Access, ownership and the Knowledge Imperative

A while back I posted about the different benefits of access and ownership in the context of legal know-how and precedents.

PLC kindly tipped me off to a report they have recently commission and published called The Knowledge Imperative which touches on this access vs ownership issue.

You can get a copy of the report for free from the link above, but there is a registration form to fill in.

There are some interesting points for law firms on "distinguishing standardised from firm-specific knowledge" and using this intelligence to decide how best to create and maintain each type. This ranges from creating and maintaining internally at one end of the scale to:-

Rely[ing] on an external provider for the entire document and supporting notes

at the other (for example by subscribing to PLC?!).

What is really telling though are some of the quotes from the law firms interviewed... may favourite being a quote from an unnamed corporate partner who says that:-

"Document automation goes against the document creation model espoused by fee earners... we have not even been able to look at the costs and benefits."

For any firm which is looking beyond how its fee earners want to work and focussing on what actually provides value to clients this should be music to the ears. For how much longer is it seriously going to be realistic to charge clients a hefty hourly rate for churning out standard documents when your competitors are using document automation technology to carry out the same tasks?

If you are interested in knowledge management and outsourcing in the legal sector (and if you are a lawyer then maybe you should be) the report is definitely worth a read.