Knowledge and experience management is one of the top four most important strategic challenges faced by the UK's leading law firms, according to research conducted by Thomson Elite. Following a recent survey of the UK's 125 largest firms, 73% of those surveyed rated it as either a 'very important' or an 'important' issue.

Retaining and exploiting the knowledge and experience within a firm, and being able to use it to the greatest competitive advantage, has always been a key management challenge. Its importance in recent years is heightened as the level of churn among qualified lawyers increases. How do you ensure that the knowledge and experience of departing lawyers is not entirely lost to the firm when they walk out of the door for the last time? And how do you ensure that the knowledge and experience of those who replace them is marshalled and maximised as quickly and effectively as possible?

The first prong of a strategy to cope with this is to look at how law firms can best retain and exploit knowledge and experience when staff turnover cannot be avoided. Innovative technology has a huge role to play here.

Secondly, it is critical to try to ensure that internal attitudes to the sharing of knowledge and experience are supportive. If information is not shared, is not used or is not regularly updated, it is valueless.

Third, and in parallel, firms must take measures to try to reduce staff turnover. This is an area which law firms have grappled with for many years, often unsuccessfully, and one which recruitment consultants have given us insight into for this article.

IT solutions

Today, firms claim to have a 'best practice bank' of documents and precedents that they point to for capturing know-how and leveraging experience. In practice, this really boils down to data and documents held on individual users' PCs and customised for their own benefits. We sometimes see a centralised database, but this is rarely used or updated.

With advances in online service, firms can not only create a 'best practice bank' of their own documents, but also access 'industry best practice precedent banks' from the various online suppliers such as Thomson Sweet & Maxwell. The real value kicks in when they can go even further and have these documents automatically updated to ensure that they are compliant with the latest changes in law.

The rewards for the use of such solutions are that firms can maximise their efficiency and have happier clients, more capacity and higher profits, while at the same time successfully retaining and leveraging know-how from both within the firm and outside.

For business development purposes the returns from the use of innovative knowledge and experience management systems can be even more immediately rewarding and transparent.

It is clearly critically important that partners preparing for pitches or putting together teams for a new case are fully aware of the experience and resources available to them firm-wide.

Yet as firms grow in size and there are more mergers, they increasingly lose touch with the individual expertise of new or existing staff. Firms that use experience management databases can find out easily and quickly who the best lawyers are for a particular task or client.

When new lawyers join a firm they are often not properly utilised. Being able to easily access detailed information about each and every staff member means that firms are more likely to succeed in their pitches, acquire new clients and increase their profits. Staff members with relevant experience are not overlooked, feel less frustrated, are more productive and can be rewarded accordingly.

In the UK many law firms do not have such experience and know-how databases, or, if they do, they are often not integrated or updated. Integration is key; for example, when a new lawyer starts, the system can trigger off the need to update and then leverage information from human resources (HR) systems, practice management systems and customer relationship management systems for use in experience and proposal generation. Surely this puts them at a competitive disadvantage to those in their peer group who can readily demonstrate that the total relevant strengths of their practice will be focused on meeting that particular client's needs?

Having more innovative solutions that automate the capture and re-use of know-how go some way toward helping to retain experience. However, obstacles arise because in many firms there is still a culture of not sharing knowledge.

Changing attitudes

Longstanding attitudes mean lawyers often hang onto important knowledge – simply because they do not have the time to share it, or because they believe it gives them the upper hand or it makes them seem more knowledgeable.

Firms can change these attitudes in a number of ways, such as offering incentives and recognition to those who contribute initially and also help with the continuous update of knowledge management systems. In many commercial companies, it has been embedded as part of the company's processes and within their performance management measurements. Such approaches have proved very successful in other industries and law firms should introduce these if they are to break down knowledge barriers and perform to their optimum.

Law firm staff retention

Now, to the question of lawyer churn. The past year has been a frenetic one, fuelled by M&A activity and lawyers have seen their career options grow.

There is an enormous demand from UK firms; from companies' in-house teams; from US firms which are expanding into the UK at a faster rate than ever before; and from firms abroad, especially in the Far East, the Cayman Islands, elsewhere in the European Union and in Middle Eastern professional centres such as Dubai.

The overriding view is that the demand for experienced lawyers has increased dramatically and that law firms are losing qualified staff at a rapid rate, especially if they do not address dissatisfaction issues properly. Well-managed firms that realise the importance of offering existing and potential employees improved lifestyles rather than just better pay packages are winning the battle to retain knowledge and expertise.

Professional recruiters cite a number of reasons why lawyers move jobs, with the most important one being the question of work/life balance. The long hours culture seems to be changing.

The holy grail of partnership is also moving down the list of lawyers' priorities. Slogging away for years on end with no clear idea of when – or even if – they will ever be made partner is becoming less attractive and instead lawyers are placing more importance on other rewards. Competitive pay is still important, but other rewards can include longer holidays, bonuses, performance-related pay and a varied and interesting workload.

Recruiters we spoke to painted a picture of many UK firms either not being particularly aware of the negative impact of having a high staff turnover, or not having any desire to change the way they treat their lawyers.

Lawyers often complain, it seems, about the coldness and remoteness of the culture within some firms. A simple mantra is 'treat lawyers better'. See lawyers as long-term assets, be honest about their career prospects and do not give them false hope about their immediate prospects. Acknowledge when they have been successful in a task, make them feel like they are part of a team and that their input is valued. Perhaps offer alternatives to becoming partner by, for example, giving different titles to senior staff members who deserve recognition.

Laurence Simons, managing partner of Laurence Simons International Legal Recruitment says: "It is quite simple: law firms which have a cavalier approach to their staff tend to have a higher level of churn. It always amazes me that some firms do not take more of an interest in why their staff are leaving."

Jitendra Valera is vice president international at Thomson Elite.