Legal knowledge management: Why it’s the lifeblood of your organisation
As organisations become increasingly globalised, more complex, and adopt different ways of working, the lifeblood of an organisation lies in efficient access to core legal knowledge. However, legal functions frequently struggle to surface information both within their team and throughout the rest of the business, often leaving people unable to find key legal information, policies, and documents when needed.
Furthermore, without a systematic method of keeping the knowledge current, information becomes outdated. Yet, people still access and rely on it.
What is knowledge management for Legal teams?
There are numerous definitions of knowledge management but, in general, it means capturing, storing, locating, and using relevant information, as needed.
Legal teams often overlook this area, even though it can significantly impact time, cost, and regulatory risk due to:
- People and content distributed globally
- Content sitting in silos and across multiple data stores
- Lack of governance around the creation and storage of content
- Lack of connectivity between systems
- Teams relying on out-of-date content
The benefit of knowledge management is clear. Where should you start, and what should you tackle first?
1. Know the challenges
Speaking with people in the legal team and the business, particularly those involved in the process you are attempting to improve, offers the best way to learn more about their challenges. For knowledge and legal content management, this may include:
- Senior legal stakeholders – Understand the views and objectives of senior stakeholders within the legal team. Knowledge and content provide a window into legal teams for the wider business, so it’s important that stakeholders feel comfortable with their representation.
- Lawyers from each sub-team – Identify the needs of the lawyers who will be relying on legal content to carry out their day-to-day tasks
- Producers of legal knowledge and content – Recognise the needs of those producing legal content. Make it as easy as possible to create content; otherwise, the frequency and quality of their output could suffer.
- Business users – Focus on areas of the business which regularly interact with the legal team to understand their requirements and pain points
2. Research user needs and pain points
Conduct surveys and interviews to learn about the issues your users experience, focusing on what they look for when it comes to legal knowledge or approaching the legal department.
- Their preferred methods of finding legal information
- Pain points with the current method of finding legal information
- Positive experiences of where they have been able to locate the legal information they needed
- How they would rate their current experience — these insights can later help measure the impact of improvements
3. Know your content
A spring clean of your content may be in order! Examine the content already available within the business. This will require significant effort, but you might be surprised by how much outdated information you can remove.
With the remaining content, focus on answering key questions:
- Who is the intended audience? – This will have an impact on where the content should sit. If you intend the content for people on a specific project or function, store it in a secure location and restrict access.
- Which category should this content fit into? Designing a categorisation taxonomy can greatly improve how easily you find and understand your content.
- Who owns the content? Identify the person who will be responsible for it once you make it available to ensure accurate and up-to-date knowledge sharing. Content owners must review it regularly to update or archive as needed.
- Does the content require regular updates? For example, you should expire or flag documents tied to regulatory change dates. Other materials, like precedents, may evolve over time. Technology can help by setting automated reminders and alerts.
4. Know your tech
While you may eventually need to purchase technology to support this solution, start by using what is already available within the business. This approach is the lifeblood of an organisation, dramatically reducing the time and cost involved.
First, speak to your IT team to determine whether suitable technologies are already available. Better use of existing Microsoft 365 licences, particularly SharePoint, Teams, and the Power Platform, often meets legal team needs.
Putting it all together
You have identified your users, understood their issues, and reviewed your existing content and technology. Now it’s time to design a solution to manage your legal knowledge. Start by creating a proof of concept that meets the most critical needs. Then, gather feedback from a small group of users to ensure you are on the right track. You can then plan further iterations to meet the remaining requirements.
People often overlook change management, but it plays a crucial role in ensuring success. You may have the perfect solution, but if no one uses it, the project will fail. Good change management ensures that you involve users and stakeholders throughout the process and maximise adoption.
Final thoughts
Legal knowledge is one of your most valuable assets. When content is up to date, easy to find, and well-structured, it enables faster decisions, reduces duplication, and supports better business outcomes. Ultimately, a strong knowledge management system becomes the lifeblood of an organisation, empowering your legal function to operate at its best, fostering better decisions, reduced duplication, and enhanced business outcomes.
This article was written by Babar Hayat, Head of Product, Tech & Transformation at Konexo
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