Beyond knowledge management to better management
In a recent meeting, a vendor said with great enthusiasm, "Let me show you our KM solution." For a brief moment of intense joy, I actually thought I was about to experience KM enlightenment. I should have known better. After a bit of fanfare, he unveiled ... a search engine. Admittedly, it appeared to be... Continue Reading →
The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) is assessing the current state of law firm knowledge management and would like your assistance. Their first step is to gather data on what's happening on the ground. To participate, please complete their brief online survey, which focuses on the number and types of people who work in KM... Continue Reading →
Richard Susskind likes to be provocative. And, he's good at it. After hearing his talk at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, I found my mind churning with ideas of what it might be like if his vision became our reality. However, I soon felt stymied by the enormity of the challenge of changing... Continue Reading →
Michael Melcher believes that thinking like a lawyer is bad for a lawyer's career. He lays out his interesting arguments in a recent piece for the ABA Journal. Here are the lawyerly attributes that he believes handicap lawyers when thinking about their own careers: • Analyze rather than explore. • Focus on flaws and potential... Continue Reading →
In a prior post I talked about how to sort out priorities for your knowledge management department by imagining what you would choose to focus on if you were trying to do it all by yourself. Now, here's a tougher thought experiment: What if your law firm believes that in the short term it cannot... Continue Reading →
Do we really have as much control over our KM department priorities as we'd like to think we have? I asked variants of this question during a follow-up conversation based on my prior post, What's Your KM Priority? In the course of this second conversation, we took a look at how our various law firms... Continue Reading →
Some law firm knowledge managers gathered recently to consider the ways in which knowledge management actually makes a difference for law firms. We undertook this exercise as a means of identifying what our KM priorities were and what they should be. To help focus our discussion, we considered the following question: What single thing does... Continue Reading →
Andrew McAfee's Twitter list of "10 Things I've Learned from Teaching" is instructive for those of us who don't teach for a living: Don't be afraid of silence in the classroom. Ask clear questions. Trust your students. Be the person who most wants to be in the room. Start on time, end on time. Check... Continue Reading →
The historic battles between Athens and Sparta or between the Hatfields and the McCoys are nothing compared to the battle royal fought daily by parents determined to make their children eat their vegetables. After years of alternating between cajoling and threatening our children, we now learn that the right thing to do is to try... Continue Reading →
Our local public radio station has just finished its first pledge drive of the year. During pledge week, they ask all their listeners to provide financial support to the radio station. Since the radio station does not receive government support, they rely on their listeners to cover a significant part of the operating budget. It's... Continue Reading →
Above and Beyond KM 