Celine Kelly Knowledge and Client Solutions Manager
Knowledge is power for legal teams who are navigating complex legal issues on a daily basis. But how can legal teams harness the collective knowledge of their colleagues and leverage it to improve their efficiency, collaboration and decision-making? In this article, I explore the concept and practice of knowledge management (KM) for legal teams, and how they can overcome the challenges of sharing both tacit and explicit knowledge. I also discuss the role of knowledge champions, the importance of a supportive culture and effective change management, and some practical strategies and tools to facilitate knowledge transfer.
KM is fundamentally about having a structured approach to identifying, capturing, organising and sharing knowledge within a department or organisation to drive efficiency, foster collaboration and support better decision-making.
For legal teams, KM means using people, processes, and technology to wrangle expertise and experience into something that can be used and reused by the team when and where they need it. The objectives of a team’s knowledge strategy will centre around known and identified gaps or challenges that the team are faced with, for example:
- breaking down information silos between teams and units
- reducing effort taken around similar or standard pieces of work
- reducing time taken to on-board new colleagues
- capturing tacit knowledge to reduce knowledge loss resulting from employee turn-over
These knowledge objectives will be a strategic driver of change on the legal team.
Tacit and explicit knowledge
Knowledge sharing among the legal team is typically the first building block to a KM solution. Generally, knowledge will fall into two major types: explicit and tacit. Explicit knowledge is the written down and tangible work product of a team or individual. Tacit knowledge is the experiential know-how, insights and learnings derived from specific experiences, transactions and matters.
Tacit knowledge is the pinnacle of KM and its efforts on the legal team. It is the expertise, judgment and experience of seasoned lawyers residing in their heads and may not be reflected in documents or files. Sharing tacit knowledge is one of the most challenging aspects of KM. How does a seasoned lawyer with years of making decisions and judgment calls articulate and share that nuanced and valuable experience and pass that knowledge on to someone else?
EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE
- written down or recorded somewhere
- easily transferrable to others
- easier to organise, make accessible and reuse
- found in documents, legal briefs, e-mails, presentations, memos, advices from counsel, practice guides, databases, spreadsheets and other documented or recorded media
- focus on infrastructure for capture, collection and re-use of documents, recordings etc.
TACIT KNOWLEDGE
- fundamentally personal and resides in a person's mind
- is intuitive and embedded in an individual's experience
- has not been captured or documented and so is hard to share and transfer to others
- focus on collaborative behaviours and knowledge exchange e.g. after action reviews, lessons learned sessions, people-to-people connections, discussion forums. The documented output of these activities is captured as explicit knowledge
For legal teams, some effective activities to share tacit knowledge include:
- regular after-action debriefs where team members discuss the strategies and outcomes of recent projects and workstreams
- mentoring programs which pair less experienced lawyers with experienced colleagues
- collaborative platforms and other technology where the team can contribute insights and best practices in a place where that knowledge can be searched and reused over time
And the challenges don’t end there. How do you make sure that the rest of the team is receptive to knowledge sharing? We’ve all had the experience of struggling to execute a task when a colleague swoops in with a piece of advice or a technique that changes everything and sets you back on track. You never forget that moment or the advice. At that point you’re fully primed and ready to receive, and to apply, new knowledge. The transfer of tacit knowledge is completed perfectly in this scenario. However, creating those kind of successful and effective transfer moments consistently and at scale across the team is a real challenge.
Champions
Knowledge champions will be key to developing relevant and practical ways to improve tacit knowledge flow. The knowledge champions are the group of people within the department who have the responsibility and mandate to drive efforts to meet the department’s knowledge objectives. Most teams don’t have the luxury of a part-time, let alone a full-time, resource dedicated to KM, so the champions need to be a group of people who genuinely believe in the value of knowledge to the team and who understand its ability to streamline work for the team. Champions shouldn’t be expected to do all the work associated with executing the knowledge programme, but are there to advocate for knowledge needs and to identify those across the department who might be a good fit for the specific projects that will drive the objectives.
As the architects of the knowledge framework, the champions will need the resources, as well as the mandate, to build something effective and scalable. In the KM world, this will mean bringing technology and processes together to capture tacit knowledge where colleagues are working. On the technology side, if the team can focus on using the software and platforms that the company already licences, it means they will be able to get started sooner on the knowledge work rather than on the administrative processes around securing budget or completing data reviews of new platforms.
Some traditional starting points for knowledge systems might include creating searchable channels in Teams or Slack where lawyers can discuss specific issues and topics or share tips on procedural matters. Equally, it might mean using SharePoint to develop a knowledge base of curated and tagged team legal resources including precedent templates, practice notes, external advices and research memos.
For both technology and processes, keep things as simple as possible and don’t burden colleagues with complicated new systems or complex new procedures. Knowledge sharing and transfer needs to happen where colleagues are already working and must not add administrative load or convoluted extra steps to already stretched personnel.
Collaboration and culture
Collaboration is ingrained into the lawyer’s way of working. It is built into how law firms and legal departments are organised, supervised and risk-managed. Working together and asking questions is essential for delivering high-quality legal services to the business. However, this informal collaboration often does not translate into a systematic and effective way of sharing and accessing knowledge. There are many reasons why knowledge sharing can be difficult, such as time pressure, lack of confidence or technical hurdles. It is also hard to measure and demonstrate the benefits of having good KM systems in place, which can affect the willingness to invest in them.
Beyond technology and processes, effective knowledge transfer requires a specific dynamic between those who have the knowledge and those who need it. It is a delicate balance that requires people to be open and generous about sharing what they know, without feeling like they are giving away their competitive advantage. On the other side of the balance, people need to be receptive to that knowledge. They need to be willing to ask questions and admit that they don’t know something. Both sides of this balance require an environment of trust and psychological safety. It also requires a culture where knowledge sharing and reuse is valued, recognised and promoted as the behaviour of high performing and high achieving personnel.
A key obstacle to knowledge sharing is a lack of attention to the values and behaviours that are needed to foster a culture of sharing. This may be because the knowledge plan focuses solely on technology and processes and doesn’t articulate the behaviours expected, or recognise the changes needed, to effectively share and reuse knowledge across the team. Your people are the cornerstone to knowledge sharing, which is why a key element of any knowledge strategy will be figuring out how to motivate colleagues to become knowledge contributors and creators.
Changing culture is hard work but incremental shifts towards an environment where meeting, sharing and talking about knowledge and lessons learned is valued and recognised is possible. Clear, consistent and regular communication on KM efforts, projects and initiatives is needed to build awareness amongst the department. Position the programme clearly and outline in particular where there are mandatory requirements around, for example, contributions or other accountabilities. Building effective awareness can take a surprising amount of time, so you must be prepared to deliver the same messages again and again.
Change management
Change management offers practical suggestions for ways to introduce change with reduced friction. At the core of change management models is an understanding of the human experience and the need to consider this experience to produce the most positive outcome for the business. This is a principle which is also central to service design, design thinking and digital transformation: that is, the value of user centricity.
KM and change management are complimentary disciplines when designing knowledge initiatives. Whereas KM programmes can easily ‘forget’ the impact new technologies and process have on the team, change management refocuses attention back on the individuals of the team who must live with both the positive and negative impacts of new initiatives.
Considering change management principles in tandem with new KM initiatives means a smoother road to success. For example, change management principles that require participation from the legal team in the design and deployment of KM systems should mean better engagement from day of launch. Change management is also concerned with the importance of communicating the why, what, when and how of change to everyone in the organisation who will be impacted by the change. Storytelling and personalised messaging across multiple communication channels will be used to ensure that the message is received concisely, clearly and consistently.
Blockers to change could include complicated new systems and logins, and inconsistent communications during change which give rise to confusion. The smaller the effort needed to create a new habit, the better the chances of adoption. Too much change in a short period can overwhelm and frustrate colleagues, so, ideally, change should be incremental and build smoothly on previous developments.
Legal Leaders' Toolkit
The Legal Leaders’ Toolkit is an award-winning online toolkit that has been designed for legal teams looking to bring KM solutions and efficiencies to their departments.
The Toolkit contains multi-media know-how and advice for in-house teams looking to start a KM programme. Get in touch with your usual ALG contact to request access.