One of a corporate lawyer's top jobs is to help their clients navigate the complexity of law in order to obtain the best possible outcome for their business. In doing so, the goal is to exceed client expectations by achieving knowledge management efficiencies that allow you to share that same legal experience internally and with your clients. The most successful of these firms are reaching a point of collaboration that arms colleagues with the ability to share their experience across teams to enhance value throughout their practice.

As a result, a gap is forming between these knowledge management industry leaders and those firms that have yet to crack the code on realizing efficiency in capturing and centralizing this critically important information. At the same time, these trailing firms remain challenged by many of the same things that knowledge management can solve. For instance, according to the Thomson Reuters 2019 State of U.S. Small Firms Report, "a large percentage, if not a majority of respondents in each firm-size classification expressed at least moderate concern about spending too much time on administrative tasks, controlling costs, keeping abreast of new tech, a lack of internal efficiency, keeping up with the competition, getting paid by their clients,and clients demanding "more for less" or pushing back on firm rates."

Each of these challenges can be addressed with effective knowledge management. That said, while the thought of catching up to a front runner in any area of business can be overwhelming, technology can position all firms to work smarter rather than harder with knowledge management, in particular.

Legal technology provides several advantages to firms, giving them the ability to capture legal knowledge, collaborate with colleagues and share knowledge and opinions in real time.

Increased Efficiency

Regardless of how precisely focused the issue, there is an abundance of knowledge and data available today. This makes it nearly impossible for any one person to stay on top of all of it. Legal technology gives lawyers the ability to access existing knowledge in a single repository where all of the firm's know-how, data, files, tasks and activities are stored and managed.

As clients continue to demand faster service from firms, lawyers are in a position to respond by leveraging technology in a manner that allows its experience, work product and counsel to be immediately available to its clients. Using knowledge automation, for instance, firms can transform frequently used documents into intelligent templates that lawyers use and share internally. By automating document production and workflow, firms can save time and resources while simultaneously reducing risk and increasing accuracy.

Increased Value to Clients

Knowledge management is key to a law firms' ability to deliver consistent and quality legal services while maintaining sustainable margins regardless of fee structure. Knowledge automation technology not only helps increase efficiency, which directly impacts margins, but also adds value to client relationships. By providing improved transparency, increased responsiveness and enhanced communications, firms are able to differentiate themselves and build client trust and confidence—each of which are encouraged by effective knowledge management systems.

Delivery

An innovative approach to delivering legal services is becoming more and more critical to a firm's success and, in turn, a clients' satisfaction. With advancements being made in knowledge management, clients and law firms alike are improving productivity, risk management and client services. Firms are able to use automation to leverage know-how through quicker and more efficient access and deployment of information. In turn, this puts in-house counsel in a stronger position to report out on legal issues to their internal colleagues and leadership teams on a consistent basis.

Lawyer Knowledge

A central location for knowledge management helps provide a framework for capturing, maintaining and sharing expertise that can benefit a firm in the same way a rising tide raises all ships. Whether in regard to positioning associates to fast-track their learning or protecting against the loss of knowledge due to the departure of a partner, a custom information repository for internal and external knowledge allows a firm's lawyers to easily search and manage know-how, saving time and money. Combined with AI and contextual search tools, search experiences are optimized to find content and knowledge that is most valuable to the lawyers.

Risk Management

Ensuring compliance and mitigating risk can be among the top issues keeping law firm attorneys up at night. Lawyers need the ability to quickly and efficiently refer to previous matters and identify potential risks for clients. Knowledge management technology allows firms to address this need by leveraging relevant information in a way that streamlines compliance workflows across an entire firm.

By implementing legal technology with the intended purpose of strengthening knowledge management, firms are able to increase efficiency, maintain lawyer know-how, mitigate risk and deliver a more consistent and high quality level of counsel to clients. The capabilities of legal technology to do just that gives firms the ability to increase their value to clients and obtain the best possible outcome, while also maintaining a competitive edge on firms who are slower to embrace these best practices.

Sarah Leicester is global campaigns manager at HighQ, a collaboration software company that was acquired by Thomson Reuters in July. Leicester has spent her career helping companies leverage the strength of technology to help drive improved business value.