Knowledge Management, Law Firm, AI

 Knowledge Management (KM) refers to the practices and processes of storing knowledge generated in a company for easy access in future without any dependency. 

And KM for law firms or legal departments is paramount. The wheel can't be reinvented or the blue prints can't be treasure hunted every time. The clauses, the strategy, the research, and various documents need to be fetched and presented for a quick turnaround time. 

The benefits of KM are many and known and practiced as well. From improved productivity due to centralized database to context based searching, from capturing knowledge to improved team collaboration and cohesion. 

The challenges remain the same - people (unwilling to change), processes (lack of it or not inline withe new realities of business), and technology (lack of it or still grappling with legacy systems or not aligned with current needs). 

Now, I feel the easiest to get people, processes, and technology to come onboard is using the ubiquitous Microsoft SharePoint. SharePoint is a content management and knowledge management system by allowing storing, sharing, and collaboration of content/documents. SharePoint supports the usual security features as required under GDPR. The ease of usage including searching, and scalability makes it one of the most easily available technology since Microsoft is anyways purchased by firms. 

Now, I feel SharePoint's USP is providing an ample opportunity to bring in the changes for people and processes. Simply put at least three policies in place - naming convention, filing order, mandatory storing of documents after every deliverable - with strict enforcement. In a year, the changes would be evident. 

Once the people and process changes are in place, its time for technology upgrade provided the investment makes sense to business. If the firm has not experience overall growth, then the ROI on new technology will not be visible in near term of 6-9 months. However, the firm has experience significant growth, technology change becomes mandatory since SharePoint doesn't allow metadata addition and search can return any number of documents. 

At this point, one may further look into DMS - document management system. There are solutions for KM that can work on top of SharePoint's DMS. The policies and processes now include defining metadata including keywords, versions, excerpts, etc., other than bibliographic details, defining structure for storing content, workflow for review and retrieving, commenting, adding addendum, updates, indexing etc. Most of the solutions now capture the metadata and classify documents by reviewing the documents with minimal manual intervention. 

In a way the DMS and KMS will reflect databases law firms purchases. The culture change that needs to be driven is the significant improvement in efficiency of individual lawyers. Rest of the improvements are just bonus. 

Now, add the AI. Once can jump to AI based solutions even after using SharePoint and without particularly purchasing any specific KM solution. AI can automate all the tasks of storing the documents. 

The fun lies in the retrieval with accurate relevancy, predictive analytics, and identifying subject matter experts for collaboration with generative AI. The creation of reports and summaries is icing on cake. 

It is imperative to understand here the challenges for using AI. The bias can be reduced to certain extent if the data set is limited to what is firm generated documents and differentiating from pure research work. But hallucination can only be verified manually. Data privacy and security requires stringent measures. Most importantly, client needs to be informed about the use of AI. AI is entirely different species from the rule-based automation and predictive analytics. AI is now learning but soon it can think. It may be fun but like the adage - speed thrills but kills - be careful.