The ALSP Update, Vol. 1, Dec. 2007 at 9, the monthly newsletter of the Association of Litigation Support Professionals(See my post of Jan. 27, 2008 on ALSP.), talks about the Yahoo Groups LitSupport listserv. A listserv is a way for people to post messages in threaded discussions and read others’…
Typically we think of knowledge management as the collection of documents and other material – guidelines, checklists, alternative clauses – that someone might find helpful (See my post of March 5, 2005 on altruistic information sharing.). Another value of knowledge management repositories like these is discussed in Sloan Mgt. Rev.,…
InsideCounsel, Jan. 2008 at 14, highlights the blog of the National Arbitration Forum, which has been online since November 2004 (See my posts of Dec. 9, 2005 on ADR-favoring companies; and Feb. 7, 2007 on the cottage industry of arbitrators.). I wondered what else I had written about arbitration. More…
More useful than tracking their time, in-house lawyers might better report on the two-to-four legal issues that recently came to their attention. If every two weeks, for example, every lawyer in a department summarized three to five legal issues they had grappled with during the previous two weeks, each in…
A new book bursts with provocative ideas: David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (Henry Holt 2007). It explores clearly and engagingly how in the coming years, with huge amounts of online information searchable, sortable, rateable, and improvable by users, we will change how we…
LawyerKM on Nov. 1, 2007 has a post that had me nodding my head in agreement. Your law department could try a blog. “But some [law] firms are using blogs to communicate internally. We love the idea because (in theory) it can help cut down on mass emails that contain…
A previous post described some of the features of the EDGE, the knowledge management platform of DuPont’s legal department (See my post of Jan. 18, 2007.). KM Space, a site hosted by Doug Cornelius, reports some comments by Gabrielle Townsend of DuPont (See my post of June 4, 2007 about…
My skepticism about efforts in law departments to rather disseminate knowledge has been expressed (See my post of March 5, 2005 on altruistic information sharing.). Not withstanding my doubts, I believe firmly that general counsel should try to build their department’s knowledge capital. Here are some of the steps I…
An article in the Economist, Aug. 4, 2007 at 48, discusses efforts by accountants to count the value of intangible investments in the business sector. How might law departments quantify and describe numerically their initiatives to increase the availability of knowledge? The most obvious tally is budget and hours devoted…
I welcome to Law Department Management Jane DiRenzo Pigott, the Managing Director of R3 Group LLC. Jane, a former partner in a leading Chicago firm, founded its diversity program and over the years developed a leading reputation in the area of law firm and law department diversity. Her periodic blog…