D. Legal Research and Intranet Content Delivery

• Author: Ted Tjaden
• Profession: National Director of Knowledge Management McMillan LLP
• Pages: 309-311

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An important part of legal knowledge management is legal research and its related elements, including research memos and opinion letters.

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Many would typically think of traditional knowledge management as being the knowledge inside the firm (within the collective expertise of the lawyers and other firm members), whereas library and legal research is the knowledge outside the firm (within the decisions of judges or textbooks of leading academics, for example). Although this inside/ outside distinction may be overly simplistic, there is some truth to it.

Despite how one characterizes the interdependency of knowledge management and legal research, it is clear that technology has radically transformed legal research and law libraries and lessened the inside/ outside distinction, resulting in all sources of legal information being important, whether the information is physically within the firm or outside the firm. Technology has also transformed law librarian-ship - especially in the last decade - with the increasing digitization of both primary sources of law (legislation and case law) and secondary sources (treatises, journal articles, conference papers, encyclopedias, case digests, and reference tools).

Although in many law firms the knowledge management department and the law library may operate relatively independently, it makes sense for them to be formally integrated, given their interrelation, and to be seen as a "one-stop shop" for legal information, whether that information is sourced from internal sources (such as model agreements or best practices) or external sources (such as commentary from a book or cases from an online database).

In addition to technology providing greater access to sources of legal information, technology also allows the prospect of cost recovery for online legal research charges (on LEXISNEXIS Canada or Westlaw Canada, for example), something which was generally not possible in a print-only environment (since the cost of library print subscriptions is generally regarded as office overhead, in the same way as rent and office supplies).³⁰

Technology has also enabled federated search, creating the ability to integrate and search on both internal content and external research databases (e.g., using such products as WESTKM³¹and Lexis Search Advantage³²).

In addition, law firm law libraries - on their own or in conjunction with knowledge management departments - are increasingly using Web 2.0...