Seven Challenges to Successful KM in Law Firms
This is an old article from Cory Doctorow, but you should read it if you want to successfully implement KM (Knowledge Management) in your firm. Though Cory is talking on the problems of promulgating reliable metadata (“data about data”) on the web at large, I think his observations are true in small organizations as well. Cory gives seven insurmountable obstacles that will keep us from reaching “meta-utopia.” In a law firm setting, these are the ones that seem most likely to torpedo a successful implementation of KM:
The fine (and gross) points of literacy -- spelling, punctuation, grammar -- elude the vast majority of the Internet's users. To believe that J. Random Users will suddenly and en masse learn to spell and punctuate -- let alone accurately categorize their information according to whatever hierarchy they're supposed to be using -- is self-delusion of the first water.