KM2 Knowledge Management: Chart a Course for KM Success

Ron Friedmann
Prism Legal Consulting
ron@prismlegal.com 703.527.2381

Kingsley Martin
Consulting Et. Al

Agenda
Definition of knowledge management Assessing readiness KM strategic planning KM tactical planning
Understanding the business, strategic, and tactical planning requirements of KM will help law firms and KM professionals better assess the firms readiness to deploy and successfully maintain a knowledge sharing initiative.

What is KM?
Knowledge management is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. KM seeks to implement processes designed to collect, exchange, and deliver know-how to those who can profit from such knowledge

Your goals define KM

Too often KM is hailed as an organizational goal the nirvana of the learning organization. To be successful KM cannot be abstracted from its purpose and goals. The goals of KM are: To improve profitability To improve work practices To improve lawyer lifestyle

Assessing Your Firms Readiness

Factor Culture Technology & Infrastructure Process Business Strategy Overall

Low

High Readiness

Indicators of Readiness
Champion
Scope of authority Firm-wide position/respect

Attorneys
Attitude Proclivity to sharing

Administrative Support
Financial support Personnel resources

Risk tolerance/Acceptance of failure

Fail fast One Strike Rule

Principal Strategy Components

Strategic Plan Leadership Business Goals

Personnel

Technology

Information

Culture (Process)

Key Planning Choices

Methodology: Will you proceed through overt planning or covert action? Business Goals: what are your business goals? Hard (financial) or soft (intangible) benefits? Type: What type of knowledge will you capture? Scope: How narrowly or broadly will you deploy your system in the short, medium, and long term? Process: Will you rely on technology, people, or both?

What are your business goals?

Goal How KM Supports KM Approaches

Increase billing rates Enable junior lawyers to perform more sophisticated work; reduce time spend on mechanical tasks Decrease write-offs Reduce write-offs stemming from inefficient work Content-based on interactive Web services Provide means for junior lawyers to learn substance and skills Ensure that all client work is of uniform quality

Capture/reuse documents Best practices Expert systems Capture/reuse documents Best practices Expert systems Interactive systems CRM Communities of practice Best practices Expertise locator Expertise locator Capture / reuse documents Best practices system

Generate new revenue sources Train junior lawyers

Quality control (reduce malpractice risk)

Bottom-line : KM programs should be designed to increase profitability?

What type of knowledge to capture?

Explicit Knowledge
Written work product Documented best practices

Tacit Knowledge
Knowledge in peoples heads Expertise location

Knowledge Creation Matrix

Tacit TO Explicit

Socialization
Tacit connecting people with people Apprenticeship

Externalization
connecting people with content Best Practices

FROM

Internalization
Explicit connecting content with people Training

Combination
connecting content with content Work Product Aggregation

Nonaka, The Knowledge-Creating Company

What is your scope?

Individual Practice group or administrative department Firm-wide Client Legal services consumer (mass market)

Inward Facing

Outward Facing

Increasing standardization

What process?
Manual By fee-earners By staff (part time) By dedicated professionals (PSLs) Automated Active Delivery Systems
Manual knowledge collection Automated knowledge delivery

Active Organizing Systems

Automated knowledge collection Manual knowledge organization

Passive Delivery and Organizing Systems

Automated knowledge collection Automated knowledge organization Passive knowledge organization

Increasing complexity & value

Case Studies: Tactical Implementation

1.

Interview practice groups heads and interested attorneys

Develop needs assessment Validation measures and metrics

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Identify Pilot Group(s) Identify users Identify Document Collection Select the Collection Process Identify your approach Select an organizational theme Determine your review process Determine how the collection be maintained? Determine how will you monitor the process? Determine the tools for access and retrieval?

1. Identify Pilot Group(s)

Champion Interested users Comfortable with computers High visibility group High priority client-base High usage of other research tools Able to evaluate the product and provide feedback

2. Identify users
Lawyers/legal assistants Secretaries Administrative staff Clients Market for online legal services

3. Identify Document Collection

For each practice area, describe in general terms the type or nature of the documents that should be included in the research archive.
Letter Memorandum (memorandums of law, research memorandum) Opinion Agreement Application or Form Brief Pleading Judgment or Order Other

Document Collection: = High Recall

4. Select the Collection Process

Collection Methods:
Usage Maintain

KMS

DMS EMail
Collect Classify

Vet

Voluntary Submission Manual Collection by content managers (PSLs) Automated Data Mining
DMS Tools (document profiles) Full-text Searching (document types) Usage Analysis Citation analysis Automated classification

5. Identify your approach

How would you measure the accuracy of your identification method? What is the more onerous outcome for the firm:
Having too few documents in the collection, or Having too many documents in the collection, potentially including irrelevant documents?

How will you address the questions?

By relying on filtering and collection processes performed by staff? By relying on vetting processes performed by lawyers? By relying on the search and retrieval tools to locate valuable reusable material?

6. Select an organizational theme(s)

How will you organize your knowledge? author / practice area client / industry subject matter- taxonomy case/transaction chronology task or workflow

Usage Maintain

KMS

DMS EMail
Collect Classify

Vet

7. Determine your review process

Will material be subjected to a quality review? If so, what type of review process? Document quality status (numeric/text) Comments (e.g. context information) Name of reviewer Review date Other

Usage Maintain

KMS

DMS EMail
Collect Classify

Vet

8. How the collection be maintained?

How will the collection maintain currency? Review/remove documents after a period of time Review/remove documents after a period of inactivity Who will perform the review?
Manual Automated

Usage Maintain

KMS

DMS EMail
Collect Classify

Vet

9. How will you monitor the process?

Usage Monitoring can be used to: Validate ROI (demonstrate usage) Manage the collection (focus on most used documents) Augment searches (sort search results by the most used documents)

Usage Maintain

KMS

DMS EMail
Collect Classify

Vet

10. What tools will you provide for access & retrieval?
Lawyer: I want to find a Credit Agreement (taxonomy) and related documents (relationships) executed in the State of California (profile) that contains a revolving credit provision (full-text search), and drafted by the firms expert (usage) Technologist: What tools and processes are needed to support this objective?

Full-text
Search Engine

Usage

Relationships
Citation, Ontology

Profiles
Database Fields

Classification
Taxonomy

What is the cost to do this manually?