Knowledge culture: How to get lawyers to use knowledge-sharing systems

Robyna May, director of knowledge and IT at Cooper Grace Ward, discusses how to weave knowledge management into a firm’s culture

Three things you will learn from this Masterclass:

1. How to get lawyers and support teams to use and develop the information in knowledge systems

2. How to embed knowledge management into lawyers’ psyches so that it simply becomes a part of their jobs

3. How to get lawyers excited about KM and acknowledge  its value, despite it not being directly tied to their billable hours

 

Knowledge management represents the intersection between information technology and the practice of law.

Knowledge management programmes necessarily incorporate an element of information technology, and the relevance of IT (beyond a cost centre) is illustrated clearly through KM.

Firms that realise the potential of this bridge between something lawyers inherently understand (knowledge) and something that they may not (IT) stand to reap substantial rewards.

However, the key to any successful programme, whether it is IT or knowledge, is to engage the whole firm.

Defining KM

Knowledge management has long defied singular definition but, for the purposes of this discussion, the model in Figure 1 may be helpful.

When looking at the elements of this model, culture, adoption and training are essential from a people point of view. Without these key elements acting as a solid foundation, the best planned KM initiatives are destined for failure.

From the technical side, the processes to capture knowledge, deliver knowledge and offer effective access to knowledge must be comprehensive and simple to use. This balance between user experience and functionality can be difficult to develop; IT and knowledge need to work closely with the user group to ensure this occurs.

At this point, it is useful to note that KM must extend to the whole firm, not just the legal team. In any support team, there will be valuable knowledge that is unlikely to be documented and, where it is documented, it may be quite different to the way legal knowledge is classified.

Firms that do not extend their KM efforts beyond the legal team risk losing valuable information that can be costly to replace.

The people side

Culture

The first step to ensuring that knowledge systems work is to create a knowledge-sharing culture. Common barriers to sharing knowledge must be removed.

Barrier 1: I don’t want to share my knowledge

The axiom that knowledge is power is as true on an individual level as it is at a collective one. For those that differentiate themselves by their knowledge on a particular topic, system, client or industry, sharing that knowledge can seem counterintuitive. It is important to illustrate that sharing knowledge will actually increase a person’s value to the team, rather than reduce it.

Knowledge sharing will allow lawyers to do their jobs more effectively and enable them to enhance their own careers. No longer do we expect to have the same job for life and, by sharing knowledge, lawyers and support staff are able to move freely to the next challenge without their singular knowledge tying them to a particular position.

Incentives and tying knowledge key performance indicators (KPIs) into performance reviews are another way to encourage the sharing of knowledge. However, the mind-shift that recognises the inherent value of knowledge sharing, as opposed to a means to reward, is of lasting value.

Barrier 2: I don’t know how to share my knowledge

Once people feel comfortable with sharing knowledge, how to do this must be crystal clear. Appropriate systems that capture knowledge at the most convenient time are essential to overcoming this barrier.

Training on the systems, delivered in a variety of ways, will address this need.

Barrier 3: I don’t know what knowledge to share

Not all knowledge is of equal value. It is important to link the knowledge a firm is targeting to the strategic direction of the firm and workgroups.

During the yearly process of business planning, it is useful to identify the kinds of knowledge that need to be focused upon in order to achieve the goals set.

For instance, consider a knowledge-sharing programme that provides daily case summaries of all unreported judgements. This may be a useful exercise but, without being tied to a business goal, the information is likely to go unused.

By contrast, consider a programme that concentrates on summarising unreported judgements in one area of law. The purpose of the programme is to ensure the industry team is continually up-to-date with new developments and can showcase this knowledge to clients and potential clients through external blogs or alerts.

The second programme is clearly attached to a business goal and the information will be utilised.

Ownership and adoption

There are two vicious circles that knowledge managers are faced with when trying to entrench the ownership and adoption of knowledge programmes.

The first is that, in order to truly demonstrate the value of a knowledge system, you need to have a comprehensive body of knowledge to base the presentation upon. However, the purpose of the knowledge system itself is to capture that valuable knowledge. Knowledge managers often find themselves trying to ‘sell’ a concept without the proof behind it.

The second viscous circle is well known to any support team working within a law firm. Lawyers’ time is valuable and there is always tension when pulling them away from the billable hour. Lawyers will adopt systems that they have had a hand in designing, but they are time poor and often do not or cannot contribute. When an initiative is launched without lawyer buy in, it may be asked why the lawyers were not consulted.

There are a number of ways to break these cycles. First, establishing a knowledge focus group, made up of representatives from across the firm, is invaluable to provide the interface for buy-in.

The key is to ensure that all focus group meetings are tightly controlled – an agenda should be circulated before the meeting and all meetings kept within the timeframe originally set out.

At the end of each meeting, what has been achieved should be quickly summarised and calls to action confirmed. If people feel that their time is being valued and their contributions considered, they are happy to be involved.

Ownership is easier to establish among small groups, as opposed to the whole firm. It is valuable to focus on a workgroup and identify their immediate knowledge needs. From here, a programme could be built that reaches beyond the workgroup and into the wider firm, but the knowledge manager can rely upon the original workgroup to champion the programme.

Focusing on ‘quick wins’ that require minimum effort but will deliver a large impact is another way to illustrate the value of knowledge management and establish buy-in.

Training

It has been said that the stone age was marked by man’s clever use of crude tools, while the information age has (to date) been marked by man’s crude use of clever tools.

 Knowledge management systems are clever tools but, in order to derive the maximum benefit from them, they must be used effectively. Document management systems are an excellent example of this – they are incredibly powerful, and yet users only take advantage of a tiny percentage of their functionality.

Training is another tension between the billable hour and the need to derive the maximum value from investment in systems. These competing priorities need to be balanced and the value of the training made immediately apparent.

One approach is to first establish exactly what core competencies are expected at various levels. This will provide a framework for both the training itself and the competency assessment at the completion of the training.

Once the core competencies are defined, overview sessions of no more than 15 minutes can be utilised to showcase the programme and demonstrate how it solves business problems. At this stage, it is imperative to illustrate why the programme is being implemented and how it links back to the business goals.

After the overview, the practical training can be delivered. This training could be delivered in a variety of different mediums, including hands-on training, seminar training or online training.

It is important that refresher training is readily available and that online resources support what has been taught. Reference sites, wikis and discussion areas are all useful online tools to support the initial training.

When knowledge systems are being developed, thought must go into making the systems highly intuitive. The more intuitive they are, the less training users will require.

The technical side

Capturing knowledge

Knowledge must be captured when it is in movement. Consider capturing lessons learned during the course of a matter.

When that knowledge is captured will depend on the nature of the matter – for a litigation matter that may go on for years, knowledge should be captured at logical stages during the matter. For an insurance matter, with a much shorter lifecycle, it may be more appropriate to do this at matter close. The key is to ensure that whatever systems capture knowledge, they do so at a time when it is front of mind for the lawyer.

It imperative that knowledge systems draw on one source and provide different views of that information, depending on the context required. By ensuring that there is one source of information, lawyers’ time spent on updating information is reduced.

For instance, information about a lawyer’s expertise is likely to be used in their CV, in tenders, in capability statements, in conference speaker biographies and on the firm’s website. It would also be used by other team members when searching across the firm to establish the resident experts in certain fields of law.

In each case, the information is the same but the presentation very different. By providing a system that allows the centralised maintenance of this information but delivers it in a variety of formats, knowledge is captured in a very effective and efficient way.

Accessing and delivering knowledge

Thought must be given as to whether knowledge should be ‘pushed’ to users (via email or other alerting mechanisms), whether users should ‘pull’ the information themselves (from portals or other systems), or whether a hybrid of both is appropriate.

Knowledge managers need to engage with the entire firm to understand exactly how staff want to access knowledge. It is likely that a variety of mediums need to be used to present the same information in different ways. Users should have control over which mediums deliver knowledge to them.

Thought must also be given to how knowledge is searched. When trying to find very specific information that the user knows is there, a targeted search is helpful. If, however, the user is unsure what he is looking for, a browsing approach, which allows him to traverse through categories, is more useful.

When considering accessing information easily, enterprise search comes to mind. There is a growing interest in enterprise-wide search and a number of ‘solutions’ in the market. However, knowledge managers must be aware that enterprise search is not a magic bullet and users still need to know how to use the separate knowledge sub-systems.

Consider the scenario of finding a bus timetable. If a person is familiar with the area he is travelling within, he will likely go straight to the relevant website and download the timetable. If the person is away from home and has no idea how the transport system works in the country he is visiting, he is likely to use a search engine to find information about the transport system, and gradually drill down until he finds the information he needs.

In both cases, the person will find the information he is looking for, but the approach is entirely different due to the level of prior knowledge. If the local traveller is forced to use the search engine and a less targeted approach, he would be frustrated at the length of time this would take. If the overseas traveller had to know exactly which site to visit and there was no assistance available to find it, he wouldn’t get anywhere.

The most appropriate tool to use is dictated by the level of prior knowledge. An enterprise search system adds another layer to knowledge management, but it does not replace any of the sub-systems it sits over.

Ensuring success

In summary, three key things are necessary to ensure the successful use of knowledge and collaboration tools:

1. a firm culture that encourages knowledge sharing;

2. lawyers and support team members ‘owning’ knowledge systems and being confident in using them; and

3. IT and knowledge staff working closely with lawyers and support teams to ensure that the solutions created align with the expected user experience and necessary functionality.

When knowledge, IT and the practice work together in this way, KM becomes an integral part of the firm’s fabric and lawyers’ use of the tools becomes a seamless part of their everyday work. 

 robyna.may@cgw.com.au