Articles Posted in Knowledge Mgt.

Enlightenment thinkers understood that knowledge only brings benefits if it enables useful change and if those who can bring about the changes can learn of it. Access to knowledge counts for as much as creation for without the means to find out, lest the candle flicker under the bushel. Akin to creativity amounting to little without effective innovation – implementation – what collectively resides in the minds and documents of law department lawyers creates far less benefit if it is not accessible without much difficulty by others.

Access costs are a theme of knowledge management. Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 (Yale Univ. 2009) stresses in many passages the vital role of information access and access costs or barriers. Mokyr defines access costs as “the costs paid by someone to find and obtain knowledge that he or she had not possessed previously” (at 42). Every dollar paid a law firm is an access cost; every subscription or CLE course has an access cost; every minute spent listening to a client describe the business problem incurs an access cost. The notion is ubiquitous as knowledge workers go about gaining and making available useful knowledge.

Intriguingly, at various points Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 (Yale Univ. 2009), describes various monetary rewards that were posted in England in the 18th century for successful innovations. The incentives succeeded. One of the best-known was a huge prize for the person who solved how to determine longitude at sea (at 134, and see 137, 187 and 192 for others).

In the world of law departments, we have a profusion of honors and recognitions bestowed (See my post of June 10, 2007: lists eight entities that give out awards.), yet no one has put cash on the barrelhead for law department management innovations.

Perhaps an organization or a collective of law departments would announce a hefty cash prize for the best idea or practice to address value billing, reports from matter management systems, contract templates or other well-nigh intractable problems. A different set of submissions would result from the current set of nominations (See my post of Feb. 4, 2006: Home Depot won award of Legal Technology News for matter management software; Oct. 8, 2007: Verizon Communications recognized for e-discovery initiatives; Feb. 21, 2008: College of Law Practice InnovAction Award for law departments; June 11, 2008: Qwest won Corporate Counsel award; April 13, 2009: law department wins technology award; April 28, 2010 #1: Dell’s web portal wins award; Aug. 10, 2010: four finalists for best department award; Dec. 5, 2010: Financial Times innovation award to ITV; and Dec. 3, 2010: seven law departments and two focused initiatives from Financial Times.).

A multidisciplinary body of research studies so-called networks. Numerous books have been written about social network theory and other derivatives. The properties of networks apply to many aspects of law department operation so my latest article weaves in definitions of key terms from network theory as it explains some of the many insights that can follow. If you would like to see what network theory has to say about legal departments, click on the link.

At one point I worried I might exhaust candidates for metaposts. Now I realize that the more posts crowd this blog, the more opportunities arise for collections of them (metaposts) as well as second and even third generation metaposts on topics covered earlier. Here are the ten latest.

1. CLE II (See my post of Jan. 18, 2011: continuing professional development with 11 references.).

2. Compliance (See my post of Jan. 14, 2011: compliance function with 6 references.).

Steadily my LinkedIn group has attracted members from all around the world. The pace of comments has picked up and the group has reached critical mass in terms of vitality and continued growth. As these things go on the Internet, you need quite a few participants to sustain discussions and to reach topics that appeal broadly. That is what has happened over the three years of my group since it opened its doors April 28, 2008.

At the one year mark it had about 200 members, it grew to more than 250 at the start of 2010, and has doubled in the past year — fifty some more so far in 2011. I hope you join, participate, and get value.

As background, here are my previous substantive posts regarding LinkedIn (See my post of Jan. 19, 2008: LinkedIn and census of members with law department in profile; Aug. 15, 2008: formed my group in Spring of 2008 – more than a score of members; Oct. 12, 2008: survey shows almost 50% of lawyers belong to a social network; Dec. 21, 2008: example of question posed and answered; Jan. 6, 2009: 66 members; Jan. 20, 2009: estimate by Kevin O’Keefe that hundreds of thousands of lawyers belong to LinkedIn; Jan. 21, 2009: 3,797 LinkedIn hits for “Skadden”; March 29, 2009: good comment on Group; May 22, 2009: Legal IT Professionals group; June 1, 2009: many lurkers on social networks like LinkedIn; June 9, 2009: 48% of in-house lawyers belong to a social network; June 14, 2009 #3: Mark Harrington’s group for general counsel has 386 members; June 16, 2009: Legal Process Outsourcing group; July 1, 2009 #3: 536,000 lawyers on LinkedIn, 200 in my Group; Dec. 23, 2009 #3: 58% of lawyers surveyed belong to an online social network; Jan. 24, 2010: more than 250 members of my group and 35+ groups exist for lawyers on LinkedIn; Nov. 2, 2010: comment on LinkedIn that spurred blog post; Nov. 28, 2010: social networks fared poorly in survey of job sources; Dec. 21, 2010: 450 members of my group.).

The book by Richard Koch and Greg Lockwood, Superconnect: Harnessing the power of networks and the strength of weak links (Norton 2010) triggered enough posts on this blog to warrant a blook review (a blog book review). I did not particularly like the book because it is much too heavy on journalistic accounts and hopping from anecdote to anecdote without enough synthesis – ironic that this blogger, the apotheosis of writing scattered, unintegrated nuggets of ideas, would criticize this! – and it is tendentious.

Still, Superconnect inspired some blogable thoughts (See my post of Dec. 19, 2010: “small world” networks; Dec. 31, 2010: “weak ties” and their strengths in networks; Jan. 3, 2011: definition of network and applications to law departments; Jan. 14, 2011: retainer’s regret; and Jan. 26, 2011: concentration in legal cottage industries.). Two other books on a similar topic are Duncan Watts, Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness (Princeton Univ. 1999) and Mark Buchanan, Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks (W.W. Norton 2002).

To use a term often employed by Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From – The Natural History of Innovation (Riverhead 2010), his book was germinative. Many ideas for this blog came to me from his discussion of the lessons we can draw from nature about how new ideas arise and spread (See my post of Dec. 14, 2010: positive quarter power laws; Dec. 14, 2010: ten years for management ideas to reach critical mass; and Dec. 14, 2010: open floor office plans; Dec. 14, 2010: commonplace books.).

On page 53 he describes “information spillover.” In a large community, where ideas can percolate and spread, “good ideas have a tendency to flow from mind to mind.” It seems likely that information spillover happens more commonly as law departments grow larger, because there are not only more ideas generated but there are more people to whom those ideas can flow. A virtuous cycle ensues.

From my reading of Good Ideas, diffusion of new ideas sounds more deliberate; spillover sounds like accidental, almost unintentional absorption of good new ideas – or any ideas, for that matter.

“Writing maketh the blogger,” a little known line from Shakespeare’s lost masterpiece Hamblog and Julionline, often comes to my mind. Not just those who scribble for WordPress and TypePad and the like, but all in-house lawyers need prose ability. So I ran across Raymond Ward’s the (new) legal writer and enjoyed grazing. He includes 31 sites on his blog roll for more resources about how to write better, whether plays or pleadings.

Symantec, the $6 billion software company, employs in its Legal and Public Affairs (LPA) Department approximately 150 worldwide, about half of which are attorneys. According to the “European Briefings” supplement to ACC Docket, Dec. 2010 at 11, in 2006 the LPA created an intranet site visible only to its members. “The intranet site includes relevant information about training, key contacts, roles and responsibilities, charters, policies, upcoming events, etc.” I wondered about the “charters.”

Also to promote the circulation of knowledge, the LPA “built a library in SharePoint for electronically sharing key articles, presentations, and other information of interest.” The article makes no mention of a document management system.

Finally, the law department at Symantec hosts internal client-facing websites that provide clients with contact information, “descriptions of programs and agreements, FAQs and training materials.” Together, all these components comprise a robust knowledge management program (See my post of June 9, 2009: SharePoint with 6 references.).