products and services offered by DLA Piper. He works closely with IT, marketing, business development, the pitch team, and other professional support teams. He supports the firm's largest international clients promoting value-added services globally across the firm's practice groups, helping to build strong relationships with clients to better understand their needs. Prior to joining DLA Piper, Chris worked for Addleshaw Goddard as a corporate research advisor. He conducted detailed legal, company, and market research and analysis and supported the firm's professional support and business development teams. Steven J. Harper is the author of The Lawyer Bubble A Profession in Crisis (Basic Books, 2013). He is a contributing editor to The American Lawyer and adjunct professor at Northwestern University s School of Law and Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers since 1999, he was a litigator at Kirkland & Ellis for 30 years before retiring in Steven's prior books include Crossing Hoffa A Teamster s Story (Borealis Books, 2007), a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year that depicts his father s two-year tangle with Jimmy Hoffa from 1959 to 1961; Straddling Worlds The Jewish-American Journey of Professor Richard W. Leopold (Northwestern University Press, 2008), and The Partnership A Novel (Amazon CreateSpace, 2010). His legal blog, The Belly of the Beast was named an ABA Best Blog of the Year. Eric Hunter is the director of knowledge, innovation & technology strategies at Bradford & Barthel, LLP and executive director of Spherical Models, LLC. Over the past three years, Eric has integrated a social media, knowledge, and collaboration environment within the firm and is constantly looking to leverage innovation solutions to enhance client service interaction while driving business optimisation solutions internally. Eric leads the Spherical Models team focusing on spherical business models through innovations in big data, social, and collaborative cloud solutions. Eric speaks and writes on competitive strategy, evolving business models, big data, and collaborative cloud solutions globally and is the recipient of ILTA s 2010 Knowledge Management Champion Distinguished Peer and ILTA s 2010 Innovative Member awards. Follow Eric on Shimrit Janes is currently a freelance consultant and writer. She previously led Reynolds Porter Chamberlain s KM project as part of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with The University of Westminster, a project that sought to develop a social media framework within a wider KM programme. Shimrit's experience and expertise includes developing knowledge solutions using enterprise Web 2.0 tools, using external social media within professional services, and developing frameworks and models in order to formalise the methodologies underpinning practice. Her research has also involved looking into facilitators and blockers to implementing effective knowledge management programmes. The latter forms a part of research conducted as part X

9 Legal Knowledge Management: Insights and Practice of the KTP, where she is working on a Social KM Framework intended to guide practitioners through the journey of implementing a social KM programme. Other experience includes consultancy in order to establish requirements and vision for projects, and developing social media strategies for small charities. Megan Jenkins is joint head of central knowledge management at DLA Piper. Her role encompasses client-facing KM, training for KM specialists, and research support. Megan links KM and marketing; acting as part-translator, part-talent scout to ensure that the most relevant know-how and expertise is made useful for clients. She has experienced client know-how needs first hand. In she was seconded to an international financial institution as head of KM for their internal legal and compliance functions. She uses her experience at DLA Piper to develop new VAS concepts with IT and marketing, especially the What In-house lawyers Need (WIN) programme. Megan works with the firm's specialist learning and development team to identify skills and training opportunities that meet those needs. The central KM team manages access to the information needed to support DLA Piper's business. Megan has an MA from Cambridge, joined DLA Piper in 2000, was admitted as a solicitor in 2002, practised in commercial property law, and became a commercial property PSL in 2006 before moving into central KM to coordinate cross-group and international projects. Norman Letalik is managing director, Professional Excellence at Borden Ladner Gervais (BLG). His responsibilities include recruitment, mentoring, performance evaluations, continuing education, knowledge management, and professional development activities, which comprise BLG s Professional Excellence Program. Norm is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management. Prior to practicing law, Norm was a law professor at Dalhousie University ( ) and the National University of Singapore ( ). Norm has delivered numerous papers and presentations throughout the world, and has written more than 50 publications in many areas of law. Norm is an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto Law School where he lectures in the Global Professional LLM Program. Norm was called to the bar of Ontario in 1989 and was added to the rolls as a solicitor in England and Wales in Norm is a member of the Canadian Bar Association s Legal Futures Initiative team looking at the future of legal education and training in Canada. Norm currently practices in the fields of product liability, class actions, maritime, and shipping law. He is a litigation partner and the National Leader of BLG s Automotive Group. Norm is listed in Best Lawyers in Canada for product liability law and in Lexpert for maritime and shipping law. Norm is the past National Head of the following BLG focus groups: Product Liability, Information Technology, International, and ADR. Jessica Magnusson is head of knowledge development at Osborne Clarke and leads the knowledge and information strategy in the firm. She works closely with the development team and manages the Training & Know-How lawyers. She also oversees the library and information services, which were outsourced to Integreon in XI

10 About the authors Prior to joining Osborne Clarke in 2011, Jessica was head of knowledge management at Baker & McKenzie where know-how, library, records management, and PSLs also came under her remit. She has a finance and accounting background, and her KM expertise was grounded at Arthur Andersen where she worked in the business consulting and financial services groups. Christoph Schmaltz is founder and director of thinknext, a business consultancy that helps clients to successfully transition from a traditional business to a networked business. He has vast experience of implementing social business and social media initiatives, especially for professional services and consumer product companies. Christoph is particularly interested in behavioural psychology and intercultural communication two aspects that are crucial when introducing new ways of working within global organisations. He has successfully worked with Freshfields, RPC, PwC, Grant Thornton, Allianz, Vodafone, and other large and small organisations. Prior to thinknext, Christoph worked as a consultant at Headshift for over five years (later integrated with the global Dachis Group), a market leader in social business consulting. He has also worked at tibbr, an enterprise social network platform provider. Antony Smith is founder of Legal Project Management Limited and helps professionals in the legal sector to improve their project management capability. Antony does this by providing training, coaching, implementation, and consultancy services to legal service delivery organisations of all kinds. Antony is a non-practising solicitor with post-graduate level qualifications in law, computing, and project management. He is a member of the Association for Project Management (APM) and the Project Management Institute (PMI). He has spent his entire career in the legal services industry and has enjoyed project-based roles at Pinsent Masons, the School of Law Kings College London, Berrymans Lace Mawer, and Axxia/LexisNexis where he spent just over 10 years in the role of strategic project manager. Katharine Ward is legal knowledge manager for Vodafone s Global Legal Function. Katharine is responsible for ensuring Vodafone s global team of 400 lawyers and support staff have access to the core information and tools they need in order to provide a world-class legal service. Katharine has 16 years experience and has held a range of information management roles in law firms, accounting firms, in-house legal teams, and law schools in both her native Australia and the UK. Katharine has a Bachelor of Arts degree (English and History) and a Master of Business (Information management). Matthew Whalley ran the Global Knowledge Management Programme for HSBC s Global Legal Function for six years. He was responsible for standardising their panel firms approach to value-add through technology, communications standards, and value-add reporting. In 2011 Matt joined Berwin Leighton Paisner to help develop their client KM/value-add offering. The firm has built-up a suite of value-add products that can be used to solve almost any client KM issue with the right delivery. XII

11 Legal Knowledge Management: Insights and Practice In August this year Matt was appointed as head of BLP s Legal Risk Consultancy and he works with clients to identify, quantify, and mitigate their legal risks. He maintains an interest in legal knowledge management and how value-add services can be most effectively delivered to the mutual benefit of law firm and client. XIII

12 PART ONE Legal knowledge management Expert analyses

13 Driving knowledge management: From reaction to engagement By Mark Gould, Addleshaw Goddard MOST OF the last 30 or so years during which knowledge management has developed into a discrete law firm function could be characterised as a period during which piecemeal copying was the norm. Typically, new ways of dealing with knowledge have been adopted by the largest firms and then smaller firms take similar measures later on. The result is that there is huge consistency across the largest firms in their general approach to knowledge. (Any variation will be in the details.) Since 2008, the legal sector has been under enormous pressure, which is slowly increasing diversity amongst law firms. That diversity should have an impact on knowledge management, but that requires clarity of understanding exactly what place KM has within the firm and who should drive it. Over time (and between firms), this has shifted from a subservient place reacting to demand and opportunity to a more valued service, aligned with firms goals. The next stage is for real strategic engagement with knowledge management. A brief history The primary knowledge activities within a law firm have not changed for generations. Lawyers have long recognised the value of precedent or standard documents as the starting point for advising clients. Likewise, in the absence of the firm s own documentation, lawyers depend on access to publicly available resources to ensure that the content of that advice is accurate. Before technology became pervasive, precedents were drafted and collected manually. They would be made available in the firm s library together with the books, journals, statutes, and case-law that the firm acquired from legal publishers. There would also be some form of informal knowledge sharing (as we might call it now), as the firm itself would have been much smaller and (paradoxically) more formally structured part of the responsibility of partnership would have been to be the fount of all knowledge. As firms grew, and technology became more pervasive, firms started to invest in people and systems to do the things that had previously been done as part of other jobs, or manually. The prevalence of physical books was undermined by online legal databases from the early 1980s. The first professional support lawyers (PSLs) were appointed in Magic Circle firms less than a decade later. This was the beginning of a cycle of development that has only faltered in the past few years. Technology makes it possible to access, more quickly and accurately, a wider collection of material than is possible otherwise. It also allows more information to be created within the firm. This surfeit of riches requires different skills than previously, to the point that specialised personnel need to be recruited. Those people then create more resources (precedents, guidance documents, practice notes, etc.) that improve the quality of the 3

14 Driving knowledge management: From reaction to engagement work done, but need additional technology (for storage, search, and retrieval) for the firm to feel the maximum benefit. And so the cycle continues. As firms developed their own KM capability, suppliers saw opportunities for themselves. New content providers and existing legal publishers looked to increase the depth and breadth of resources available to firms, and technology vendors developed their database and search tools into knowledge management systems. On the demand side, partners saw (or heard from potential recruits) that other firms had invested in knowledge services and systems. Fearing a loss of competitive edge they expected the firm to catch up by making similar purchases. Once many firms had made a significant commitment to knowledge (whether by employing PSLs, by buying systems, or both), clients started (by implication or explicitly) to require some form of knowledge support from their firms. By the mid-2000s, one could confidently assert that there was a fairly stable model for KM in law firms. This was borne out by the publication of two books on the topic: Gretta Rusanow s Knowledge Management and the Smarter Lawyer (2003) and Matthew Parsons s Effective Knowledge Management for Law Firms (2004). (It should be noted that there are significant differences between the UK and the US in approaches to legal KM, for reasons that are beyond the scope of this discussion. The consistency within each jurisdiction is roughly equivalent, however.) Who is driving law firm KM? This summary history of KM in law firms does not describe how the KM function is managed and led. There can be significant variation. For some, it is an aspect of IT provision, whereas others might locate it alongside HR. Some firms have appointed dedicated KM leaders, whilst others look to one or more partners to perform that function, or roll it into another business services role. The scope of KM leadership can also vary significantly. At a basic level it might be a purely internal and operational role, encompassing a variety of activities including harnessing resources and directing people, setting policies, influencing behaviour, and culture. Beyond that, there may be a responsibility for setting strategy for knowledge management within the firm. Whatever the scope of their role, very few KM leaders have been able to act without reference to significant pressures from elsewhere. Those pressures can be said to drive KM across the sector, so it is important to recognise and understand them. So why did law firms KM develop as described in the previous section? The causes are interlinked: Economic or organisational change: The increasing complexity of legal practice (either the size of the firm, the client base, or volume of work) makes it harder for lawyers to dedicate time to knowledge activities and also makes those activities more important; Technology: Wider use of technology in legal practice starts to conceal the work being done (pre-document management is hidden in s and document folders). The technology also offers a solution to this problem in improved document management and in knowledge databases and enterprise search; People: The growth in knowledge requirements triggered the creation of the PSL role, initially for existing feeearners wanting to change the way they worked. The existence of PSLs within a firm enabled more knowledge activities 4

15 Legal Knowledge Management: Insights and Practice to be done by fewer people, driving more PSL recruitment as well as new technology adoption; Market pressure: Law firms follow their competitors KM initiatives, and clients assume that firms can provide knowledge support (either from their PSLs or by using technology); and Suppliers: The economic and technology drivers for law firms are similar for publishers and technology vendors. They can then present a ready-made solution to firms. In almost every case, knowledge activities have been a reaction to a situation or opportunity, rather than developments planned strategically in advance. This is not unique to KM work law firms rarely thought strategically until the last decade or so. It does mean, though, that firms knowledge activities have been shaped to a significant extent by the interests of their suppliers, their competitors, and their people (PSLs and fee-earners). Client demand at this stage is minimal and proceeds from an assumption that the other interests have worked to ensure homogeneity across the largest law firms. The leader of a reactive KM function is likely to focus almost exclusively on routine operational and management issues. This will extend to making choices about approaches, systems, or tools, but only when necessary. The better KM leaders will spot the limitations of this approach for the firm and for clients, and will develop a more forward-looking strategic (or at least tactical) approach to developing knowledge for the firm. Where there is a wider strategy for the firm, the KM strategy should align with it. Had there been no other changes, it is likely that more firms would have seen a gradual shift to this kind of strategic alignment. Disruption It is fair to say that, with a few exceptions, the legal sector itself was fairly well-settled in the mid-2000s. Whilst firms might have differed in terms of their geographical spread and the expertise at their disposal, most of the largest firms worked to a very similar business model and goals. The years since 2008 have changed the assumption that there is a predominant way of running a legal business. This disruption is particularly strong in England and Wales, where there has been major regulatory change alongside economic upheaval and technological innovation. The major recession following the nationalisation of Northern Rock in the UK and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in the US inevitably affected law firms. Unlike previous recessions, the impact was not a simple reduction in fee income, which could be managed by a corresponding reduction in costs. This time, partly because of the depth of the recession and partly because of their greater sophistication in buying legal services, clients multiplied the cost pressure on firms by making it clear that legal services should be provided more effectively and at a lower price. One of the reasons for clients becoming more active in seeking cost savings is that the pace of technological change has increased in all sectors. Most businesses have been able to save costs through some form of automation or similar technologydriven efficiencies. At the same time, consumer access to technology has reached a point where traditional business models have needed to adapt to meet new types of consumer demand. Law firms have been slow to adopt new delivery models (especially compared to banks, whose online banking services now handle significant numbers of transactions, or insurance companies which now sell more 5

16 Driving knowledge management: From reaction to engagement consumer policies online than through brokers). They have also been slow to make progress with automation. So, since 2008, law firms have faced: an unfavourable general economic climate; direct pressure from clients to reduce fees; and raised expectations from clients and staff that technology could be used better. Outside England and Wales, this combination is disruptive. In England and Wales, settled law firms are also faced with fresh competition from new types of business that can offer legal services without the burden of tradition. A more strategic approach? How do firms react to this disruption, and what is the effect on knowledge activities? It is still possible to treat this upheaval as almost irrelevant to continue to practise law as before, serving clients in the same way with little change. This could work for a very small number of firms, but luck is probably the only factor determining which those will be. The fate of the rest will be to fail by not changing quickly or radically enough, or succeeding by making real business change. Almost by definition, such change cannot be doing the same as everyone else in a reactive fashion. Instead, it needs to be driven by clear strategic goals. Firms will need to answer for themselves questions such as: Which clients should we act for?, What kind of work should we do for them?, How should we organise ourselves?, How should we work? and so on. Crucially, the outcome of improved strategic analysis across the legal sector will probably be increased diversity amongst law firms. This can be demonstrated mathematically. Assume that there are just four possible responses for each of the four questions posed above. That would provide 256 possible combinations of answers (4 x 4 x 4 x 4). In reality, there will inevitably be more than four questions to answer and many more than four options in each case. The combinations of choices made by firms will create different businesses operating in very different ways. Whilst some of the differences that come about as a result of this process will be small, so that standard systems might still work as before, it is not safe for suppliers to assume that the market they are selling into is as homogenous as it has been until now. The corollary of that assertion is that purchasers of systems and services need to be cautious of offerings that claim (implicitly or otherwise) to provide a knowledge management solution. Legal technology vendors should therefore be much less influential in driving knowledge management in law firms than they have been in the past. Whilst diversity will reduce the influence of suppliers, technology vendors have another challenge. Just as firms are becoming more diverse, so are the systems they use. Until now, law firm IT has been characterised by monolithic systems: practice management, CRM, DMS, know-how, etc. The pace of change in technology will erode some of those monoliths. We have started to see this in the knowledge sphere with the introduction of social tools. This will only accelerate. One outcome of this is that firms will start to seek best of breed products in the wider IT marketplace, rather than choosing from products tailored for law firms. Increased diversity amongst firms will perhaps also diminish the extent to which firms look to their competitors for inspiration (or to copy). As differences between firms become much more tangible, it will be clearer that simply transplanting ideas from one firm to another will not work. 6

17 Legal Knowledge Management: Insights and Practice Naturally, partners and others still need to seek inspiration somewhere, and it is likely to come from clients. This might have two facets. In the first place, a more strategic approach necessarily requires examination and clarification of what firms do for clients. Clarity about this will in turn make it clearer what knowledge and insight is needed to deliver that service. A more client-focused strategy will also allow clients to express more clearly what knowledge support they would like for themselves, rather than making assumptions about what is available. If law firms become much better at strategy, where does knowledge management fit in that process? Implicit in the discussion so far is an assumption that a new strategic focus will become the main driver defining knowledge activities. For those leading knowledge management, however, merely aligning KM strategy with the firm s may not be enough. A firm built on better use of knowledge would involve the knowledge experts in creating the strategy itself. What should firms be asking of their knowledge leaders? Even if we only consider the questions arising from the application of technology to legal practice, there are many questions that KM leaders can help to answer. For example: Which aspects of our work could be automated? and How should we automate? Historically those questions might have been answered by vendors. But, as firms need to differentiate themselves from each other the responses need to be better informed by an understanding of the way knowledge is used already. In addition, firms choosing different organisational models or new approaches to client delivery will need their KM leader to consider the knowledge consequences of those choices. The outcome of that consideration will then be incorporated into the strategy. When KM is engaged with strategy, the future knowledge environment will need to be defined alongside the business model that will deliver it. KM will help to drive the firm. Engaged KM The historic overview of knowledge management above described a function defined by reaction largely to external forces. Even before 2008, some firms had seen their KM strategies better aligned to the firm s strategy driven not by change elsewhere, but by clearly defined business goals. The next step is to an engaged KM function, which participates in (and drives aspects of) the development of the firm s strategy. The focus for KM changes as a result. Rather than being merely a way of getting better advice to clients, it is used to ask and answer strategic questions for the firm producing a better strategy (and improved performance) as a result. The responsibility for making the case for this change rests with law firm knowledge leaders. 7