Digital White Papers

49 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT KM in a Time of Innovation A New KM Structure KM has moved into various areas of legal practices. The traditional support model at law firms used to set out four main areas (not including finance): » IT system support » Library/research/KM support » Legal technology support » Legal project management With disruptive technology and the rising amount of new knowledge, this model must be revised. Either KM responsibility should be shared among the four teams or the teams should be combined so the same KM standards are applied uniformly. KM centralization creates a "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" effect. Combining different teams prompts dialogue and communication that previously did not exist, and bringing different perspectives together may spark new ideas. Team members can leverage their variety of skills to provide an integrated support for the legal team. The challenge is for law firms to recognize the need for change and restructure the KM team accordingly. Some law firms set up specialized roles such as for strategies and innovations or innovative knowledge management. New KM roles tend to focus on new products in the market and how firms can benefit from automating manual tasks. The innovations team also tests applications that firms are considering buying. Although most applications today are fairly intuitive, learning to use them properly still takes effort, and even more effort is needed to integrate applications with other systems. The innovations team can share its user experience with the rest of the firm to shorten the learning curve for everyone else. Things are moving forward fast, and KM needs to adapt in a time of innovation. KM's ongoing mission is to recognize new knowledge in different areas and make sure the legal team is equipped with sufficient knowledge for the new digital era. ILTA SHENGSHI ZHAO Shengshi Zhao is a Project Services Consultant at MinterEllison. She has 10 years of experience in information technology across financial and legal industries and brings together legal technology perspectives from both law firms and service providers. A consultant on various litigation and investigation matters using technology- assisted review, she is a certified project manager with a Juris Doctor from UNSW and a Bachelor of Science in actuarial mathematics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Contact her at shengshi.zhao@minterellison.com.

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