KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
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What Legal KM Professionals Can Learn from KM in the Big Four
Even the casual reader of the legal press cannot miss the
news that the Big Four are expanding into the legal market. As
innovators and trend-spoers, law firm knowledge management
(KM) professionals can benefit from understanding KM
practices in Big Four consulting companies to learn from their
example and consider their impact on the changing legal
marketplace. Vishal Agnihotri has two decades of experience in
KM, including working for two of the Big Four firms, KPMG and
EY. She moved into the legal space nearly four years ago as the
first Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) at Akerman and is currently
the CKO at Hinshaw & Culbertson. I met with Agnihotri to
discuss KM in the Big Four. We had a wide-ranging discussion
about staffing, responsibilities, collaboration technology,
adoption and experience capture.
Approach to KM Staffing
Due to the size and scale of Big Four firms, the typical ratio of
KM professionals to client-facing professionals is the same or
even smaller than at most law firms. While at EY, Agnihotri's
team of 12 reports served 7,000 in the Americas Financial Service
Office. For a firm of almost 200,000 people worldwide, the global
knowledge team was 750 people strong (a 266:1 ratio). About
300 people of those 750 were in EY India and were responsible
for research and content management. At KPMG, the country
specific and service line KM groups reported to the senior
partners at the member firm, country or practice group level,
but took direction on overall knowledge strategy from the
global CKO.
by Cindy Thurston Bare of Foundation Soware Group, and Vishal Agnihotri of Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP
What Legal KM Professionals Can
Learn from KM in the Big Four
