Be the best at the basics

Posted on November 8, 2011 by knowledge4lawyers

It is so easy to be seduced by the latest management fad or the topic of the day, but if your firm doesn’t have a solid grounding in the basics, it’ll struggle to fly. If I had to list 5 top KM basics that all firms should have in place, they’d be

  1. Have a strategy – refer to it, revise it, keep it alive
  2. Measure results – and act on those measurements, advertise successes and ditch failures – act on data not hunches
  3. Market KM – make sure everyone understands “the point” or they’ll never take time out to help
  4. Connect people – once the basic explicit data has been captured & staff have the basics to do their jobs, concentrate on connecting people – everyone prefers to speak to each other for more nuanced answers, so connect them in multiple ways for maximum results
  5. Leverage – whether it is existing software, existing knowledge, existing people – reduce, reuse, recycle

What would your top 5 basics be?

 

I talk about the basics of KM in my popular “KM: The Works” training session, which are every January, May and September in London. Find out more here. Or find all the latest events on Eventbrite here.

Do you want an occasional (approx monthly) email with updates about my latest blog post and open training events? Sign up here.

For help and advice visit TheKnowledgeBusiness.

Or if you prefer to “DIY” get “Knowledge Management Handbook” here.

 

Posted in KM, Strategy, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

In praise of serendipity

Posted on October 20, 2011 by knowledge4lawyers

I was chatting with a Head of Knowledge recently about Twitter and how some sections of the legal sector are very resistant to using it, even as just another broadcast medium or as a knowledge-sharing tool to connect its professionals to others in their field.

Mulling over our conversation, I was thinking about all the reasons why I’m such a fan, despite the fact that I have to be very disciplined to avoid it becoming a time waster.

I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the major reasons I’m a fan (apart from the obvious fact that you can converse and connect, not just receive broadcast messages), is that it has re-introduced serendipity into my working life.  Because people tweet about whatever moves them (work, hobbies, news, politics, interests, life) it introduces me to ideas that I wouldn’t necessarily come across otherwise.  For me, this is a fantastic spark for innovative thought.

In my usual working world, search engines on subscription legal information sites and searchable online books, together with  the semantic web, focus my updates and search results in increasingly efficient way.

I get fewer and fewer opportunities to leaf through books when working, and this means that I am losing the opportunity to stumble upon something interesting.

I miss the serendipity.

It is always such a joy to find something that is perhaps not relevant now, but is interesting and can be mentally tucked away for another time, or something that is not directly relevant, but introduces a new way of looking at existing problems and sparks a thought or sends me in a totally different direction.

For me, Twitter fills that gap.  It enables me to connect with people on a “whole person” level. I hear about their hobbies as well as their business news.

Twitter may be a river that you only dip your toe into, but it is full of surprises and can sweep you away in unexpected directions.

What do you think?  Have you been missing serendipity and if so, how have you re-introduced it into your working life?

For more advice and help, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness or get your own copy of “Knowledge Management Handbook”

 

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Starting out

Posted on October 5, 2011 by knowledge4lawyers

If your firm has recently increased in size or needs to be more efficient to satisfy its clients, you may be wondering whether Knowledge Management tools can help.  This post is for solicitors like you.  It aims to be a simple 5 step plan that cuts through the jargon to help you get started.

1. Designate someone as the “Knowledge Lawyer”.

You won’t be able to afford a PSL for each speciality straightaway, but you will have at least one ambitious associate or junior partner, keen to make a name for him/herself.  Task them with finding out more about KM and co-ordinating the firm’s efforts.  This person needs to have the confidence of the partnership and to speak with their authority.

2.Introduce training in Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)

Equip your fee earners and their support staff with the skills to be more efficient in managing their own knowledge and make them responsible for it, supported by your Knowledge Lawyer.  The training needn’t be led by an outside expert, provided your new Knowledge Lawyer has the time and expertise, although an outsider may be cheaper than taking your KL away from his/her fee earning work.

Your firm is likely to move to co-ordinated, centrally organised KM as it grows, but because of the nature of “lawyering”, PKM training is always useful.

3. Encourage each lawyer to become more aware of how they work

Each lawyer should be constantly asking themselves how they work and how they could work smarter:

  • What aspects of this work could be put into a workflow/process?
  • What information am I reusing each time?
  • Where would be the best place to keep/retrieve this information?
  • For how long is this information useful/when does it “expire”?
  • What aspects of this workflow/letter/document could be a precedent: the whole document, a paragraph, an appendice?
  • What top tips/lessons learnt would I pass on to colleagues?  What would I do differently next time?  What did the client particularly praise or appreciate?
  • Can I reuse anything in our firm’s marketing: in an article, blogpost or client seminar?
  • What would make my work easier?  How much would it cost to implement?  How would it further our business objectives?

4. Feed this information back to your Knowledge Lawyer and develop some simple best practices, policies and procedures

Create simple policies and procedures for managing the firm’s “knowledge” and best work practices, tailored to your firm’s needs.  Make sure these are simple and adaptable.  Don’t lose the opportunity for improvement on existing best practices by demanding slavish adherence to them.  These policies are intended to make work easier and more efficient, not add a layer of administration.

As the firm changes and adapts, keep systems under review, but always come back to two simple questions: “How do your lawyers work?” and “How can they work smarter?”.

You may find it cost-effective to get expert help for some aspects of this, but this will depend on your Knowledge Lawyer (how much time they have, how much they could earn for the firm instead, whether they have become a KM champion, whether they are able to inspire people to change their working ways).

5. Connect people to build trust

Once a firm has the basics it needs set up, it gains far more from connecting its staff, building relationships and encouraging conversation, than by investing more in IT systems.

Trust is the key.  Lawyers will not risk their own reputation by using precedents that they do not trust, by accepting work practices suggested by those that they do not trust, by cross-selling the services of those they do not trust to their precious clients.

Connect staff in multiple ways (e.g. those with similar work; those with different work but similar clients; those with different work but similar work practices) and for multiple purposes (training, marketing, business management, socialising) to build relationships and trust.

And lastly, your business needs will change as your firm grows, so keep changing, adapting and improving.

For personal advice and help, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness, or if you prefer to DIY, get your own copy of “Knowledge Management Handbook” from Law Society Publishing here.

 

Do you want an occasional (approx monthly) email with updates about my latest blog post and open training events? Sign up here.

I also talk about starting out in law firm KM in my popular “KM: The Works” training sessions, which are every January, May and September in London. Find out more here.

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Tuning in to WII FM – knowledge-sharing for tough times

Posted on September 28, 2011 by knowledge4lawyers

KMers in the legal sector discuss continuously the best ways to improve lawyers’ engagement with KM systems.  Do you need top-down support or bottom-up engagement?  Do you need “big KM”, “small KM” or “personal KM”?  Trying to engage fee earning staff is difficult enough in the good times, when there are plenty of KM staff  about.  In tough times, when KMers and fee earners are working with one eye on the job ads and one ear open for rumours of redundancy, it feels like an impossible task.

The simple truth is, looking at it from the individual lawyer’s point of view, why should they engage with know-how projects and share knowledge more widely, when they could be proving their value to the firm by earning fees and billing massive amounts of chargeable time?  The firm gets the benefit of a knowledge-sharing culture; the fee earner gets the benefit of keeping his/her knowledge to himself/herself. That is why, particularly in tough times, you have to continually ask “What’s in it for me?” (WII FM). Appeal to their rational side and promote knowledge-sharing to your lawyers as the win-win solution.

So, what’s in it for me?

Glory – a young ambitious lawyer may be desperate to distinguish themselves, to be noticed by the partnership as an expert with a specialist niche who is indispensible. He/she will engage with know-how projects which give a payback of face-time in front of partners, such as writing for knowledge databases, notes for precedents, or client-facing KM (newsletters, portals, seminars).  It’s important to remember to give credit to these lawyers to prevent their support flagging, but be sensitive if they don’t want to appear to have too much “spare time”.

Please their clients – clients will not pay for their solicitors to work in inefficient ways, reinventing the wheel.  Most solicitors will be glad to be able to deliver their client’s work on time at a lower cost than expected, due to the efficiencies KM practices can deliver.  Here, it is important to have plenty of ways of sharing the resultant client satisfaction widely, or the possible loss of chargeable hours will put them off.

Develop new skills – contrary to popular belief, most lawyers are keen on life-long learning and developing new skills. Once they understand the benefit of investing a little time in learning a new systematic way to store their work, retrieve and reuse it, and perhaps learn to use new software, they will be pleased to have a new skill for their CV.

Better leverage and more fulfilling work – those fee earners who enjoy the technical detail in their work, can, with help, be persuaded to develop checklists and workflows which can streamline work, removing the straightforward tasks, enabling them to be leveraged to a less expensive fee earner, and leave them free to focus on the technical law and client relationships.  The key with these fee earners is to keep their eyes on the prize – the development of workflows, checklists and commoditization of their work can be tedious, so they’ll need support through this phase and plenty of publicity afterwards, about the new leveraged result.

Connecting people and teaching – many fee earners enjoy teaching junior lawyers, particularly through storytelling (not that they would call it that).  Work systems which enable senior lawyers to connect and engage with junior lawyers formally and informally have a significant payback to law firms (often better than expensive knowledge databases) and make work more enjoyable for the fee earners involved.

Work-life balance – there is a (small?) minority of lawyers who are confident in their existing roles and like to go home to their families at the end of the day. With a more streamlined process and more efficient access to knowledge databases, these fee earners can finish their chargeable daily targets more efficiently.


The trick with improving engagement, particularly in tough times, is to tune in to each lawyer’s different WII FM and utilise them appropriately.  A convert to KM will become a champion for KM, and if you are very fortunate, begin creating a virtuous circle towards a knowledge-sharing nirvana.

For personal advice and help, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness, or if you prefer to DIY, get your own copy of “Knowledge Management Handbook” from Law Society Publishing here.

Do you want an occasional (approx monthly) email with updates about my latest blog post and open training events? Sign up here.

 

Posted in Internal marketing, KM, Professional Support Lawyers, Strategy | Leave a comment

Recommended Reading

Posted on September 16, 2011 by knowledge4lawyers

I often get asked by lawyers moving into PSL / KM work where they should start with reading up on KM, so I keep a list here and update it as I get new recommendations.

This list comes from a number of sources – my own favourites, LinkedIn groups, LisLaw.

Which of these do you rate and are there any missing? Which 3/4 would you choose?

Recommended Reading

Parson’s “Effective KM in Law Firms”
Rumizen’s “Complete Idiot’s guide to KM”
Davenport & Prusak “Working Knowledge”
Russell’s “Knowledge Management Handbook”

Collison & Parcell’s “Learning to Fly”
Rusanow’s “Knowledge Management and the Smarter Lawyer”
Susskind’s “The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services”
Empson (Ed) “Managing the Modern Law Firm: New Challenges, New Perspectives”
Carla O’Dell and Cindy Hubert “The New Edge in Knowledge: How Knowledge Management Is Changing the Way We Do Business”
Dalkir “Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice”
Hislop “Knowledge Management in Organizations”

Two recently recommended on LisLaw were Parson’s and my own, Russell “Knowledge Management Handbook” which is published by the Law Society of England and Wales and has 5* on Amazon.

*Update* my latest textbook “Practical Projects in Legal KM: A Year of Living Knowledgeably” has just been published.

___

Do you want an occasional (approx monthly) email with updates about my latest blog post and open training events? Sign up here.

For personal advice and help, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness, or if you prefer to DIY, get your own copy of “Knowledge Management Handbook” from Law Society Publishing here.

 

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Improving engagement with wikis and blogs

Posted on August 23, 2011 by knowledge4lawyers

I was having coffee with a lawyer friend the other day who was struggling to improve engagement with a wiki she had set up a few months ago.  She thought it was a great wiki, well designed, with plenty of useful content (and as a practising lawyer in the field herself, I’m sure she was right) but it still wasn’t really engaging the other lawyers in the community of practice yet.

Our conversation reminded me what a common issue this is, for which there is no magic solution.  This post is for her and draws together some top tips which I hope will help.  If you have your own top tips, please add them in the comments below.  I’d love to hear what is working in other law firms.

10 “Do”s

  1. Use this technology with the right groups – the group needs the right level of trust, technical expertise/enthusiasm, the right culture and you must be able to address their privacy concerns.
  2. Use it for the right purpose – focus on a key problem that needs to be solved, which offers a tangible benefit.  Sell the wiki to your lawyers by selling that benefit.
  3. Don’t compromise on ease of use – don’t enforce inflexible page templates, although some guidance may help new users; respond flexibly if the community starts to use the technology in different ways (as long as it furthers your business strategy of course).
  4. Use the right content – integrate with other technologies (RSS feeds, e-mail) as far as possible for maximum population for minimum effort, but make sure it is useful content; keep it useful & trustworthy – when people see the benefits, they will use the technology.
  5. Encourage contributions – encourage junior members of staff to contribute and respond positively to anyone who contributes, don’t just accept their contributions; if possible, try not to have someone who is paid to populate the wiki or blog as fewer people will then bother (“but that is his/her job”); have an ongoing programme of reminders to staff and training about the wiki/blog’s usefulness & how to use it; and use the personal touch – keep language friendly & avoid a “corporate” tone on blogs.
  6. Keep it trustworthy – fix links & typos, make sure content is relevant and quality is good.
  7. Get people comfortable with it – avoid technical language; get people started with something they are comfortable with, this could be a personal page, or a short Q&A/top tips article on a topic they know well; get people to use the wiki regularly, perhaps by including agendas for relevant meetings for people to discuss the meeting beforehand, or, at the very least, to visit once before the meeting.
  8. Let people choose roles that suit them – some may suit the “gardening” i.e. fixing links and typos, adding references and quotations; others may suit a “champion” role – encouraging its use by others.
  9. Once you have one or two successful groups, start to roll the programme out, using the first groups as mentors and champions.
  10. Measure your success

5 “Don’t”s

  1. Assume that once you have built it, they will come – these always take time to get off the ground: don’t get disheartened.
  2. Assume that one training session in “how to use it” will be enough – plan a programme of different types of training (group, individual, desk-based, team-based) on an ongoing basis.
  3. Control it too much – the biggest problem you are likely to face is that not enough people contribute and people only contribute their absolute highest quality, not that you have too much or inappropriate material.
  4. Forget to include a private place for people to draft their work – this is how many people, but lawyers in particular, like to work (draft and re-draft) so make sure they have the option to save a draft of their comment or blog post before publishing them.
  5. Think that you are creating or have to create Wikipedia – your wiki doesn’t need to look like Wikipedia or have the same level of open editing if that doesn’t suit your business’s culture or your business’s needs – your wiki was created to meet your business needs, so do whatever suits your business.

For personal advice and help, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness, or if you prefer to DIY, get your own copy of “Knowledge Management Handbook” from Law Society Publishing here.

 

Do you want an occasional (approx monthly) email with updates about my latest blog post and open training events? Sign up here.

I also talk about wikis and blogs in my popular “KM: The Works” training session. The next one is on 28th January 2016. Find out more here.

There is also a wiki project in my new textbook “Practical Projects …”

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Top tips for a tip-top KM strategy

Posted on May 18, 2011 by knowledge4lawyers

Do you have a KM strategy?  Where is it?  On your desk, or gathering dust on a shelf?  If it isn’t working for you, saving you time and money and keeping you on strategic track, then re-write that strategy.  Hopefully this post will be a useful practical guide to writing or rewriting a KM strategy that works.

1.       Clarify your business objectives

What are your firm’s official/published objectives? If it helps, consider objectives in relation to

  • Profits – consider hygiene & health factors
  • Assets (people, knowledge, technology etc)
  • Market sectors
  • Brand
  • Culture

Use a SWOT analysis (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats) and a PEST (Political Economic Social Technological), but only if it helps you.

Look at your business’s documentation and speak to key staff and ask

  • What do the Partners want/fear from the coming year? What are their perceived business problems?
  • What are your Associates and Assistants saying informally about their coming year and their objectives?
  • What are your clients focussing on in the coming year?
  • What is your competition focussing on in the coming year?

2.       Assess your current level of knowledge activity and your resources

Review what you currently do, how and why. Don’t spend time on a massive knowledge audit (unless you really need to, in which case it should be one of your objectives for the year).

Review your current level of activity against your competition. This is for background information only. Your KM strategy supports your business strategy, not theirs.

3.       Ask how your knowledge activity currently supports your business objectives

  • Evaluate the effectiveness of your current programme of everyday work and projects.
  • Realign and refocus your knowledge activity to meet your business objectives.
  • Where needs are being met, review whether knowledge activity could be undertaken more effectively and efficiently.
  • Don’t be afraid to sideline activities which are no longer meeting your business’s objectives.

Identify gaps and then assess the cost and return of options to fill those gaps.

4.       Think about where you’d like to be ideally in 5 years time

5.       Make your strategy practical

There is no point writing the strategy unless you are going to refer to it throughout the year. Choose a style that suits you and make it practical and simple.  If you need to write your strategy in a particular style for your Executive Board, consider having an additional short, plain English roadmap for everyday use.

Address solid issues. Goals such as “build a better knowledge-sharing culture” will not drive practical improvements, unless you also break them down into smaller goals. Identify key needs and goals and identify how these will be met by actions during the coming year.

Make objectives SMART (Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic with a clear Timescale). Keep them simple.

Limit the number of objectives you set. Better to achieve 5 clear objectives than feel overwhelmed by 10 and achieve none of them.

When considering new projects

  • Prioritise any quick wins & leverage any technology you already have.
  • Don’t waste precious resources on practice areas/partners that work well without knowledge support – this can wait for more profitable times.
  • Don’t put off an important task looking for the perfect solution:  implement a good “work in progress” for the time being.

Once the strategy is written, do not put it in a beautiful binder, file it on a shelf and let it gather dust. Whenever you start or complete a project, are asked to broaden your workload, or review your budget/departmental spend, keep your objectives in mind and focus on those tasks which promote your strategy. And make keeping your strategy under review a habit: review it monthly or quarterly (depending on your objectives and the changing economic landscape).

Lastly, if you cannot find the time to write your strategy or find the task too imposing, write a short one-page roadmap or a rough draft. Something is better than nothing.   In its simplest form, your strategy just needs to say where you are now, where you want to go and how you are going to get there.

For personal advice and help, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness, or if you prefer to DIY, get your own copy of “Knowledge Management Handbook” from Law Society Publishing here.

Do you want an occasional (approx monthly) email with updates about my latest blog post and open training events? Sign up here.

I also talk about KM strategies in my popular “KM: The Works” training session, which run in January, May and September each year. I also run an afternoon workshop specifically on Strategy in July. Find out more here.

Posted in KM, Professional Support Lawyers, Strategy | Tagged , | 3 Comments

10 ways to work your knowledge

Posted on May 8, 2011 by knowledge4lawyers

One of the most common barriers to getting fee earners involved in knowledge activities is the “chargeable hours problem”: that the payback for non-chargeable time spent on KM is simply not great enough compared to the payback for the same amount of chargeable time (payrises and promotion). KMers in the legal sector have grappled with this problem in numerous different ways.

One of my tactics is to make one piece of content work really hard. If a fee earner can see that an afternoon of non-chargeable time will actually get him/her significant amounts of visibility with clients and senior partners, they will be more keen to engage.

10 ways to work your knowledge:

1. An article for an in-house newsletter, e-zine and/or firm blog
2. An article for an external publisher
3. An article for an online publisher, such as Ezine Articles
4. A seminar for clients
5. An internal training event
6. Upload the presentation to SlideShare
7. Video the client seminar and/or in-house training event and put it on YouTube or turn it into a webinar
8. Prepare a summary for your internal KM database
9. Distil from it a workflow and/or checklist for similar work
10. Engage with followers about the whole process via Twitter

Each bit of work will require slight re-purposing for a different audience or a different focus, but this is minor compared to the initial investment of time in researching the key topic.

And lastly, after all this, your fee earner will have earned the right to call themselves an “expert” in this field in your internal White Pages/address book.

Do you have a favourite way to re-use knowledge?  I’d be interested to know what works in your firm.

For personal advice and help, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness, or if you prefer to DIY, get your own copy of “Knowledge Management Handbook” from Law Society Publishing here.

 

Do you want an occasional (approx monthly) email with updates about my latest blog post and open training events? Sign up here.

 

Posted in Client-facing KM, Internal marketing, KM, Professional Support Lawyers, Training and learning | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

My 5 favourite (and least favourite) tweeters

Posted on April 6, 2011 by knowledge4lawyers

I love a list. Following on from yesterday’s top 3 blogs, I thought I’d share my favourite and least favourite tweeters.  First, my favourites (in no particular order):-

  1. @gebhardtr – Rebecca Gebhardt, Director at Linex & KM solutions developer.  Posts about IT & KM in the legal sector and offers a good mix of real life and useful information.
  2. @lawyerist – tweets from lawyerist.com, the blog about surviving in legal practise.
  3. @JaneCWoods – a woman who knows a lot about women – how they work and how they succeed.  Always genuine and an excellent speaker.
  4. @knowledgetank – a really useful aggregator of KM blogs/tweets.
  5. @22twts – real-time Twitter interviews with practising lawyers who tweet.

 

Those were my favourites, who are my least favourites?

I’m not going to name my 5 least favourite twits, but I will list the three things that I particularly dislike/make me unfollow:-

  1. Insufficient conversation/promoting others & too much self-publicising & broadcasting.
  2. Too little personality – too many repeated posts, automated posts and stock replies.
  3. No or little information in the “about” section.  I am interested in whether you like the violin or are a hard working mum, but I really need to know what you actually do/what you tweet about.

Who are your top 5 favourites and top 3 bugbears?

For personal advice and help, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness, or if you prefer to DIY, get your own copy of “Knowledge Management Handbook” from Law Society Publishing here.

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My 3 favourite blogs

Posted on April 5, 2011 by knowledge4lawyers

There are so many good sources of information out there and so little time to read them all, that I thought I’d share with you my current 3 favourite blogs, where the content consistently interests or challenges me.

In no particular order:-

Above and beyond KM

V Mary Abraham’s blog about how we work and how knowledge management can help. Her observations are based on her experience practising law and then practising knowledge management in New York City.  I’ve particularly enjoyed her post likening KM to an immigration experience and her ideas for a better search function for LexisNexis et al.

Knoco Stories

Nick Milton describes himself as a Knowledge Management guide and coach, trainer and service provider.  Although not specific to the legal sector, I always find interesting and relevant learning points from his posts about his work as founder of Knoco Ltd.  Recently I’ve particularly enjoyed “KM – realising the need” and “KM leads to a boring life”.

LawyerKM

Patrick DiDomenico’s blog about knowledge management, technology & social media as they pertain to lawyers, law firms, and the legal profession.  Patrick is a lawyer and a KM professional from New York City.  I’ve particularly enjoyed his recent post on leveraging legal work for blogposts.

Those are my current favourites – what are yours?

For personal advice and help, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness, or if you prefer to DIY, get your own copy of “Knowledge Management Handbook” from Law Society Publishing here.

Posted in KM | 1 Comment