I mentioned my Zero-Percent Rule* in a previous post, Knowledge Harvest. There I stated the rule as: you should try to make any KM initiative require zero percent of an attorney’s time. This is not a rule because it is desirable to have zero input from attorneys on KM initiatives. To the contrary, I think that most legal knowledge management folks would love to have more attorney input. This is a rule because it is uncommon to get more than zero percent of an attorney’s time on KM initiatives. As I’ve said, for most attorneys, when one case or deal is done, it’s usually on to the next.

Therefore, I am revising the ZPR to state: legal KM folks should not expect more than zero percent of an attorney’s time on KM initiatives.** If we live by this rule we will not be disappointed.  And if we get some input from the lawyers, then it’s like icing on the KM cake. 

Now that we have that squared away, the Zero-Percent Rule should not be seen as an insurmountable problem. Technology is here to help. No, I am not trying to incite the age-old dispute about whether knowledge management is about technology or people or culture or whatever. Let’s agree that all of them are important. But, technology is important when you can’t get the ”knowledge seekers” to participate. 

One example of how technology helps overcome the problems of the ZPR is MoFo’s AnswerBase, which is powered by Recommind.  Part of that tool enables lawyers to identify experts within the firm.  The great thing is that it is a passive system that requires no active participation by attorneys.  The idea is that expertise is determined by data from various systems.  For example, the fact that attorney Jones billed 1,500 hours last year on area of law Y (data from time and billing system) and was the author of 14 briefs on that same area of law (data from the DMS) and is the responsible attorney for several other similar matters (data from the accounting system) helps make the determination that attorney Jones probably is an expert in that area of law.  

Another example is a system like Contact Networks, which I wrote about in the Who Do We Know? post.  Such applications passively determine relationships among your lawyers, clients, potential clients, and others by mining e-mail traffic and other contact information.  Again, zero-percent attorney input.  I really like this because it helps eliminate internal spam e-mail, otherwise known as “PTI” e-mail.  You know about PTI e-mail: “Pardon the interruption, but does anyone know Mike Smith or any other senior executive at Big Corp?”  With a system like Contact Networks, or the like, those questions can be answered without spamming every single lawyer in the firm. 

How are you working to overcome the problems of the Zero-Percent Rule? 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

* I have a feeling that this “rule” may have been met with some objection, but since LawyerKM has been–and still is–on vacation, I have no idea.  (Thanks to the magic of WordPress technology, this post, and all posts since, and including, Knowledge Harvest, were pre-written and published on a schedule.)

** I reserve the right to further revise this rule at any time.

Blogging is not easy. It takes thought, time, and effort.

What does blogging say about bloggers? At the very least, it says that they are interested in the blog subject. Interested enough to spend time thinking, researching, writing, and editing. This is time that could otherwise be spent doing any number of things (relaxing, exercising, socializing, etc.). One might argue that blogging demonstrates more than just interest - it demonstrates a passion for the blog topic. If one’s blog is related to what they do for a living, that means passion for one’s profession. And a passionate employee is a good employee.

Should employers encourage employees to blog? Should they prohibit blogging? Should they pretend that it’s not happening? I’m not talking about whether employees should be permitted to blog on company time. While most employers would say no, Michel Anteby, in his Harvard Business Review article, Working in the Gray Zone, suggests that it may be OK, and even beneficial. Anteby says that this has to do with employees’ need to “enact their ‘occupational identities,’” (i.e. “the self-image that a person trained in a specific vocation develops as a member of that profession.”). Much the way blogging indicates a passion for the subject, “gray zones signal a higher aspiration among employees that immediate supervisors deem worthy of pursuit.”

Blogging (on your own time) is good. I know that I personally–and professionally–benefit from blogging. It makes me a better KM guy. I learn from my blog buddies, some of whom are listed in my blog roll (and on the LawyerKM Netvibes Universe). But a blog, like any medium, should not be abused. A good blogger’s guide is The Golden Rule. Another word to the wise is “don’t [write] anything you wouldn’t want published on the front page of the New York Times” (aka The New York Times Rule). (I know, I know, some bloggers would love to have their stuff published in the New York Times - anywhere in the New York Times.)

In my opinion [see opinion disclaimer], a reasonable approach is best. Lawyers love the word “reasonable.”  What does this mean? Todd Alan Ewan and Carolyn M. Plump put forth some pretty reasonable blog policy ideas in their article, To Blog or Not to Blog: An Employer’s Dilemma (although I think that they may have borrowed the title from another blog post. I’m kidding.). Perhaps another piece of guidance comes from our friends at Thomson Reuters, which recently released its Code of Business Conduct and Ethics.

Part of that code states:

It’s OK to mention Thomson Reuters in a personal blog. However, if you maintain a personal blog, it should not contain or discuss any confidential or nonpublic information about Thomson Reuters, our customers or other people or companies that we do business with. You should not cite or reference customers, employees or business associates without their approval. If your blog mentions Thomson Reuters, it should be clear that any opinions that you express are your own, and not those of Thomson Reuters. Even then, you should be mindful of the Trust Principles in discussing Thomson Reuters or any of its competitors. Further, personal blogs should never be used for internal communications among fellow employees and you should not use a personal blog to air any differences with co-workers, Thomson Reuters or people or companies that we do business with. Some Thomson Reuters businesses may have their own supplemental policies and guidelines on blogging.

That seems reasonable. And it seems that some law firms subscribe to such reasonable ideas. David Hobbie (Caselines) and Doug Cornelius (KM Space), of Goodwin Procter, write about KM topics and are pretty open about things they do at the firm. Tom Baldwin, of Reed Smith, also shares some of his KM experiences with the world via his blog, Knowledgeline. The KM community benefits from their ideas and experiences.

In the end, whether employers love it, hate it, allow it, prohibit it, or tolerate it; they shouldn’t ignore it. They need to be aware that people blog. And some of those people may be their employees. Reasonableness may be / probably is / definitely is–in my opinion–better than ignorance.

And for you bloggers out there, The Golden Rule and The New York Times Rule are good guidance, but perhaps the best way to put it is: Don’t Be Stupid.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

In their article, Don’t Just Capture Knowledge - Put It to Work, Katrina Pugh and Nancy M. Dixon discuss ways to ensure that institutional knowledge is available for those who need it and not simply filed away in the archives. They use an approach called a “knowledge harvest: a systematic, facilitated gathering and circulation of knowledge.”

“The key,” they say, “is to identify, before the harvest begins, others in the organization who could use the knowledge (the ‘knowledge seekers’) and involve them in gathering valuable lessons.” The case study in the article involved a health-care consulting team. The authors reported that the knowledge seekers participated out of self interest and therefore asked “tough, exploratory questions of knowledge originators, extracting important nuances…how knowledge might be applied elsewhere, what worked and what didn’t, and so on.”

One factor not discussed was the ease with which the facilitators were able to obtain the assistance of the key participants, the knowledge seekers. For law firm KM folks, we know all too well that getting our knowledge seekers–the attorneys–to participate in knowledge-sharing activities is tough. Since KM activities don’t directly contribute to the all-important Profits Per Partner (it’s Am Law 100 season!), when they finish one case or deal it’s usually on to the next. “Post mortem” and “after action review” are not terms they teach in law school. And good luck getting attorneys involved before some “knowledge harvesting” activity begins.

Legal KM folks always have to keep in mind what I like to call the Zero-Percent Rule: try to make any KM initiative require zero percent of an attorney’s time. It’s a half joke, but painfully funny. Ask anyone involved legal knowledge management and they’ll tell you that it’s a real problem. More on the Zero-Percent Rule later.

So, to all you legal KM folks out there: Can a knowledge harvest work in a busy law firm? Is this a question of KM culture, technology, both, or neither?

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

I’ve written before about legal blogging.  But being a KM guy, I usually focus on the benefits of using blogs inside the law firm, for KM purposes. 

Kevin O’Keefe (Real Lawyers Have Blogs) writes a lot about using blogs as marketing tools.  And he should know - he’s helped a lot of firms dramatically increase traffic to their websites.  Check out his recent post, Lawyer blogs driving traffic to law firm websites. 

Just as most firms got on the website band wagon in the 1990s (some reluctantly, remember?), most firms–the ones that haven’t already–will have one or more blogs in the next few years.  I know, I know: this is not such a ground-breaking prediction given the recent report that “53 of the Am Law 200 firms in 2007 were blogging a total of 110 blogs.“  And it’s not just small firms that are on the band wagon: check out Kevin’s post that has a long list of firms that blog.  There’s some big names there. My favorite take away from Kevin’s “Lawyer blogs driving traffic…” post (above):

Blogs are turning out to be a very cost effective means to drive traffic through the law firm website and particular, practice areas and lawyer bio’s.

Why?

• Law blogs focus on substantive legal information, as opposed to promotional copy. Google can tell the difference and is obviously more interested in pushing information, as opposed to marketing copy, to the top of search results.
• Blogs have more frequent updates. More updates, the more keywords and key phrases people will be searching for that you’ll have in your blog site.
• Viral marketing. Blogs routinely get cited by other blogs and reporters. You’re seen when your target audience is doing research on your niche in the law.
• Subscribers by RSS and email. Websites don’t have subscribers.
• Blog RSS feeds being aggregated by Google Blog Search and Technorati so blog posts are picked up by reporters and bloggers subscribed to keywords and key phrases at those places.
• Links. The holy grail of search optimization. Incoming links from other relevant sites (law in this case) establish the importance of a site in Google’s mind. The more links, the more important, and the higher you’ll be in search results.

 LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

The good folks at Common Craft have made another easy-to-understand video. This one will help you understand podcasting. Read about the other “…in Plain English” videos here.

The video is here:

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

To help you decide which blog software is right for you, check out WeblogMatrix.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

From CIO.com, here a quick rundown of 9 wikis (surprisingly absent is the popular PBwiki).

And WikiMatrix is a handy way to compare the dozens of wikis available.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

There’s an interesting article, Email Software Delves Into Employees’ Contacts, in The Wall Street Journal that discusses how more firms are using applications that mine email traffic and other contact information to infer relationships. Thomson-owned Contact Networks and Dun & Bradstreet-owned Visible Path are mentioned, but BranchIT is not.

I like these tools to help solve the “who-do-we-know?” problem. If you’re not familiar with this type of tool, there is a nice online demo from Visible Path that helps explain things. The best part about these tools is that they require no input from the lawyers. They need not submit contacts or even keep their Rolodexes up to date. Relationships are determined passively. The downside: some people just don’t like the idea of an application monitoring their email and other electronic activities. Apparently, these companies are slowly overcoming such obstacles: Contact Networks reports that “about 40 law firms, including Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP” are using the application.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Here’s an interesting article from Gina Passarella on law.com about how (externally-facing) blogs are gaining steam in law firms (even large ones).   Blogging is great for marketing purposes, but there are other uses for blogs internally.  See: To Blog or Not Blog Inside Your Law Firm… 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

On March 18, 2008 NewsGator conducted a webinar called “Increase Employee Productivity with Enterprise RSS.” Replay here. 

More LawyerKM on RSS here.

More on RSS from other KM sites here.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms