Sunday, June 28, 2009

Law Firm Knowledge Management Conference - Sydney

Lawyers Weekly Magazine last week published a summary of the recent Janders Dean Law Firm Management Conference in Sydney.

The feature report discusses the content and analysis of presentations given by Janet Young (COO of Freehills), Matthew Parsons (author and former global Chief Knowledge Officer at Linklaters), Justin Harness (associate Director of Macquarie Bank) and Simon Price (European Director of Recommind).

The conference was a useful and timely forum within which leaders from the Knowledge Management community in the APAC region discussed both the maturity of the knowledge discipline within law firms, and potential impacts on the future evolution of KM via the economic downturn.

"This year a study by the Korn/Ferry Institute asked senior partners of the Global 100 law firms to rank in order the importance of their support functions. Of the six options available - including business development, finance, HR, IT and sales and marketing - knowledge management came in last.

Janet Young, chief operating officer at Freehills, told the conference that she finds those results concerning. "You've got the top 100 firms in the world saying, '[KM] does not offer much value'."

Editor of Lawyers Weekly Angela Priestley asks: "will the downturn leave its own mark on the current state of the legal sector - and leave knowledge vulnerable to the axe? (Janet) Young thinks not. "It's helping our lawyers deliver what they need to do," she said."

The full feature article can be found
here.