km update and trends june 2005

7/29/2019 KM Update and Trends June 2005

1/20

2005 Trends inKnowledge ManagementJune 28, 2005

Washington, DC

Tania Daniels Ron Friedmann

Senior Consultant PrincipaleSentio Technologies Prism Legal Consulting
http://www.prismlegal.com/


2/20

Trends in Knowledge Management

Is KM a Separate Initiative?

Baking it into the Process

Expertise Locators

Future Trends

Automated versus manual solutions

Blogs: publishing as KM driver

Collaboration E-discovery spill-over

Marketing as KM movers


3/20

Trend #1


Is KM a separate firm initiative?

Or is it the overlooked business process of law?

Attorneys are knowledge workers Practice of law is the application of legal principles to

a unique set of facts

Requires utilization of research resources, work

product, expertise


4/20

Trend #1


What are the goals of KM efforts? More effectively utilize internal and external

knowledge resources

Requires understanding practice specificrequirements, workflow analysis, collaboration efforts

Organizational KM confusion: where do KMgroups reside? Within IT department

Within Library

Separate department


5/20

Trend #1


Where does firm know-how reside?

DM, E-mail, RM, CRM, Accounting, Marketing, HR

Is the attempt to organize content and

resources, cull best practices and precedents,

and identify expertiseseparate from the

requirements of practicing law? If not, how does this change the organization

and management of a firm KM program?


6/20

Trend #1


Trend towards viewing KM as an integral part of

business of practicing law

Benefits of an integrated organizationalperspective:

Requirements gathering analysis look at the

practice of law from attorney perspective

Offers integration opportunities in daily workflowroutines

Becomes a firm-wide initiative that everyone benefits

from not just those inclined to use KM resources


7/20

Trend #2

Baking it into the Process Processes with KM opportunities

Hiring

Client development

Matter in-take Matter staffing

Document and e-mail creation

Time keeping

Official filings (court, SEC, etc) Vendor or expert retention

End of matter (deal closes, litigation done)

Records management


8/20

Trend #2

Baking it into the Process

Examples of Specific Firms

Discussion


9/20

Trend #3

Expertise Locators

What expertise do you want to track? Internal Substantive Who Knows What

Who knows about issue A in context of facts B?

External Who Knows Whom Whos appeared before Judge X in jurisdiction Y? Whos worked with co-counsel J?

Substantive versus Process

How do you define expertise? Number of hours billed

Self-ranking

Contextual analysis of documents/e-mail


10/20

Trend #3

Expertise Locators

Whats out there?

LawPort

Number of hours billed, adjusted if necessary

Self-rankings with comments

Bios include expertise

Categorized by firm taxonomy topic, industry,

jurisdiction, language Topic Pages view expertise on subject

Matter Pages view others with expertise on topic


11/20

Trend #3

Expertise Locators

Whats out there?

Recommind Matters & Expertise

Number of hours billed

Links to bios, documents, other matters

ii3s AdvanceKnowledge

Expertise determined by number of documents

submitted within a taxonomy category


12/20

Trend #3

Expertise Locators

Whatever happened to?

Tacit

Contextual analysis of email, documents,

portal/Intranet content, extranets

ActiveNet is still active but not in legal

Kamoon Gone? [URL is no longer active]


13/20

Trend #3

Expertise Locators

Homegrown Solutions

Many firms continue to rely on e-mail

messages to distribution lists Questions sent to central address

Collect answers into full-text searchable

databases with web interface

Find prior answers, expertise

Way to market expertise as well as collect it


14/20

Trend #4

Future Trends - Overview



Collaboration E-discovery spill-over



15/20

Trend #4

Future Trends


UK and Australia rely on PSLs

US trend is toward automated solutions

Enterprise search (e.g., Recommind)

Work product retrieval (e.g., Practice

Technologies, West KM)


16/20

Trend #4

Future Trends


Blogging is big

Some large firms have public blogs

At least one uses blogging internally

Ease of posting combined with RSS feed may

lead to paradigm shift


17/20

Trend #4

Future Trends

Collaboration

Collaboration is hot again

Microsoft acquired Groove expect to see

more collaboration built into Office

Collaborative spaces may create new opportunities

to capture knowledge

Wikis gaining ground Collaborative blog anyone can post

Many large companies already use


18/20

Trend #4

Future Trends

E-discovery spill-over

Big dollars are flowing to e-discovery

Software likely eventually to substitute for

some lawyer review - semantic engines to

support this are improving

Potential to apply software developed for e-

discovery to KM


19/20

Trend #4

Future Trends


Marketing departments need ready access to

lawyer expertise, deals done, and cases

handled

In some firms, Marketing and KM aligned to

capture the same key information


20/20

Concluding Thoughts

Schools of thought Firms that dont do KM will die

KM is a competitive advantage

Theres no penalty for being a late adopter

Market pressure is missing GCs say that want KM but dont vote their dollars

Fixed fees favor KM but hourly billing reigns

But some firm dynamics favor KM Merged firms must cross-sell Associate retention and lawyer life styles

Risk management

km update and trends june 2005

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