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Much has been written about the legal industry's efforts to provide greater value to clients at a lower cost. But the special challenges that large, global law firms face when implementing this innovation mandate are often overlooked. Increasingly savvy clients want their firms to leverage meaningful data, streamline their workflows, and provide greater clarity and reliability on pricing. Doing so requires outside counsel to properly collect and store data, standardize work product to the extent practical, automate where possible, and develop holistic solutions that meet the aforementioned goals and promote client collaboration.

With thousands of lawyers and dozens of practice groups spread among multiple jurisdictions around the globe, devising more than just point solutions can feel daunting for global firms. What's more, most lawyers don't have the bandwidth to focus on innovation. And most IT professionals—if they are not lawyers themselves—are not familiar enough with lawyer and client needs to design solutions without heavy lawyer involvement. This is why knowledge management (KM) teams are essential to meet firms' innovation goals.

KM serves as the bridge between practicing attorneys, business services teams and IT. Because many KM professionals are lawyers themselves, they have a level of subject matter expertise that allows them to relate to practicing lawyers, anticipate their needs, and communicate the value of products and initiatives. KM professionals also share an understanding of, and adaptability to, new technology, and can help the firm make wise investments by advising which tools will serve real business needs. As a liaison, a KM team solves several innovation struggles within large law firms.

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Problem #1: Decentralized Knowledge and Information

In law firms with multiple offices around the world, each office, practice group, and partner may have their own set of documents, their own precedents, their own noteworthy samples, their own version of the "in search of" email, and more. This often means that even relatively routine tasks are undertaken in a bespoke manner, which is inherently inefficient. A KM team can reduce these inefficiencies by working with practice groups to adopt standardized form documents, creating a centralized electronic knowledge bank that is accessible to everyone firm-wide, or implementing electronic search of the repositories housing the knowledge.

Before jumping to a solution as advanced as enterprise search, for example, there are steps that a firm just starting out on its innovation journey should not skip. Firms should begin by curating content. They can work with practice groups to ensure that a) the most frequently used documents contain agreed-upon language, b) all language options are present within the document, and c) there is sufficient guidance to help a drafter navigate the form. Beginning at this level ensures that solutions that build upon the document (e.g., process maps, document automation, or enterprise search) rely on the most relevant, complete, and user-friendly version of the document.

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Problem #2: Lack of Standardization

In a sense, lack of standardization is tightly connected to Problem #1. But it also presents an opportunity unto itself and goes deeper than just knowledge sharing. Most firms could benefit from stronger, clearer standards in many areas: document drafting, naming conventions, matter classification and profiling, standardized processes for opening new projects, and other models that help the firm deliver more consistent work product to the client. Standardization techniques not only increase efficiency and reduce error, they also promote a more cohesive global brand.

The central role of KM is figuring out how to design these standards so that the firm can better leverage and scale its resources. The KM team can partner with the practice groups to learn how they are currently working, what is important to them, and how they could benefit from various improvements. The team can then use this information to craft useable standards and taxonomies for the practice group.

At the beginning of a standardization project, the KM team should think about how it will capture metrics that define the project's success. For instance, the team may want to know whether the process or document is saving time, or how many times a particular form document has been used. When the KM team determines how it will capture and report this data upfront—when it begins with the end in mind—it can undertake the project with a clearer idea of the goals it wants to achieve.

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Problem #3: Bridging the Gap Between Lawyers and IT

Lawyers and IT professionals often communicate as though they do not speak the same language. This often means too much time spent getting projects off the ground, frustration on both sides, and solutions that may not address the whole (or the actual) problem. KM professionals can close this divide by understanding the ways in which lawyers work and translating their needs into technology requirements. The KM team can also act as an intermediary between the development teams and the lawyers after implementation, ensuring that developers learn how the lawyers use the solutions, what issues they have, and where there may be opportunities for improvements.

Because KM and IT teams are often reliant on one another for the success of their projects, it is important to cultivate a good relationship between the two groups. Even if KM and IT work under separate leadership, they need to treat each other as though they are all on the same team.

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Problem #4: Responding to Clients

The beginning of this article mentioned that the innovation mandate was client-driven. And it's with the client that we find KM's fourth major contribution to a firm's innovation initiatives. When a client asks its outside counsel what they are doing to promote quality and efficiency and reduce costs, the KM team can be a valuable partner in responding to these inquiries.

However, recent years have seen the client-KM relationship go beyond requests for information and toward collaboration that leverages both sides of the client-law firm boundary. One way KM at a large firm might work with clients is by providing KM as a service. By sharing its thought processes and projects, a law firm's KM team can essentially serve in the KM role within a corporate law department. Additionally, just as KM devises means of sharing and centralizing content and communication within a law firm, it can do the same for communication and content between the firm and the client.

A great way to find opportunities for KM-client collaboration is by attending the many knowledge management or legal operations conferences held each year. These conferences—such as CLOC or ARK KM—are usually well-attended by clients who have a keen interest in innovative KM solutions. Moreover, the laid-back atmosphere at conferences lends itself to really getting to know the client, what their pain points are, and how KM can help create desired solutions.

Innovative legal service delivery can be especially tricky to get right at a large, global firm. Such firms operate in multiple jurisdictions, comprise thousands of employees, and must meet lofty expectations of countless clients. A KM function is the string that ties together the needs of disparate regions and practices, weaving in technology and efficiency initiatives where appropriate.

Jordan Galvin is a US-qualified lawyer and serves as the Knowledge Management Resources Lead for Mayer Brown. She is passionate about empirically evaluating legal services and delivery mechanisms, and collaborating across teams to create scalable solutions.

Philip Bryce first became a full-time knowledge management lawyer at a major US-based law firm in 1999, putting him among the first wave of US law-firm KM leaders.  Since 2015, he has been the Global Director of Knowledge Management at Mayer Brown. He received his undergraduate degree from Tufts University and his law degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law. He served as a law clerk for the late Hon. T.F. Gilroy Daly in the District of Connecticut and as a practicing litigation associate with a large law firm before moving into a full-time KM role.