Beyond knowledge management to better management
In a world run by bean counters, knowledge managers sometimes fear that they will get short shrift if they cannot marshal the data necessary to impress the folks in green eyeshades. The problem is, of course, that it can be challenging to find compelling metrics to support the case for KM. In the context of... Continue Reading →
Forty years ago today, my parents packed up their children and every material possession they had to move to the other side of the world. In retrospect, I can only marvel at the bravery involved in taking that step. With that move they had to start all over again -- in a culture and climate... Continue Reading →
If you're in law firm management, you've probably been feeling a bit like Ebeneezer Scrooge staring at an unhappy future as several bloggers** recently painted a relentlessly challenging picture of the law firm of the future. (In Charles Dickens' A Chrismas Carol, Scrooge's deceased partner, Jacob Marley, warns him in a dream that he is headed... Continue Reading →
Every good conversation invites participation, and I've found it impossible to resist jumping into the very interesting conversation Toby Brown and Ron Friedmann have begun online regarding possible business models for large law firms. The genesis of the conversation was a session at the 2010 International Legal Technology Association Conference in which Ron Friedmann, Gerard... Continue Reading →
A Notice to Lexis and Westlaw: You would be well-advised to read this post since it proposes a better model for your products. (As for the royalty checks you'll owe me, let's talk...) For a few brief months early in my legal career, I was a litigation associate. As such, the main focus of my... Continue Reading →
If there is one theme that emerges from my many conversations with lawyers, it is their weariness with the seeming inability of legal IT vendors to produce applications that work in an intuitive, simple and effective way. In fact, lawyers often seem resigned to struggling constantly with software that forces them to adapt to it,... Continue Reading →
Love it or hate it, you can't ignore SharePoint. Thanks to the might of Microsoft, SharePoint has become part of the technology and knowledge management conversation at law firms all over the world. While not every law firm has deployed it, most I've talked to are thinking about it. Unfortunately, all that thinking is giving... Continue Reading →
It's Valentine's Day. Do you remember the pleasure of a new love -- the excitement, the giddiness, the joy? So tell me, when was the last time you felt that way about your office technology? To be fair, it's rare to have an elevated pulse when thinking about over-burdened workhorses, but that's a shame. Do... Continue Reading →
SharePoint Collaboration Across Your Team. Panelists: Meredith L. Williams (Director of Knowledge Mangement at Baker, Donelson) and Steve Fletcher (Chief Information Officer at Parker Poe). [These are my notes from LegalTech NY 2011. Since I'm publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical... Continue Reading →
Lessons Learned from Internalizing and Off Shoring the Management of Information [Internalizing means moving information management responsibilities inside your in-house legal department. Off shoring means using vendors who handle the work outside the US. While this session was primarily focused on eDiscovery and document review, the lessons are useful if you are rethinking how to... Continue Reading →
Above and Beyond KM 