Why should your legal management implement knowledge management models?

It is not new that information has now become one of the major assets of companies. Despite this, one of the most common challenges that we identify in our consultancies to legal areas, lies precisely in the existence of hidden knowledge, stored in a disintegrated way and without the ability to be used for informed decision-making.

Some of the factors that make knowledge management difficult are:

• The traditional culture of the lawyer where "knowledge is power" or where the individual possession of knowledge is consistently rewarded.
• The information available to them is distributed in silossuch as groups, departments or colleagues.
• The loss of knowledge for impending withdrawals or voluntary withdrawals.
• The fact that members of legal departments do not have uniform access to sources information or knowledge.

Understanding that knowledge is the only asset that grows over time seems imperative to implement models that allow for proper administration.

A decade ago, knowledge management emerged as a discipline of "business innovation." This discipline has reached a level of maturity where the principles, practices and tools that make it unique can be discerned.

What is knowledge management in legal departments?

It is the process by which acquires, generates, stores, shares and uses informationideas and experiences in order to develop wisdom and capacity to contribute to the implementation of the strategic objectives of the organization. Facilitating the transmission to partners in a systematic and efficient manner.

The objectives of knowledge management in legal departments are:

• Capture "know how" legal.
• Keep the best jobs, regardless of who generated them / created them (document management).
• Find information more easily (centralized search)
• Data collection content in multiple sources.
• Making better use of what has already been paid, avoiding "reinvent the wheel."
• Promoting a cultural change towards collaboration instead of silos, facilitating the communication of legal equipment.
• Building databases to enable the company make better decisions.

But... how to implement knowledge management in a legal management?

Some of the best practices for transferring knowledge are:

• For immediate application:
  • Mentor programs.
  • Documentation generation processes.
  • Documentary repository.
  • Documenting / disseminating best practices.
• retrospective learning:
  • Interview with experts.
  • Information sessions drawn from lessons learned.
  • Case studies.
• Active learning:
  • Combined learning, such as classes, online education and discussion.
  • Increased skills, skills and technical learning.
  • Present the contextual or historical foundation behind selected themes, events or other topics.
  • Provide practical experimental learning through special assignments and in-action learning programmes.

In this regard, we recommend that the following methodological order be used:

• Knowledge Audit: Identification of the main information, needs and uses of the information in the company. In parallel, the objectives of the legal department, the services provided, the customers and the environment are analysed.

Example: identification of means in which information is stored, identification of tacit and explicit knowledge, know-how, processes, procedures, identification of information silos, among others.

• Brechas analysis: It analyses the difference between the state of management of the current knowledge of the company and the desired one in terms of facilitators and barriers for a successful implementation of a knowledge management.
• Strategy Roadmap: Building a strategy for the legal department, setting key priorities for implementation.

Example: comparison between the two states identified from which a planning with goals, activities, responsible and main milestones arises to be met with defined dates for the implementation of the strategy.

• Implementation of Knowledge Management Technologies: Implementation requires various tools that participate in the knowledge management cycle. These facilitate communication, collaboration and content management for better capture, distribution, dissemination and application of knowledge.

Example: information collection tools, wikis access portals, among others. Some tools can be: Zendesk, Hubspot, Sharepointamong others.

Our recommendation...

Knowledge management is one of the 12 key competencies that identifies CLOCwith which a legal department must count to increase its efficiency, as we put it in our article: how to make your legal management more efficient.

While this competence is grouped within the competence of an advanced legal management, our recommendation is that an analysis be made of the state of health of knowledge and information management in your legal department.

Implementing the Madurez Index Test which we have developed in Alsteryou can get a road map to identify the opportunities for improvement in your legal department.

To learn more about our services and solutions for legal management, visit local.Alster.law

By Guillermo Teibo, CIO in Alster.