Articles
Playing it smart in an era when knowledge management rules
The term ‘knowledge management’ is commonly used in modern professional services firms and its implementation is crucial as firms strike a balance between information poverty and information overload, writes Kirsty McPhee.
Modern law firms are a deep well of information and knowledge – and there is a risk that staff could sink in it if managers do not understand one clear point.
That is, litigation and commercial lawyers access and use information differently, as do junior and senior solicitors, as do librarians and support staff … you get the picture. As a consequence, firms have to focus on what they want to achieve with their information and knowledge, rather than getting bogged down in how to organise it. I learnt this lesson when I started with my current firm. One of the first projects I undertook was to build an intranet for accessing and finding our online legal research resources. The website posed many challenges, and success was not really enjoyed until the second-generation website was unveiled when it was clearly understood that librarians organise information and access it very differently to how lawyers seek it out and turn it in to knowledge.
The successful version of the intranet applied both information and knowledge principles. It was designed to meet the needs of a wide variety of legal staff with very specific needs. The firm is now rolling out its fourth version of the intranet, a decade after the first was launched, with senior lawyers actively participating in the design and build of the site. The result? A sophisticated, easy-to-use legal research and administrative portal that is accessed by the entire firm.
Defining knowledge management
My firm’s intranet experience demonstrates the value of smart knowledge management, a concept that is still a mystery to many organisations. Since the start of the 21st century, the global economy has witnessed a transition from making profits from traditional resources such as land, labour and capital to what is known as a knowledge economy1.
The term ‘knowledge economy’ has no standard universal definition, however the general and accepted definitions are built around the interrelated concepts of a knowledge society, modern society and network capitalism: put simply, we are now working and living within an economy where knowledge is considered the primary input to production, innovation and economic benefit2. The knowledge economy is an important concept for the legal industry; law firms, in particular, are knowledge intensive and competitive advantage is built and developed on the breadth and quality of a firm’s knowledge and perhaps, more importantly, how the firm uses its knowledge.
Professional skills such as legal research, judicial problem solving and analysis, negotiating, drafting, advocacy, interviewing – as well as more general business skills, such as file management, email management, e-discovery, marketing, document management, tool kits, procedures, policies, websites and intranets, plus firms’ administrative functions and IT – all require active and effective knowledge-management processes to ensure survival and success in the knowledge economy.
Knowledge management is, at its core, simply the efficient handling of information and resources within a commercial organisation. There are many benefits that come with having a professional knowledge manager in-house or working with a consultant, however it is certainly not a necessity. Knowledge management begins with you and your staff and requires active participation and involvement at all levels, in all functions, across the firm.
Effective knowledge management can begin with little to no financial investment; just a bit of your time now to save a lot of time in the long run. In the current commercial market, the focus needs to shift from the practice of law to the business of law.
Understand the difference between knowledge and information
In general use, the words ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’ are often used interchangeably, which creates some confusion when trying to draw a distinction between information management and knowledge management. Information should be thought of as data; it is explicit, it is known – such as facts or statistics – and it is easy to copy and replicate. Knowledge, on the other hand, should be thought of as structured information, with understanding and wisdom at its core; it involves people, it is tacit and it is hard to copy as it involves know-how.
A helpful analogy is to think of a library – while a book sits on the shelf, it is information. When lawyers need information on a particular subject, they search a library catalogue, and the library catalogue points the user to the relevant materials and books in the library collection. When a librarian has used his or her professional skills and subject knowledge to create a catalogue that makes it easy for lawyers to find books on a particular subject, this is information management.
By contrast, when the information in the book is read, considered, applied or used in any way by the lawyer to prepare an advice, it becomes knowledge: know-how, people and a tacit understanding is involved. The lawyer completes the advice and then considers if there is a potential future need for others to prepare similar advice; if a precedent document is then created that is not only easy to use but easy to identify and find by other lawyers when the same information need arises in future, this is knowledge management.
Avoid having too much or too little information
Knowledge management does not have to be this formal or complicated; examples of simple but effective knowledge management are all around us.
Think of a temperamental appliance in your office; it is likely we will all picture a photocopier. A photocopier comes with a manual which provides a detailed and accurate guide to all functions and fixes for errors or malfunctions. This document is information: hundreds and hundreds of pages of technically thorough and accurate information that becomes useless and inaccessible due to the sheer volume of material and the language style.
When a sign is placed above the copier with step-by-step instructions to fix a jam that is written in plain English and includes diagrams and common troubleshooting tips, effective knowledge management processes have been employed.
Effective knowledge management ensures professionals in all departments and teams in a law firm can strike an appropriate balance between two equally dangerous places: information poverty and information overload. Within my own firm, we are grappling with the grouping and batching of emails. While all employees have become very familiar with emails, the way they store and access those messages varies markedly depending on their age, the section of the firm in which they work and the topics of the emails. To effectively manage this situation, it is crucial to have clear communication and conversations to arrive at a solution that works for most, if not all, people in the firm. When you get such difficult projects right, you know that your firm is a good knowledge manager.
Work faster and smarter
You already know what you do, but effective knowledge management requires an awareness of how you do it. Embracing the following steps will help.
1. Appreciate that capturing knowledge is just part of the process – using it and accessing it is what counts.
2. In a knowledge-management context, create processes that are faster and easier – that is, minimise input to maximise output.
3. Create an environment in which knowledge-sharing becomes the norm.
4. Consider the costs against the value of embracing a knowledge-management culture.
5. Understand that managing knowledge is beneficial to clients and the firm.
In the next article, I will further explore ways that law firms can use knowledge-management to deliver better business outcomes.
Kirsty McPhee is the practice manager of Perth law firm Tottle Partners, where she is responsible for library, research and knowledge services, as well as IT and administrative functions across the firm. She has worked in law libraries for the past decade.
www.tottle.com
References
1 Fombad, Madeleine (2015). Knowledge Management a Competitive Edge for Law Firms in Botswana in the Changing Business Environment, South African Journal of Information Management (17) 1: 633
2 Ibid