SUMMARY ANALYSIS

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT & LAW

The implementation of Knowledge Management in Law Firms and Internal Legal Departments in France

A summary analysis of a survey conducted in 2006 by Juriconnexion

Bénédicte Baudot (Knowledge Management Specialist, Shearman & Sterling LLP) and Agnès Chrissement (Law Librarian, Gide Loyrette Nouel)

Notes: In order to protect and respect the confidentiality of the law firms and the companies that responded to this survey, no names shall be
released. The figures and the percentages found in this survey are based on the number of responses received. If you feel that your
professional expertise could contribute to this study’s findings, you are welcomed to contact Juriconnexion’s « Knowledge Management & Droit »
group.

To best document the results of this survey, the terms “in-house counsel” and “lawyer” have been chosen to differentiate between law
practitioners who have fulfilled the basic qualifications to practice law in France and those who have been accredited by an additional association
in order to practice in all legal contexts, respectively.

NOTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT:

DEFINITIONS
2. Practiced Knowledge Management Activities
Traditionally1, the concept of Knowledge Management has been addressed
in several ways: a standard definition, the way in which it is implemented, its
organization, its application or even through the financial and human means If you had to list the KM activities of your firm, which activities
in which it is employed. would you include?
Among the definitions proposed to describe knowledge management in this
study, those that are believed to best represent this concept are of an 18%
operational and economic nature : «To combine knowledge and savoir-faire 36%
in procedures, products, (and) organizations in order to create value » » (38
13%
%) and « To value the intellectual capital of a firm »(34%).

The other suggested significations: «To provide me with the information that
I need, when I need it, and if possible, without my having to ask for it »
(utilitarian definition) and « To manage a piece of information’s life cycle,
from the emergence of an idea, to its formalization, its authentication, its 20% 13%
diffusion, its reutilization and its optimization » (a functional definition) were
only selected by 19% and 9% of the survey’s respondents, respectively. The
definitions proposed and recognized for Knowledge Management by
professionals in the legal sector seem to depart from the traditional Creating databases and information systems that
Knowledge Management explanations used in non-legal sectors. facilitate the management of knowledge and
36%
know-how in varying specialized sectors
Creating global information retrieval systems
APPROACHES TO KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT 20% (thus making data available to all users)
Managing work groups in specialized areas
1. The Duration of a Knowledge Management Project (practice groups) as well as writing and
18% composing reports and studies that encompass
45% of those that responded to this survey indicate that they are developing all updated information and knowledge
KM projects with short- term deadlines. Only 5% declared that they were not
participating in any ongoing projects in this domain. Creating information-specific retrieval systems
13% (collects data that is targeted to the specific needs
of a group of specialists).
5%
Organizing and developing networks between
20% lawyers working in similar contexts or disciplines (
45% 13% such as languages, legal specializations)

These results are representative of the Knowledge Management

30% activities exercised in internal legal departments and law firms.
There were several possibilities as responses to these questions.

45% Short-term project The application of Knowledge Management is fundamentally

oriented toward the creation, the development and the
30% Average- term project maintenance as well as the procedural management of information
storage (according to 69% of responses).
20% Long-term project
Managing communities of practice and coordinating work groups
among specialists are activities which are less typical in current
5% No ongoing projects applications of Knowledge Management. This approach, which
considers people’s attitudes toward the exchange of information in
Knowledge Management incentives, is not (yet?) a well-recognized
or widespread approach to Knowledge Management practices
(according to 31% of responses).
1
A definition taken from Manuel du Knowledge Management : une approche de 2e
génération / Jean-Yves Prax. - Paris : Dunod, 2003. - XI-477 p. : ill. ; 25 cm. -
(Stratégies et management). Prix de l’Intelligence économique 2003.

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In addition, there are other activities that contribute to Knowledge
Management objectives which are specific to a particular domain:
- Technical support in legal practices:
Essentially present in American law firms, this activity is dedicated
to the development of systems and the creation of procedures
that serve to manage ongoing affairs. It mainly consists of setting
up specialized information systems that respond to the needs of a
particular case or theme. This activity is directed by PSLs, Practice
Support Lawyers or by Knowledge Managers.
- Capitalizing on the internal production in a law firm or in an
in-house counsel:
The purpose of this measure is to consequentially provide new and
added value to a given piece of information or data (summaries,
creation of templates.) This type of activity is led by lawyers or in-
house councils that are dedicated to Knowledge Management,
referred to as a KML.
- Continued Education for lawyers enrolled in French Bars
lawyers working in similar contexts or disciplines
(languages, legal specializations)
 Sharing information and knowledge as well as recent
developments concerning regulatory changes. (ISO
standards, Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, etc.).
Beneficiaries
Those that benefit from Knowledge Management systems are
lawyers and in-house counsels.
Furthermore, one of the particularities of practicing Knowledge
Management in a law firm allows clients to be considered as
indirect beneficiaries of these systems.
4. Organizing Knowledge Management

This is an activity which is progressively becoming a norm across How has your company structured its Knowledge Management
law firms. Its structure and organization is at times assigned to department to manage your company’s knowledge and know-how?
Knowledge Management officers.

In this section, it is best to differentiate between the organizational

3. Reasons to Develop a Knowledge Management System
structures in law firms and those in internal legal departments to
demonstrate the different tendencies in each.
What type of demand? What are your company’s needs? Who
are the beneficiaries? Having made this distinction in the following table, one can
conclude that knowledge management systems in law firms and in-
house counsels exercise an inversed organizational structure.
The Demand for Knowledge Management
The demand for Knowledge Management tools emanates from
different people depending on law firm structure in place: Law Internal
Firms Legal
- Lawyers or Law Practitioners want to save time and efficiency Departm
while obtaining reliable and productive information. ents
- Knowledge Managers (sometimes documentalists or law
librarians) thus suggest the creation of systems intended to give a Knowledge Management Lawyer 26% 13%
supplementary value to the information created by a given (Activity is directly led by law
establishment. practitioners)
Knowledge Manager
(Activity specifically dedicated to 26% 13%
The objective of Knowledge Management tools is to extract the Knowledge Management)
most relevant and a useful aspect of internal know-how to provide
a firm with a final product whose increased improvement
Special documentalists or librarians 26% 0%
consistently surpasses expectations.
working in an information center
In law firms, asserting an excellent reputation through the quality of
a firm’s consultations is a delicate and complex matter. No modification to the preexisting 11% 37%
company structure*

Basic Requirements Other** 11% 37%

 Conserving knowledge and preserving intellectual
capital. This aspect is fundamental to preventing the
loss of data and expertise that arises when lawyers leave
a law firm.
 Access to internal « know-how » through facilitated
searches within a larger corpus of documents.
* Meaning that the initial structure of the company was not altered
to accommodate the arrival of Knowledge Management practices.
** Used to describe a structure that often encompasses all of the
aforementioned positions listed in the table above throughout the
duration of a knowledge management project or system.

 Sharing information: Unlike other sectors in which KM is

implemented, sharing information in law firms only
occurs between practitioners participating in the same
legal concentration or between offices that share similar THE CONTENT OF A KNOWLEDGE
practices. This exception is due to the specific nature of MANAGEMENT SYSTEM & PROCEDURES
legal documents that are intended to be used in a
particular legal concentration. At times, sharing
5. Capitalized Information and the Content of a Knowledge
documents across legal departments may be poorly
suited and even « dangerous » if it is applied Management System
inappropriately to another context.
Which types of information are or should be capitalized by a
 Creating an internal standard within a law firm that gives
knowledge management tool or system?
it an edge over its competitors.
 Identifying each employee’s competencies and skills, in
order to organize and methodize networks between

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 15% 16%
• Legal affairs are confidential by nature.
• Law is a science that is in a constant state of evolution.
Information that is not updated can quickly become
27% 21% obsolete.

21%
• The quality of internal know-how is one of the potential
elements used to determine a law firm’s reputation and
standing.

27% Contracts, acts, clauses, templates • Law is a discipline consisting of many sub-
concentrations thus resulting in separate areas of
practice.
21% Notes, memos
• Working in a legal environment and managing legal
21% Other (See the list below.) affairs is especially time-consuming.
• Exchanging information and sharing knowledge are
16% E- mails, messages activities that are rarely practiced nor systematically
reinforced in the legal sector.
15% Conclusions, precedents
• Law is often practiced in international structures.
Difficulties concerning the multiplicity of languages are
*Several responses were possible. thus inherent to Knowledge Management practices.

Similar to the way in which « The Organization of Knowledge

Management » was presented, the following table reflects which
types of information are capitalized according to whether the
establishments act as law firm or as internal legal departments by
using a separate column to illustrate the different needs of each
sector.
Internal
Law
Legal
Firms
Dépit.
E- mails, messages 13% < 24%
Notes, memos 23% > 19%
Conclusions, precedents 24% > 14%
Contracts, acts, clauses, templates 27% > 24%
Other (See the list below.) 19% < 13%
Contract models, as well as acts and clauses are prioritized types
of information in Knowledge Management systems. The following
denotes the need to conserve a written trace of knowledge sources
and know-how to create a piece of information with added value as
well as to guarantee an improved quality in an establishment’s
assignments.
Other elements are also included in these systems*:
 Legal consultations, continuing educational resources,
documental products, updated thematic files, feedbacks
concerning varied activities, debriefings related to
external communities, coordinating networks between
lawyers working in similar contexts or disciplines
(languages, legal specializations), external contact
information.
In internal legal departments, the cases pertaining to and affecting
an enterprise as well as their respective commentaries are one of
the additional components integrated into a Knowledge
Management system. .
* Some of these components are traditionally managed by the on-
staff information center.
6. The Particularities of Legal Knowledge Management
Legal Knowledge Management consists of characteristics that
derive directly and simultaneously from efficient legal practices and
legal culture itself. The following is a list of characteristics and
conditions that are specific to this field:
7. Information Workflow Procedures
Eighty-four percent of the establishments that responded to this
survey developed standardized procedures for recovering the data
that is intended to support Knowledge Management systems. The
creation of these procedures has assigned a specific function to
the ensemble of Knowledge Management specialists. These are
measures that are needed to maintain the durability and the
pertinence of these types of systems.
The development and the maintenance of these systems are
determined by the level of collaboration and availability of
participating lawyers or law practitioners.
- The mandatory transmission of information,
- Voluntary participation,
- Flexible intermediary solutions that attempt balance mandatory
and voluntary tasks, cooperating with the establishment’s
information center, creating a proofreading committee
The quality of a structured procedure for transmitting and
recovering data seems to be a determining factor in the success of
a Knowledge Management project. It is the principal cause of
system set backs and failures.
Verifying information, although considered essential, is only
anticipated or considered as an essential part of the process in
42% of cases.
Three Reoccurring Problems
Assigning a Status to a Piece of Information and Documenting its
Life Span
Having to ascribe a precise status to information
(“Confirmed Source”, “Authoritative Information“, “Final
Document”, “Definitive Status”, “In-Progress”, “Draft”, “Archive”, for
example).
Determining a Piece of Information’s Authority and Reliability
There are objective and subjective criteria used to determine an
information resource’s validity.
For instance, a document that has recently been legally modified
faces the risk of obsolescence.
Being Responsible for Publishing and Determining the Relevancy
of Information
Only lawyers and law practitioners, or information specialists with a
double competency in legal matters can determine the pertinence
of a given piece of information

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To ensure a system’s longevity and continued quality, it is
absolutely indispensable that lawyers and in-house counsels take
the time and the responsibility to regulate its content regularly.
8. Information Security
Already confidential by nature, storing legal information in
Knowledge Management systems implies an elevated level of
vulnerability to unwanted access.
All Knowledge Management specialists: Knowledge Managers,
lawyers, law practitioners or information specialists are conscious
of the complications that arise from having to preserve
confidentiality within an establishment.
89% highly prioritize the obligations of adhering to intellectual
property rights in the systems that they manage (copyright laws,
database laws…)
68% of those that responded to this survey believe that their
competencies in the two aforementioned topics are not completely
up to date.
HEADING A KM PROJECT
9. Maintaining Support from a Firm’s Partners and Directors
Most of the Knowledge Management specialists who have
participated in this study feel that they have been supported by
their firm’s partners and directors. This encouragement is
unanimously considered an imperative step toward the success of
initiated projects.
Generally a project’s phases are viewed as useful projects and are
thus initiated. Nevertheless, once a project enters its « active »
phase it will receive less encouragement. If a system requires
frequent follow-ups to ensure its relevancy and performance, it
often loses the support that it initially received.
Between the lack of time others have available to dedicate
themselves to sharing information and the loss of interest that
usually develops throughout a long-term project, Knowledge
Management systems often suffer from a loss of enthusiasm. The
obstacles faced by those involved in these projects encompass
several factors : a lack of time, not understanding the relevance
and the significance of a system, a reluctance to share
information, the difficulty of preserving valid and current
information, the difficulty of invoicing (Who should be invoiced for
Knowledge Management activities?), a divergence of opinion
regarding the selection process involved in choosing a given
system and /or procedure, a reluctance toward using digital
information or computer-based tools instead of « paper-based »
tools.
Overall, obtaining long-term support, (both a willingness to
participate in and to utilize knowledge management systems), from
partners and directors ensures the longevity of a project and allows
for a system’s complete development by rendering the project
useful and indispensable.
In the absence of such support, Knowledge Management practices
accumulate into successive projects that never reach full maturity.
Taking into consideration how people react to and make use of
these systems is thus imperative to a knowledge management
system as it constitutes the sine qua non of a project’s success.
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10. Feedback Concerning the Benefits of Using KM Systems
Have you received any acknowledgements from users regarding
the advantages that they have experienced from having
implemented Knowledge Management in your firm?
Lawyers and In-house counsels rarely provide feedback
concerning the implementation of Knowledge Management
systems.
To overcome the difficulty of obtaining this type of information,
Knowledge Managers need to frequently inform users about the
tools available to them, notably through indirect measures such as
informal exchanges. Doing so will facilitate the way in which they
obtain feedbacks concerning user experiences. This retrieved
information will thus permit Knowledge Managers to remodel
existing systems to better suit the needs expressed by these
systems’ principal users.
One must note that a lawyer’s or an in-house counsel’s (KML, PSL,
etc.) participation in a Knowledge Management system’s
development as well as in the transmission of information vastly
improves the overall user response in an establishment: a law
practitioner will more easily address him or herself to someone in a
similar capacity who shares his or her domain of expertise.
11. Arguments in Favor of Knowledge Management
Which arguments would you support to encourage the
implementation of a Knowledge Management project?
Arguments contributing to the quality of work to be delivered to
clients: Improved reliability and reactivity, a sophisticated
coherence over content transmitted by several lawyers working in
the same team, the competitive advantage of adhering to an
internal doctrine which other competitors do not possess.
Arguments contributing to the capitalization of value through
collective intelligence : Rationalizing a lawyer’s individual work
through group efforts to create collective knowledge, creating a
community of practice, Valuing internally created work, the
preserving knowledge to avoid the loss of expertise a law firm
might incur in the event of lawyer’s or an in-house counsel’s
departure
Arguments contributing to internal organization, procedures and
expenses: Time-efficiency, improved reactivity, improved Risk-
Management, cost-effectiveness, eventually an internal
restructuring of the workforce that improves the cooperative
utilization of individual expertise.
12. Return on Investment
Currently, the return on investment of Knowledge Management
projects in the law sector seems to be rare. Only 26% of the
responding establishments demonstrate a real interest toward this
matter.
Among the positive responses received, 75% originate from
internal legal departments. While law firms also worry about this
factor, their negative responses mostly from not having the tools to
determine actual figures and to address the costs of Knowledge
Management invoicing.
This issue is a matter that, at present, is still open to debate and
that elicits intense reflection in different establishments.
13. Utilized Tools and Technical Solutions
The need to implement information technology tools to manage
and organize Knowledge Management data is evident.
Depending on the type of Knowledge Management organization in as specialized products that have been created internally (often
question, the process of selecting a technical tool consists of developed from pre-existing software such as « MS Access »).
choosing between products sold by program editors or elaborate On the other hand, all of the law firms that responded to this survey
systems developed internally. The latter is often preferred because develop the whole of their Knowledge Management systems on
such programs are easily customizable to lawyers’ and in-house their own. It is worth noting that very few law firms wanted to add
counsels’ needs as well as for reasons related to confidentiality. any comments to the questions pertaining to the technical tools
and the methods that they use.
The use of freeware is very uncommon.
The Relationship between the Information Technology Department
The following table demonstrates which types of tools are preferred and Knowledge Management Practitioners.
and used by the respondents who partook in this study.
Finding a means to balance decision-making processes between
information technology departments and knowledge management
YES NO N/A practitioners is an issue that was expressed and reinterpreted by
this survey’s participants:
Products available on the market 63% 32% 5%
A better understanding of the technical specifications established
Internally developed programs by those working in a specified project is essential to a Knowledge
89% 11% - Management project. The presence of information technology
(created to meet special needs)
professionals is necessary in order for technical decisions to be
Freeware (Open Access) 16% 84% - made, but should also ideally constitute collaboration between
Knowledge Management practitioners (Knowledge Manager, KML,
PSL, KMA, information specialists, special librarians...).
This study demonstrates that internal legal departments use
products that are available on the market in a general way, as well

This summary analysis constitutes the results found for the « Knowledge Management 2006 » survey, directed by the « Knowledge Management
& Droit » working group under Juriconnexion.

Bénédicte Baudot (Shearman & Sterling LLP) | Agnès Chrissement (Gide Loyrette Nouel)
Translation performed by Rita M. Benitez (Shearman & Sterling LLP)

http://www.juriconnexion.fr