The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/96072
New associates in KM boot camp would be recruited to co-author model documents with senior lawyers. even a few months would help) on particular KM projects, with KM professionals leading the charge? How might this work? Following a general firm orientation, new associates would be turned over to the KM team for a crash course on the finer points of law firm KM. The team would describe the work the new associates would do and train them to do it, taking care to fully emphasize how the rest of the firm will use the end products and the value those products will bring. Following their KM basic training, these recruits would go into the trenches to complete several important assignments. One primary duty would be to interview lawyers in their practice group about any documents those lawyers have contributed to the firm's precedent collection. Armed with a set of interview questions developed by the KM team, new associates would ask the contributing lawyers questions about the document and matter, including the nature of the deal, the parties' priorities and any unusual or particularly interesting clauses. With this information, the new associate would annotate the precedent, adding context and bringing potential users a richer understanding 52 Peer to Peer of the document and reducing the risk of blind reliance on it. In addition to one-on-one exposure to lawyers in their practice group, new associates would become intimately acquainted with the elements of the various documents — much more so than they would by attending a seminar or trying to write one alone. Along the same lines, new associates in KM boot camp would be recruited to co-author model documents with senior lawyers. Over a series of meetings, the associate and senior lawyer could review existing precedents for well-worded clauses and alternatives for a range of scenarios. Together they would identify any necessary research into clauses or other aspects, which the new associate would then conduct. After the new associate prepares a first draft of the model, the pair would revise as many drafts as necessary to present a polished, final model to the practice group. In this way, the new associate gets hands-on, in-depth drafting experience, and the firm gets a new — and arguably better — model document. Why better? Through the process of explaining and discussing clauses with the new associate, the senior lawyer may come to eliminate archaic language with no legal significance, used for no