What’s one thing that will doom your law firm knowledge management program? Your knowledge manager’s inability to question premises. (To be honest, this can be a problem with most disciplines, but I don’t presume to speak to any other areas of expertise.)
For example, lawyers (being people who value precedent) have historically placed a high premium on document collections. Consequently, it was natural for early law firm knowledge managers to assume that their first priority was to create and manage document collections for lawyers. Is this the way it should be? Does this fondness for collections make sense any more? In fact, as the rate of information production grows exponentially, is it even practical to think we can create and maintain a collection that is either comprehensive or current? Or, should we be thinking more about search and retrieval? Check your premises.
Here’s another example: lawyers (being people who write professionally) have historically placed a high premium on model documents. (For those of you outside the legal profession, these are contracts that do not contain client-specific information, but generally do collect the firm’s knowledge of that type of contract by providing annotations containing drafting advice and negotiation guidance.) Most lawyers would love to have a model document for every kind of contract they typically prepare for their clients. To be honest, some lawyers dream of a fill-in-the-blanks model that they can just pull off the shelf and use. In reality, however, model documents can be extremely time-consuming and expensive to produce. And, they can be a bear to maintain. In short, they are an expensive undertaking. Nonetheless, many law firm knowledge managers have assumed that a top priority should be creating a comprehensive set of model documents. But does your firm have the human commitment and financial resources necessary to provide properly maintained model documents? And, even if it does, is this a good use of its resources? Check your premises.
Knowledge managers should lead by example when it comes to finding creative solutions to practical problems. The first step along this path is to question our premises. When we fail to do this, we pursue outdated goals and methods, thereby relegating our KM programs to an increasingly irrelevant position within the firm.
***Update, 26 Oct 2009 ***
If you’re willing to take a radical, critical look at the things you do and the way you work, the following reading might help:
- Mike Figliuolo, How Blowing Up Your Business Can Drive Innovation
- From the Above and Beyond KM Archives:
[Photo Credit: oberazzi]
Above and Beyond KM 
Mary -True. Model documents are expensive. Even worse, they have a negative ROI when you are billing by the hour. If the model saves you a hour (or more) of drafting that is time that will not appear on the bill. (I will ignore collect-ability and quality since they are not meaningfully measurable.)Switch to fixed billing and flat fees, then the investment in form documents is truly an investment that can yield a measurable financial return. That hour (or more) of drafting time saved makes the engagement that much more profitable for the firm.
Doug -You're right that a fixed fee billing structure makes the benefits of modeldocuments more intuitively obvious. Nonetheless, my point about checkingpremises remains. We won't know for sure that a model has been helpfulunless we can actually identify and measure the impact of that model.Alternatively, we'll need solid and consistent anecdotal evidence that aparticular model was helpful. Are firms ready to do that kind of duediligence review?- Mary
Agree with you completely that the full cost of ownership should be evaluated on any investment, KM or otherwise. Benefits are great, but there is rarely a free lunch. Usually there is cost involved. If that cost outweighs the benefit, it's a non-starter.This sounds simple, but especially with KM, there are often a lot of soft benefits that are hard to quantify. Though we try, there are many assumptions compiled that rarely are accurate. Many initiatives in a large organization will claim that they will cause or caused the same benefits.Nonetheless, we should always strive to quantify costs and benefits the best we can.
Swan -Given the “soft benefits” of KM, it may be hard to actually quantify thefull cost of ownership. Nonetheless, knowlege mangers are not off thehook. We just have to work harder to be sure we have a defensible way ofexplaining and substantiating the costs and benefits of KM. But even if wecan't nail down every last item, I suspect that simply making the effortwill prove beneficial.- Mary
Doug -You're right that a fixed fee billing structure makes the benefits of modeldocuments more intuitively obvious. Nonetheless, my point about checkingpremises remains. We won't know for sure that a model has been helpfulunless we can actually identify and measure the impact of that model.Alternatively, we'll need solid and consistent anecdotal evidence that aparticular model was helpful. Are firms ready to do that kind of duediligence review?- Mary
Agree with you completely that the full cost of ownership should be evaluated on any investment, KM or otherwise. Benefits are great, but there is rarely a free lunch. Usually there is cost involved. If that cost outweighs the benefit, it's a non-starter.This sounds simple, but especially with KM, there are often a lot of soft benefits that are hard to quantify. Though we try, there are many assumptions compiled that rarely are accurate. Many initiatives in a large organization will claim that they will cause or caused the same benefits.Nonetheless, we should always strive to quantify costs and benefits the best we can.
Swan -Given the “soft benefits” of KM, it may be hard to actually quantify thefull cost of ownership. Nonetheless, knowlege mangers are not off thehook. We just have to work harder to be sure we have a defensible way ofexplaining and substantiating the costs and benefits of KM. But even if wecan't nail down every last item, I suspect that simply making the effortwill prove beneficial.- Mary