Realizing the benefits of KM has proved elusive for law firms. It has been well documented that few
initiatives have been successful. A brief review of the history of KM programs in law firms will serve to
highlight some of the barriers to success.
Initial large-scale efforts to collect and organize documents were frequently based on document
management software (DMS). Although a DMS serves primarily to manage current work product
(sometimes referred to as work in progress), it was hoped that the technology could also manage
reusable work product by asking fee earners to mark or profile documents with bibliographic and context
(client and matter) information. This profiled data, together with full-text search features, would then
provide researchers with the necessary tools to locate valuable documents. Unfortunately, few firms have
been able to achieve this goal because fee earners lack the time or incentive to fully profile documents.
Moreover, the process of profiling at the time of document creation often fails to distinguish valuable final
documents from ancillary material.