Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession is the subject of the Ark Group's conference I'm attending in New York City. Here are my notes. Toby Brown is involved in Client Teams, Alternative Fee Arrangements and Knowledge Management at Fulbright & Jaworski LLP. He's also a recovering economist. This presentation focuses on the strong role KM... Continue Reading →
The Role of KM in Legal Project Management
Andrew Terrett (Director of Knowledge Management, BLG) and Joshua Fireman (VP and General Counsel, ii3) presented a full-day workshop on legal project management (LPM) at the Ark Group Legal Knowledge Management Conference (October 26, 2010). Here are my notes. Your Knowledge Management Department and Legal Project Management It is not a given that legal project... Continue Reading →
ARK: Project Management
Andrew Terrett (Director of Knowledge Management, BLG) and Joshua Fireman (VP and General Counsel, ii3) presented a full-day workshop on legal project management (LPM) at the Ark Group Legal Knowledge Management Conference (October 26, 2010). Here are my notes. Definitions: Six Sigma = "a rigorous and disciplined methodology that uses data and statistical analysis to... Continue Reading →
Lower Cost Law Firm KM?
Law firms in England were famous in earlier years for hiring armies of practice support lawyers to carry out knowledge management activities. By contrast, many North American firms have resisted doing this because of the personnel costs and management challenges involved. In lieu of armies, some North American firms have opted to throw technology at... Continue Reading →
Law Firm KM and Revenue
One of the presenters is showing us a website his firm created. Originally it started as a knowledge management project in which they wrote a treatise and put it online on a subscription basis. This website includes links to and summaries of regulatory decisions, coupled with an excellent search function. In fact, the search engine... Continue Reading →
The Role of KM in Legal Project Management
In this session two seasoned law firm knowledge managers talked about how they bring KM to legal project management (LPM). * LPM can be a Trojan horse. You may start by "just putting a little structure around" your work processes, but you end up by radically changing how we work, as well as the culture... Continue Reading →
KM and Change-Resistant Lawyers
Scientists have been warning doctors and patients alike about the dangers of over-using antibiotics. One of the biggest problems they see is that improper use of antibiotics has led to the development of drug-resistant bugs. Because these super bugs are becoming increasingly difficult to treat, they bedevil modern medicine. Similarly, we find that there is... Continue Reading →
Do You Really Know?
Do you really know how your colleagues work? Do you really know what they need? Are you sure? If you don't truly understand them, how can you provide the right knowledge management and technology support to help them? Every time I hear someone in law firm knowledge management or IT say "Our lawyers would never...,"... Continue Reading →
The End of Your KM Job?
My friends were so worried about me that they rushed over to check that I hadn't lost my marbles. In fairness, their response could be considered reasonable given that I had just declared to a group of law firm knowledge management specialists that much of what we collectively were doing at that time shouldn't be... Continue Reading →
Coalition of the Willing
Lawyers in most firms are given a lot of freedom to decide how to manage their own knowledge. In fact, it's a rare law firm that can demand that its lawyers handle their knowledge in a particular way. For many, the battle began and ended with the document management system. At this point, most firms... Continue Reading →
Above and Beyond KM 