Beyond knowledge management to better management
Thinking creatively about alternative billing structures is something increasing numbers of lawyers and law firms are grappling with. To help with this, Thomas Gaines, Jeffrey Brandt, Jeffrey Rovner and Eugene Stein gave a terrific presentation at ILTA09 regarding how technology might assist with alternative billing arrangements. They started by exploding some common alternative billing myths,... Continue Reading →
One of the thorniest problems we've faced in knowledge management has been how to explain what we do. Ray Sims set out to determine if there was a definition of knowledge management that could help with this. What he discovered was not one or two, but rather 62 definitions of KM. That's more than one... Continue Reading →
It used to be so simple, so predictable. Just as night follows day, we followed a well-worn retail pattern: September back-to-school sales, then Columbus Day sales, then Halloween Sales, a pause for Thanksgiving, and then (finally!) Christmas and after Christmas sales. You always knew what kind of discount you could expect to find depending on... Continue Reading →
Navel gazing is a distressingly popular activity among knowledge managers. (To be honest, even I have indulged in it from time to time.) I'm not sure exactly what drives this tendency, although I expect it may have something to do with the fact that we aren't always able to explain succinctly what it is we... Continue Reading →
Is there such a word as Twitternut? Twitterphile? If so, that's me. I've found Twitter to be a game changer. I've loved the ability to connect and converse with a diverse range of interesting folks around the world. They regularly provoke me to laughter and always make me think a little harder about the topic... Continue Reading →
Sometimes those small things we routinely take for granted give us cause to remember how valuable they are in their ordinariness. This fact was driven home to me last night when I mailed off my biennial registration to the New York State Office of Court Administration. In New York, each practicing lawyer must register with... Continue Reading →
Paul Sloane has written a fantastic piece called How to Ruin a Brainstorming Session. If you take a closer look, you'll realize that many of the elements that are fatal for brainstorming are also fatal for a knowledge management program. Here are some of the practices Paul Sloane believes are deadly: You have no clear... Continue Reading →
Are you having fun? That's the question that once stopped me dead in my tracks. I was an earnest first-year associate at the time and the person asking the question was a very senior lawyer. Given current economic conditions, you may be tempted to say that a question like that should be reserved for a... Continue Reading →
Jason Ryan Dorsey has mastered the art of "edutainment." Over the course of a rollicking keynote address and subsequent 90-minute presentation he shook us out of our complacency about the impact of generational differences in the workplace. (A cautionary note: As I was tweeting his 90-minute session, several readers asked what data he had to... Continue Reading →
Yesterday's post, Are Law Firms Ready for Transparency, was retweeted on Twitter quite heavily and generated a fair amount of discussion there and via e-mail. Some of that discussion is now reflected in an update I published this morning clarifying a few of the features of Mallesons Connect. (If you're interested in Mallesons' terrific project,... Continue Reading →
Above and Beyond KM 