"I listened to Law Technology News' "Future Tech" podcast from LegalTech West Coast today. It featured a search for KM in the law firm setting by Tom Baldwin, Reed Smith's Chief Knowledge Officer.
At Reed Smith, Mr. Baldwin finds three knowledge buckets: (1) what the firm knows; (2) what lawyers need to do to accomplish their work; and (3) who the firm knows. Number 3 is, at once, the interesting bucket and the most difficult to manage.
In bucket number 3, Mr. Baldwin finds "relationship capital." The things the law firm knows from lawyer referrals; from "match-making" services for in-house counsels and corporations; from "pitches" for new clients and services; and from experience smoothing out client conflicts.
Like the LegalTech key note speaker, Charles A. James, vice president and general counsel of Chevron, Mr. Baldwin finds KM software wanting. Whether it is in the form of CRM or e-mail, the current software routines do not fit bucket number 3.
It is hard to argue with either of these gentlemen and their findings.
The search for a KM solution can follow the Life of Brian. That is, the solutions out there can insult as many people as they inform. And of course, there are always some who find the humor in any situation. But seriously, it appears that the KM solutions themselves shape the problem, rather than the other way around. This reasoning has prevailed because we are inured and enamored with the idea that very simple solutions can solve complex problems, overnight. But that's not always the case.
Managing the knowledge contained in Mr. Baldwin's bucket no. 3 is a complex problem. The solution won't be solved overnight and it won't be solved by one software company. It will take a collective. And what better way to work in a collective than engage the social networks growing up all around us in the form of Facebook, Linked In and others. Because if we don't, we're liable to end up with an empty bucket.
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