Very few law firms have yet to consider a knowledge management (KM) initiative. Some firms remain sceptical and are holding back resources until greater experience and consistent positive results are available. Many firms have already dipped their toe in the water and have invested, to various degrees, in KM. A few firms have been through a generational evolution of their KM initiatives, with some of these firms quietly reaping the benefits from knowledge programmes with little publicity for fear of losing their current competitive advantage; a number of firms are publicly enthusing about their success.

Those firms gaining a positive return from KM have directed their approach by linking it to their business strategy. How to openly link KM initiatives to business strategy, without being seen as only paying lip-service to the alignment can be difficult and lessons can be learned from those who have benefited from such an exercise.

These firms are working through, or have already gone through, the transformation from 'legal practices' to a 'legal business' and have found that knowledge management principles act as a transformation agent. These firms are:

. gearing their business around the needs of bespoke legal advice and/or commoditised legal services;

. driving unnecessary cost out of the business, rather than having a broad-brush reduction of all costs, while strategically investing in the business; and

. recognising that practice and business development needs to be considered on a multi-fiscal year basis.

It is instructive to look at attitudes to KM in the US and Europe over the past 10 years. There is a clear history of US firms looking to the technology 'silver bullet' for KM success, while Continental firms put their emphasis on people/cultural concerns and improvement. In this environment, the UK sat nicely in between these forces, recognising that KM success is primarily a people and process debate, while also recognising the need for technology as a facilitator of changing practices. The breadth of the English Channel compared to the vast span of the Atlantic Ocean provides a measure of the balance attributed to the people/process view and the technology enabler in the UK.

This technology hypnosis often associated with US-centric firms has not been demonstrably successful. Believing that KM is solved by technology and that as long as you pick the right software you will reap the benefits, has consistently led to a lack of focus and lack of investment in the people and process issues intrinsic to successful knowledge management, while leading to a lot of client service disruption and substantial spend. With the reemergence of internal investment in US firms after a few tight years, the more balanced 'UK' perspective is being mimicked as a good practice mindset.

How can firms openly link KM and business strategy?

Stating that 'our KM strategy follows our firm's business strategy' sounds politically correct, but how is this effected in a pragmatic and practical way? Business strategies do not typically extend to useful specifics on activities such as knowledge management, so some qualitative questioning into the essence behind your firm's business strategy is necessary to get to this level of detail.

A simple and effective method of getting to the 'emotions' behind a business strategy is to question firm leaders on their aspirations. These aspirations can identify the roadmap that the firm intends to follow, allowing the questioner to identify the capabilities that would be necessary to meet these aspirations and from these capabilities derive the KM solutions that need to be considered.

Care should be taken to ensure firm aspirations are heard from a cross-section of firm leadership. A managing partner will have aspirations based on an aggregation of the different market segments present in the firm. The aspirations of practice group leaders will also be necessary since differing KM solutions may be needed by different practice groups.

Example aspirations heard from law firm leaders include:

. we want to do only top tier work (with absolutely the minimum of commodity work to preserve client relationships); or

. we want to do only commodity work, based on high turnover and maximised profitability; or

. we want to do more top-tier work and less commodity work, but always retain a blend; or

. we want to bring our next generation fee earners to full effectiveness as quickly as possible; or

. we want to reduce the risk of our client service.

Each of these aspirations can then be analysed into capabilities, for example:

. we want to attract the best and brightest lawyers (expanded for demonstration purposes);

. I want to be able to do interesting challenging work (i.e. no drudgery);

. I want access to experts who are willing and have the time to coach me;

. I want access to high quality legal information resources delivered just in time based on my special interests at a point in time; or

. I want a formal structured professional development programme.

Development of specialised skills and expertise

. Innovate continuously; or

. access to/partner with specialised skills (e.g. economists).

To provide these capabilities, KM solutions can be attributed, such as:

. document assembly tools;

. access to know-how;

. better search and navigation tools for legal information;

. expertise locator;

. online legal training;

. legal process automation capabilities; and

. career development matrices.

The ability to demonstrably derive KM initiatives from the firm's business strategy and the aspirations of firm leadership provides those initiatives with an understandable context and justification in the eyes of lawyers. Allocating a weighting to the initiatives identified allows for prioritisation and the allocation of scarce resources.

Crucially, the maturity of the debate held with executive and financial committees and with front-line lawyers has grown. Through direct relationship to the firms' business imperatives, KM has acted to empower the firm to achieve its business goals.

Simon Levene is a consultant with Baker Robbins & Company in its London office.