Texas Library Association: The Next Generation of Knowledge Management
Greg Lambert writes:
I had the honor of presenting to at the Texas Library Association Conference here in Houston today. The topic was on Library and Knowledge Management’s collaborative roles within a firm, and how they can work together to bring in better processes, automate certain manual procedures, and add analyze data in a way that makes it (and as a result, KM and Library) more valuable.
Below are the thoughts I wrote down to discuss six questions. These questions were raised at the ARK KM meeting earlier this year and, although the audience was substantially different, I thought it would be a good reference point to cover what is expected of us, and how we can contribute to the operations of the firm in unexpected ways. Thanks to Sean Luman for stepping in and co-presenting with me after Toby suddenly had a conflict.
[Note: Click here to see the Prezi that went along with the presentation.]
My first time to see a “Prezi.” See what you think about it. Comments?
BTW, I thought the frame with:
Lawyers like to think all work is “custom” work.
Clients tend to think most work is “repetitive” (but lawyers are still charging as if it is custom work.
Was quite amusing. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between those two positions.
I think topic maps can help to integrate not only traditional information sources with case analysis, pleadings, discovery, but non-traditional resources as well. News sources for example. Government agency rulings, opinions, treatment of similarly situated parties. The current problem being that an attorney has to search separate resources for all of those sources of information and more.
Skillful collation of diverse information sources using topic maps would allow attorneys to bill at full rate for the exercise of their knowledge and analytical skills, while eliminating charges for largely rote work of ferreting out resources to be analyzed.
For example, a patent topic map in a particular area, could deliver to a patent attorney just those portions of patents that are relevant for their review, not all patents in a searched area or even the full patents. And the paths taken on the analysis of one patent, could be available to other attorneys in the same firm, enabling a more efficient response to later queries in a particular area (think of it as legal bread crumbs).