Gerry Heidenreich

There are tons of sites and books that tackle the subject... it all boils down to one question:  How do I manage my knowledge???

Well... in a law-firm environment, the answer is a tough one.  I am having a rediculously interesting time trying to get my arms around the idea of all our information being everywhere! 

• Office documents stored in our DMS, many or most of which don't have useful metadata
• Millions of contacts stored in our CRM, but without using the tool to it's full extent, and without properly managing the data, it's become a glorified rolodex riddled with obsolete contacts and contact information
• Email - Personally I get 20-30 useful emails a day, they may be developer journals, information on the summer picnic, or continuous discussions about topics and/or issues within the firm.  Either way, I delete the other 150 or so that aren't important or useful, and store the rest away in folders I've created.  I've gotten pretty good at finding what I need when I need it.  I have my own system, as does just about everyone in the firm.  (Unfortunately, this includes printing out all the useful e-mails and storing hardcopies away in some cave).
• Paper - Emails, picnic memos, various client files, contracts, invoices,  you name it... it's on someone's desk, in a pile, or stored away forever.  The existance of these items is known mostly (often only) to he/she who put them there.  Good luck to the unfortunate individual hunting for one of these items.

... now they get interesting ...

• Phone calls in a VOIP network pass through the network.  Though I haven't researched it, I have to believe there's some method of capturing calls and storing them away for later use.  All information for every call in the network is stored in a database and retrievable other than the communication itself. 
• Meetings... the firm has 13 meeting rooms.  On any given day, at any time, 10 of these rooms are being used.  Often, they are full of attorneys and clients... Committees also meet regularly to discuss practice, administration, or, as of today, Knowledge Mangement... There are a few classic issues with meetings.  First, especially in the case of a committee situation, not everyone can attend.  Secondly, and most importantly, much the information gained in a meeting gets filtered out immediately after walking out of the meeting room and stepping back into real-life.  Even if minutes were gathered for the meeting, the topics, points & counter-points, and conclusions discussed are rarely stored away effectively.  This is a prime example of uncaptured information that, if captured, could serve as a powerful knowledge tool!

Now... after looking at this very incomplete list of knowledge sources within the firm, you can begin to recognize a pattern with our issues.

1. Electronically captured knowledge is being used in a shallow manner.  Users enter the information they need to enter, and do not understand the value of supplying additional information in their document.  Users do not understand the value of meta-data.
2. Papers are easy to carry with you, but if there's no electronic version of the information stored away, then there's no way to search and retrieve the information on each paper document.  The information is isolated and still uncaptured by a knowledge system.  OCR/Imaging solutions allow us to turn paper into electronically captured information.  Also, users need to be able to disconnect and take information with them.
3. Enterprise Applications tend to have features embedded that enable rich searching capability, or even (in the case of CRM) “context-sensitive“ intelligence at your fingertips.  Learning that these capabilities exist in the applications used everyday bring power to the user, and ultimately, valuable knowledge to the enterprise.  Train users extensively on enterprise applications.
4. Uncaptured information is everywhere.  In phone calls and meetings, issues are discussed, conclusions are made, and business is done.  Very little of this correspondence gets captured, though it should be considered one of the most important examples of information and knowledge.  A bridge needs to build to tie uncaptured information into a knowledge system.

So... what have I gotten myself into?  All I know is that this will be an amazing experience for myself, and it's going to be a long ride.