Knowledge Management for Lawyers

• Author: Ted Tjaden
• Pages: 349-372

349

CHAPTER 10

KNOWLEDGE

MANAGEMENT

FOR LAWYERS

This chapter discusses knowledge management and its importance to

the practice of law, along with its close relationship with legal research

and writing. As a discipline, knowledge management is generally not

discussed or t aught in law school; instead, it is often only when t he law

student becomes a law practitioner that the importance of knowledge

management can be appreciated and put into use. A nd although techno-

logical advances in the practice of law over the last twenty-f‌ive years

have both caused and supported the ascendancy of knowledge man-

agement in law f‌irms, the reality is that lawyers have always practised

forms of knowledge management, from the moment hundreds of years

ago (or longer) that a lawyer f‌irst set aside a good sample agreement or

f‌igured out a better way of doing things. As w ill be seen in this chapter,

knowledge management intersects with legal research and writing in

a number of ways, with precedents and research memos being the two

most obvious examples. In addition, although knowledge management

in the legal industr y is often associated with large law f‌ir ms, even small

f‌irms and sole practitioners will benef‌it from adopting personal know-

ledge management principles to become more effective in their work.

A. WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT?

There are many def‌initions of knowledge management.One reason for

this is that knowledge management spans several disciplines (ranging

LEGAL RESEARCH AND W RITING350

from business management, to information science, to computer tech-

nology) and any number of industries and business es. For our purpose,

a basic def‌inition is suff‌icient to introduce the topic:

Knowledge management (KM) is the process of capturing, develop-

ing, sharing, a nd effectively using organizat ional knowledge. It refers

to a multi-disciplined approach to achieving organisational object-

ives by making t he best use of knowledge . . . .

Knowledge management effort s typically focus on organ isational

objectives such as improved pe rformance, competitive advantage, in-

novation, the sharing of lessons learned, integration and continuous

improvement of the organisation. KM efforts overlap with organisa-

tional lear ning and may be disting uished from that by a greater focus

on the management of knowledge as a strategic asset and a focus on

encouraging the sharing of knowledge. It is an enabler of organisa-

tional lea rning.1

From this def‌inition, we can obser ve a number of things:

• Knowledge management is a “process.” There are steps that an organ-

ization can take to improve the sharing of knowledge.

• Knowledge management involves “capturing, developing, sharing,

and effectively using organizational knowledge.” These aspects of

knowledge management often involve the use of technology for cap-

turing, developing, sharing, and effectively using information.

• Knowledge management focuses on “improved performance, com-

petitive advantage, innovation, the sharing of lessons learned, in-

tegration and continuous improvement of the organisation.” This

aspect of knowledge management acknowledges that it ca n be applied

to achieve different goals with in the organization with the end goal of

better using past knowledge and experiences to improve future per-

formance.

Another way to conceptualize this topic is to think in terms of two

categories of knowledge that are being managed: (1) explicit knowledge

(being the insights and experiences embedded in organizational pro-

cesses or practice — what is often found in document s or other tangible

content) and (2) tacit knowledge (being the insights and experiences

embodied in individuals — what and who they know). In a law f‌irm

setting, explicit knowledge tends to be precedent or sample business

agreements or litigation pleadings, checklists, research memos, opin-

ion letters, and how-to guides. Equally — if not more important — is

1 Wikipedi a contributors, “Knowledge Manageme nt,” Wikipedia, The Free En-

cyclopedia, online: http://en.wikipe dia.org/wiki /Knowledge_ma nagement.