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As part of the ILTA Knowledge Management Peer Group Steering Committee, I am helping put together a session for the annual conference in Washington DC in August.
This session will cover the wide spectrum of uses of document management systems in law firms: from the simple to the complex. Then, we will examine how innovative firms have leveraged document management systems to promote knowledge management efforts.
If you or someone you know has some good experience with this, please let me know.
Send me a tweet on Twitter: @LawyerKM
Thanks!
On the eve of the Ark Group’s Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession conference in New York City (Oct. 26-27, 2011), I wanted to tell you about an upcoming KM conference in Sydney, Australia. Ark Group’s Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession, scheduled for March 6-7, 2012 in Sydney, is sure to be a great conference.
I spoke at this event earlier this year, and can tell you that the presenters and audience were all top notch. The 2012 conference will surely be excellent. So, if you’re in or around Sydney in March, you should certainly check it out.
Here is a brief description from Ark Group:
This one-day forum will provide you with opportunities to hear timely and topical knowledge management case studies. You’ll have the chance to interact and network with presenters and attendees from organisations similar to yours and share ideas and how to:
There are also post-conference workshops on social media and tacit knowledge transfer.
Click here for a PDF brochure of the event.
Here is a continuation of my ILTA Conference coverage. ILTA information followed by my brief notes. Please forgive the typos (I’m typing away quickly just to get the thoughts down on “paper.
From ILTA:
Social Networking in the Legal Industry
Description: Law firms, like virtually every other business today, are discovering the benefits of social networking collaboration. Learn about the use of collaborative tools such as wikis, blogs and discussion forums, and networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
Date/Time: Monday 8/22/2011 at 1:00 p.m.
Location: Canal C
Speaker(s):
My Notes:
This was a standing room only crowd. They actually had to bring in more chairs and there were still people sitting on the floor. This session covers non- Continue reading »
The ILTA Conference has begun here in Nashville. I’ll be attending as many of the sessions as I can (there are so many to choose from). The first session I attended was a Knowledge Management Peer Group Steering Committee sponsored session called Advances in Document Assembly.
Here is the info from ILTA followed by my brief notes. Please forgive the typos (I’m typing away quickly just to get the thoughts down on “paper”).
From ILTA:
Advances in Document Assembly
Description: While document assembly applications have been around for a few years, adoption has been relatively slow and usually for niche legal practice areas. However, new technologies may rejuvenate interest.
Date/Time: Monday 8/22/2011 at 11:00 a.m.
Location: Canal C
Speaker(s):
My Notes:
Poll: Most people in the room do not currently use DA software.
DH – What is DA? – Continue reading »
If you’re headed to the ILTA Conference next week, please consider attending some (or all) of the six Knowledge Management Sessions. Then, immediately following the final KM session, please join the KM Peer Group for our annual conference Cocktail Party on Wednesday 8/24 at 4:30 p.m. in room Delta C at the Gaylord. The cocktail party is sponsored by Recommind.
The International Legal Technology Association (a.k.a. ILTA) Conference starts next week (Aug 21-25) at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, TN. The official conference Twitter hash tag is #ILTA11.
As a part of the ILTA Knowledge Management Peer Group Steering Committee, I had the pleasure of serving as this year’s conference liaison. The Steering Committee members worked hard to develop six great sessions for the conference. I hope you attend them. Here are the summaries of the six sessions:
1. Advances in Document Assembly
Description: While document assembly applications have been around for a few years, adoption has been relatively slow and usually for niche legal practice areas. However, new technologies may rejuvenate interest.
Date/Time: Monday 8/22/2011 at 11:00 a.m.
Location: Canal C
Speaker(s):
2. Social Networking in the Legal Industry
Description: Law firms, like virtually every other business today, are discovering the benefits of social networking collaboration. Learn about the use of collaborative tools such as wikis, blogs and discussion forums, and networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
Date/Time: Monday 8/22/2011 at 1:00 p.m.
Location: Canal C
Speaker(s):
3. It Takes a Village to Deliver Effective AFAs
Description: Learn how KM professionals and key players from finance, IT, professional development, legal project management, records and other areas can collaborate to help law firms implement successful AFAs.
Date/Time: Wednesday 8/24/2011 at 9:15 a.m.
Location: Delta Ballroom C
Speaker(s):
4. How KM Supports Innovative Service Delivery
Description: KM isn’t just precedents anymore. Hear how some true innovators in the field have tied sustainable KM processes and tools to specific legal services in ways that show clear increases in value delivered to clients.
Date/Time: Wednesday 8/24/2011 at 11:30 a.m.
Location: Delta Ballroom C
Speaker(s):
5. Creating an Optimal KM Value Strategy
Description: A sound KM strategy is essential to success. Whether you are just starting a KM program or you’ve been at it for years, you’ll take away insight into how your colleagues have formulated or refreshed their KM strategies to optimal levels, and what did and didn’t work.
Date/Time: Wednesday 8/24/2011 at 1:30 p.m.
Location: Delta Ballroom C
Speaker(s):
6. KM Helps Meet the ACC Value Challenge
Description: The Association for Corporate Counsel (ACC) has challenged law firms to understand their clients’ business better, be more efficient in their work, be more effective in training junior lawyers, and better budget and manage costs. Find out how knowledge management can help achieve these goals.
Date/Time: Wednesday 8/24/2011 at 3:30 p.m.
Location: Delta Ballroom C
Speaker(s):
These are all sure to be excellent sessions and I encourage everyone to attend.
As you may know, I’m a fan of (and perhaps a bit obsessed with) simplicity and concision. So, I’m always looking for good, high-quality ways of making a point without wasting time. When I came across a nice video by Nick Milton of Knoco about the distiction among data, information, and knowledge, I felt compelled to share it. This video (along with other good KM info) is also embedded in Knoco’s FAQ page.
During some recent speaking engagements, I mentioned how lawyers can benefit from using social media, among them, blogs. Countering one common reason for resistance to blogging–”I don’t have the time”–I pointed out how to use leverage to your advantage.
The idea is simple: turn the work you already do into a blog post. Lawyers do lots of work. They draft briefs, contracts, opinion letters, etc. Some even try to develop business by drafting newsletters, presenting pitches, and speaking at bar association functions, trade shows, and the like.
Of course, you can’t just copy and paste a client pitch, opinion letter, or brief into a blog post. I hope it goes without saying that you shouldn’t disclose confidential or proprietary information in a blog post. You also need to edit the content for your audience. The bad news is that it will require a little work. The good news is that unlike the newsletter that just goes out to the people on your mailing list, your blog audience is potentially limited only to those with web access.
You’ll also need to convert your content so that it works for the web. This means, among other things, that you’ll need to “tighten it up.” Make your posts short and to the point. The web is giving us all A.D.D. If you can’t hook your readers quickly, you’ll lose them fast. But that is also good news. It forces you to chop up your otherwise lengthy materials into bite-sized pieces, which in turn, means more blog posts.
You work hard. Recycle some of that work into blog posts. I just did. And I intend to do it more in the near future.
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