LawyerKM

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms

Janet Johnson dropped us a comment on the “About” page regarding Attensa and an upcoming announcement.  See her blog for details.  Full disclosure: Attensa is a client of Janet’s. 

LawyerKM doesn’t do endorsements (however, we can be bought – kidding), but she is right.  We have written about RSS (click the RSS category on the left to see) before, but not mentioned Attensa.  We’ve seen their stuff in action (along with the other big enterprise RSS players (NewsGator and KnowNow), and they are worth looking into.  

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms

In his KM Space blog (see our Blogroll), Doug Cornelius is doing a great job of summarizing the happenings at the ILTA conference.   We almost feel like we are there.  Thanks Doug! 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms

Thomson West announced today West km integration with Recommind’s MindServer Legal platform. It’s not exactly clear from the press release how the two systems will work together, but Recommind pundit Oz Benamram, director of KM at Morrison & Foerster, says “This integration expands the utility of our AnswerBase Knowledge Management system, providing one central location for our attorneys to answer all of their legal research questions. … This will save us time during our legal research and, in turn, help us serve our clients better.”

It was only a matter of time before West or Lexis buddied up to Recommind. One could argue (and Lexis probably will) that it didn’t need Recommind because it already has Fast. We’re not sure if that passes the straight-face test. If they’re smart, Lexis will get really friendly really fast with Practice Technologies and “integrate” with RealPractice.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms

Connectbeam apparently is not the only player in the enterprise social bookmarking game.  An eweek article by Dave Greenfield called Crowd Control: Social Bookmarking Apps Provide a New Knowledge Management Platform describes some of the others:  BEA AquaLogic Pathways, Cogenz, and IBM Lotus Connections. 

Next Time: Social Search. 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms.

ILTA’s 30th Annual Educational Conference takes place August 20 – 23, 2007 at Grande Lakes Resort in Orlando, FL. 

LawyerKM likes ILTA and the KM Peer Group.  The conference is a great time and a great place to learn about legal technology (including KM).  There are a lot of great people involved – some of whom are mentioned in this schedule of the KM Peer Group’s conference track.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms

In “Can you Digg It?…” We asked (but nobody answered) whether social bookmarking is right for law firms. We also wondered whether it was worth the investment. Well, the good people over at

Connectbeam are of the opinion that it is. They even went so far as to create an enterprise social bookmarking and tagging system that does the trick.

As they state in their nice online screencast demo, “time to action is fundamental.” The whole idea behind enterprise social bookmarking is to get to information quickly so people can act and get their jobs done.

Connectbeam creates an environment where members of a company can “tag” content (like websites). Those content items can also be grouped into topics.

Users can also search for keyword and get a list of all of the content items that are tagged to the keyword. In addition, the same search lists related tags (i.e. other tags that users have used for content related to the keyword) and related users (i.e. users who also have tagged content related to the keyword). This has an expertise location function. Clicking on a related user shows their bio, contact information, displays their “tag cloud” (i.e. the terms that they have used to tag other items), and the topics that they have chosen to share within the company. Tags in the tag cloud are of various font sizes. A larger font indicates that more items are tagged with that term. Tag cuds are used in many public social bookmarking applications, like Delicious and photo sharing sites, like Flickr

Users can create private topics, group topics, and company topics. So, a key member of the firm’s antitrust practice group might locate and tag a website that provides good antitrust resources. She can save it as group topic. Others can search for it, or simply see what things she has tagged.

We still wonder if lawyers will take the time to tag stuff.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms

Legal Technology Exchange
Bridging Innovation and Strategy to Enhance Delivery of Legal Services
November 4 – 6, 2007 ·  Pinehurst Resort, Village of Pinehurst, NC 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms

Who is Louis?  The new website LOUIS — the Library Of Unified Information Sources — makes U.S. Federal documents available to the people – by searching or RSS feed, if you so desire. 

Like Google News (see also here) or Yahoo News, you can perform a search and then subscribe to that search via RSS feed.   This is a real time saver, people. 

Very handy, if you are tracking Congressional Reports, Congressional Records, Congressional Hearings, the Federal Register, Presidential Documents, GAO Reports, or Bills & Resolutions.  

This is similar to the Justia’s Regulation Tracker, which we told you about back in April, but may be broader in scope. 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms

Common Craft has published a new video called Social Bookmarking in Plain English. 

Like the other videos (Social Networking in Plain English, Wikis in Plain English, and RSS in Plain English), this is a great, simple introduction to what can be a complicated thing. 

If you want to know more about social bookmarking and tagging and how it is used in conjunction with social networking, please see our previous post, Can You Digg It.  You’ll also learn how lawyers and law firms might use social bookmarking in their workflows. 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms