Outsourcing know-how

With just over a month to go until Ark Group’s inaugural ‘Outsourcing Know-How in Law Firms’ conference, people are beginning to get rather excited. This topic, although by no means new, has been one of the hottest on the KM circuit in recent months. Indeed, when Joanna Goodman, KM Legal’s feature writer, approached knowledge professionals in the early stages of research for this month’s cover feature, she was almost swamped with opinions and comment on how best to utilise external providers in knowledge processing and know-how management.

Seemingly, despite a buoyant legal market, the impending commoditisation of legal services is causing concern for many firms, particularly in the areas of salaries and fees. The fact that growth cannot be maintained indefinitely is another worry.

For those firms that have already responded to these pressures by outsourcing some of their legal updating and know-how processing, there remain a number of unanswered questions: how far can the balance between outsourcing and utilising internal know-how teams and professional support lawyers be tipped? What service provider to use? How can know-how be outsourced effectively when, currently, there is little provision for specialist practice areas? Similarly, unless the external market in legal know-how itself grows, what is the future for outsourcing? I’m sure you will find the points raised in the cover feature (page 10) of interest.

A more detailed account of a law firm approach to outsourcing (or not) can be found in this issue’s Q&A (page 14), which details aspects of know-how processing and development, with a centralised approach, at UK firm Irwin Mitchell.

Elsewhere, Catherine Flutsch provides coverage of some of the highlights of the recent European Knowledge Management Thought Leaders’ Forum, at which she chaired the opening day. Along with detailing a useful benchmarking and networking exercise carried out by participants, she finds inspiration in some of the work being done by KM players outside of the legal profession.

I hope that you enjoy this November/December issue of the magazine. As always, if you would like to write an article, have any feedback or would like to see a particular area covered within these pages, I can be contacted by e-mail at kclifton@ark-group.com.

Kate Clifton
Editor