Layer cakes and legal content writing

Posted on September 2, 2020 by knowledge4lawyers

A guest article from Sue Bramall of Berners Marketing.

A sponge cake is a cake, but it is not quite the same as a Victoria sandwich (with its cream filling), or a Sachertorte with its rich chocolate coating, or a carrot cake with its cream cheese frosting.  These extra ingredients transform a mundane sponge cake into something special, something altogether more enticing.

And, so it is with legal content writing.  A legal article is a legal article.  But one set of 800 words is not always as enticing as another.  Would you have been reading this article, if it was called “The problems with legal content writing”?  Probably not.

If you are the Knowledge Lawyer or PSL charged with producing a newsletter and have to source articles from a number of solicitors around your firm, then you may have to cope with varying quality of material which comes into your inbox.

Some legal articles will be witty, engaging, in plain English and right on the button.  Others will be incomprehensible, full of jargon, tortuous or tedious. Regardless of the quality, very few articles will be written in a way which is designed to maximise the chance of being found in an internet search.

Many solicitors will recognise that drafting an article for marketing purposes is not the same as drafting a contract or pleadings.  If they also acknowledge that they are not a search engine expert, then they are likely to be grateful for you to add some frosting in the way of journalistic flair.

But others will be less enthusiastic and may present an article as “signed off and ready to send out” as a firm signal not to “mess about” with it.  This is often a signal that they do not understand the role that content plays in a digital marketing strategy.

In either case there are a few things that you might consider including in your baking kit to make life easier:

Planning – check the recipe first

Occasionally you might receive an article and wonder why on earth the topic was chosen.  Before someone puts pen to paper, if possible, encourage them to prepare a short synopsis first to outline:

  • Why is this important now?
  • Who is it relevant to?
  • How might the firm benefit (ie win more work on this topic)?

Commissioning – check the ingredients

It can be useful to have two things in your store cupboard:

  • Prepare some model precedents for different types of articles, such as for a deal, a case report, top tips, new legislation.
  • Provide a crib sheet, highlighting the information which you need:  Who? What? When? Where? Why? How did we add value? How can we help?

Editing – check it is baked correctly

Consistency of style is really important, especially if your newsletter comprises articles from several contributors.

Editing – adding the filling & frosting

Even the best drafted legal articles will benefit from some editing for a number of reasons:

  • A fresh perspective will highlight jargon or acronyms which may mean different things outside of this legal practice area – for example, LPA means very different things to a private client lawyer and a planning lawyer.
  • The marketing team will be familiar with the structure of the website, and they will know which hyperlinks are required and the best wording for those links – the best words are absolutely not “click here”.
  • They will also know which keywords are being targeted and which social media hashtags should be used.
  • If an article has already been published on one website, then it will benefit from some tweaking before it is added to your firm’s website.  For example, a journalistic headline is great for print media, but not so effective for internet search purposes.

Update your recipe book

It is worth having a content policy which pulls all this together in order to ensure high quality and consistent content, and highlights that the content is part of your digital strategy so needs to confirm to a few digital protocols. 

Whether or not you enjoy baking, wouldn’t we prefer to offer our clients a Sachertorte rather than a plain sponge?

Sue Bramall of Berners Marketing is a colleague of mine from the Law Consultancy Network and has more than 25 years of experience marketing professional services.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, follow the blog using the button at the top right or sign up for the roughly monthly busy-person’s round-up. and if you own one of my textbooks, sign up to the textbook owner’s list for a few extras.

Posted in Client-facing KM, Professional Support Lawyers, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

5 top tips to encourage brave knowledge sharing

Posted on August 25, 2020 by knowledge4lawyers

“I’m not pro-failure, I’m pro-learning.” Astro Teller, Google X.

“Failure is not a bug of learning, it’s a feature.” Rachel Simmons, Smith College.

“The greatest enemy of learning is knowing.” saying/proverb

Sometimes it can be incredibly difficult to persuade people to discuss near misses and mistakes, even though we all appreciate how these provide fantastic learning opportunities.

How can you, whether you are a senior leader or a KMer, encourage the braver kinds of knowledge sharing?

  1. Frame discussions of errors as learning opportunities. Most modern work is complex, time-bound, and error-prone. Near misses and errors usually occur as a result of this, rather than due to simple incompetence. Ensuring employees understand this framing will help to encourage open discussion. A single near-miss can be reframed as a “great catch” and identifying the contributory factors behind a near miss or mistake offers the opportunity to improve the system of service delivery as a whole.
  2. Invite people to think in an aspirational way and speak up. Be curious about how they think improvements could be made. Ask them to investigate whether the delivery of all their work was as high quality as they would wish, and if not, what changes would help them.
  3. Respond to potential problems in an appreciative, respectful and helpful/problem-solving way. Remember that the best returns for organisations come from improving their systems, rather than writing off incidents as caused by a one-off screw-up. Early information about shortcomings nearly always mitigates the size and impact of future large-scale failures. Ensure your staff understand that avoiding these larger scale problems is your motivation.
  4. Remind people of the motivation and purpose behind their work. Working on improving complex systems in order to deliver a larger “good” can feel more valuable than trawling through depressing mistakes, whether they’re your own or other people’s. This can be easier in some businesses than others, but most firms and individuals can identify some higher purpose if given time.
  5. Don’t just accept “fail fast”. Failure has little intrinsic value unless there is also time and opportunity for reflection and learning from that failure. Encourage reflective learning both by individuals and by groups, through techniques such as the After Action Review.

If you are interested in psychological safety in knowledge sharing, I highly recommend “The Fearless Organization” by Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School, which was the inspiration for this post.

Her book is our current K&L book club choice. If you are interested in getting a carefully curated selection of books to support your learning, read more about the book club here.

Posted in knowledge-sharing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Learning, unlearning and new learning

Posted on August 5, 2020 by knowledge4lawyers

Whilst we think a lot about creation of new knowledge in KM – learning from experiences, learning from databases, learning from each other – one thing we talk less about is the need for unlearning as well.

People, especially experienced professionals, are not clean slates or empty vessels into which new learning pours. They are complex individuals with complex frames of reference, biases and a huge network of intertwined experiential learning, and unlearning old patterns of behaviour is as important as learning new ones.

Old knowledge is not overwritten like a computer programme. In the early stages of many people’s careers unlearning can be a fairly straightforward process, but later on, it can be more difficult for experts to wrap their heads around the changes necessary to unlearn existing processes or best practices, and adapt to new ones.

And when our organisations are not obviously failing, there can seem to be little imperative to change.

How are KM practitioners to help with this process inside their organisations?

Firstly, we need to understand that unlearning is not about forgetting.

If you’ve ever tried to “not think” about something, you’ll know how impossible “forgetting on demand” would be. Instead, unlearning is about questioning the existing mental models that we’ve been working with, discarding those that no longer provide value, and moving towards working with new ones.

Simple? As with other situations involving change by humans, it is a process rather than a discrete event … and it is tougher than it sounds.

Firstly, we need to encourage those involved to understand the reasoning behind the change. Why is the existing mental model no longer working? This can be a difficult change to support, as our mental models are often unconscious and, even once conscious, letting go of them can feel like an admission of failure. The subject matter experts that KMers support may have built their reputations and whole careers on their mastery of a particular field within a particular delivery process, so an admission that new models are needed can feel like a real loss.

Secondly, we need to support those involved in finding a new mental model that will work better for them.

Thirdly, everyone will need to practice, practice, practice, until the new mental habits are embedded.

What can KMers do to help with this process?

The exciting news is that unlearning and relearning appears (although there isn’t a huge amount of research) to be a process that gets easier each time, so once you get the ball rolling, things should get easier.

The skills needed to question, let go and learn, will be best learned through experience and reflection upon that experience, and will be encouraged by a strong culture of non-judgmental curiosity (not that I pretend that such a culture is easy to create). KMers can help those that they support by discussing the value of new knowledge as part of a wide tapestry of learning, and encouraging reflection on relevant experiences.

KMers can also help those they support, but in particular their subject matter experts, to understand that new knowledge doesn’t need to create dissonance with existing knowledge. Each moment of unlearning and new learning is in fact part of the creation of a wider expertise. Observation, experimentation and creation of new ways of working and understanding are essential to successful organisations, and experts’ wide levels of experience help them to adapt in novel situations, where simple best practices do not apply.

What are your experiences of unlearning in your organisation?

How do you support your subject matter experts in handling their natural resistance to change?

I’d love to hear from you below.

And if you have found this post interesting, follow the blog using the button at the top right, or sign up for the busy person’s roughly monthly summary of interesting stuff, or have me along to one of your knowledge sharing/learning meetings to start the conversation!

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KM teams – the post-pandemic landscape

Posted on July 30, 2020 by knowledge4lawyers

We (in Knowledge Network) just had such an interesting discussion led by Simon Burton of CB Resourcing, looking at

  • how KM teams have stepped up to help their organisation adapt to new ways of delivering client services during the lockdown,
  • how they’re planning to help with changes to the business landscape, including areas anticipating expansion and areas that will remain depressed, as we emerge into the next phase, and
  • what skills they can learn and adapt now, to offer greater value for the future.

It was particularly interesting to me to hear how KM teams are trying to fill the informal knowledge sharing gap and new routes to relationship and network building when everyone is working from home.

How are you dealing with these issues?

Although I’d never say it was easy to create a user-friendly online knowledge database, I’d say it is even harder to create a trusting network when everyone is at home, coping with their own personal difficulties, which could include loneliness, caring responsibilities, health worries or difficult domestic circumstances.

Have you any bright ideas to share? Comment below.

And if you want to join KN-UK for similar interesting talks, get in touch for more info.

Posted in Knowledge Network UK, knowledge-sharing | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Exciting news!

Posted on July 23, 2020 by knowledge4lawyers

I’ve started another book.

It’s one I’ve been wanting to write for a while now and the silver lining to lockdown has been the time it has given me to write.

Will be a while until it’s out, but keep your eyes open for sneak-peaks and requests for help!

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K&IM awards

Posted on July 22, 2020 by knowledge4lawyers

Have you nominated someone or something for the CILIP K&IM awards yet?

I’m sure you must know some outstanding people and outstanding work that justifies recognition. More information here

Posted in innovation, KM | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Narrative Inquiry, oral history and knowledge sharing

Posted on June 26, 2020 by knowledge4lawyers

Knowledge exists on a spectrum. At one end we have explicit knowledge which is easy to write down and access from written materials and towards the other end we have tacit knowledge which is highly subjective and difficult to access.

Storytelling and conversation is one of the more effective ways to surface and explore tacit knowledge. It is also a fantastic way to ensure that the shared knowledge sticks: stories which are vivid and meaningful are simply more likely to be remembered and acted upon.

Story sharing can also help organisations to retain their vibrancy, sharing stories of successes and help people to understand and frame their work as meaningful.

If you are interested in storytelling for knowledge sharing in organisations, join our webinar by Thaler Pekar, an internationally recognized pioneer in the field of organizational narrative, leadership storytelling, and persuasive communication.

Learn more and buy tickets here.

And if you want to learn more

This webinar is part of the series for Knowledge Network Online, the international knowledge sharing group for professional services KMers. Learn more and how to join us here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Serendipity, connection and coffee – an interview

Posted on April 23, 2020 by knowledge4lawyers

My recent chat with Michael Soto about random virtual coffee connections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbQRrZKmz3c

Have you had any successes with virtual coffee connections? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments below.

Posted in KM, networks, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Global support and community

Posted on March 26, 2020 by knowledge4lawyers

In these difficult times I’ve been wondering how I can use my knowledge about knowledge sharing, conversation and community to help support my own community of Knowledge people.

I’ve already set up some random virtual coffees and if you want to join the second wave next month, let me know.

Now, thanks to a great idea from my colleague Katherine Thomas of Free Range Lawyers, I’m going to arrange some *planned* virtual coffees.

So, if you work in Information, Knowledge or Learning and want a bit of support from a peer who (mostly) doesn’t compete with you, drop me a line and I will do my best to pair you up with someone of a similar background/role from a different area of the world, so you can share experiences and support each other with no strings or fallout. No pressure on either party, just two friendly people who understand each others’ pressures, with less of the worry about spilling the wrong beans.

And of course a different geographical outlook might spark some new ideas too.

If you want to join in, email me (helenerussell@theknowledgebusiness.co.uk) or comment below with a few short details – 1) Info, Knowledge or Learning? 2) Country? 3) Sector? 4) Frontline or Senior Leader? – so I can pair similar people up.

And, most importantly, I need you all to share the heck out of this idea, so we have plenty of people from all over the world involved.

Free and no strings of course.

Stay home, stay well and make new virtual connections!

Posted in networks | Tagged , | 1 Comment

KNUK online – a covid-19 update

Posted on March 25, 2020 by knowledge4lawyers

I’m very excited that we have the lovely Alison Day online next week, talking about the knowledge sharing and learning frameworks they use in the NHS and how she influences leaders to improve decision-making with evidence and knowledge.

If you are an existing member of KNUK, you should already have heard from me with the details, but if you are one of those who comes along to the odd session or someone who’d like to come along but has always been too far away, or someone thinks this is the perfect time to join such a lovely community, read on…

In the light of covid-19, for the time being, I’m combining all my KNUK in-person groups with the new online one and instead of 5x 2-hour in-person events, I’m going to be running 10x 1-hour online events instead.

I’m gradually contacting all those who were planning to speak at in-person events and hunting down some other people to speak, so the programme is “emerging”.

If you are already part of KNUK you should have had your invitation this morning and you don’t need to do anything more, just log in on 1st April at 12.30.

If you would like to join for the year, there is still time, drop me a line and I’ll invoice you (it’s £265 for one person for the year) and send you the log in details.

If you would like to book for individual sessions, you can find them on Eventbrite.

Any questions, drop me a line.

Hope to see you all there.

Stay home and stay well everyone!

Posted in Events, Knowledge Network UK | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment