Canadian Lawyer

18 J U N E / J U LY 2 0 1 9 w w w . c a n a d i a n l a w y e r m a g . c o m S carce resources drive in-house counsel to do more with less. Tech- nological innovations assist in maximizing legal operation manage- ment, which includes efficient knowledge management. At the organization for which I work, we use Office 365 as part of our overall IT platform. This includes Microsoft Teams and the mind-mapping application MindMeister. We found that using mind maps greatly enhances the capture of tacit knowledge and disseminates this knowledge throughout the organization. KM helps organizations identify, select, organize and disseminate important information and expertise. It is an integral part of overall legal operations man- agement at the strategic, management and front-line staff levels. Having efficient KM systems at these levels then allows counsel to focus more on high-value strategic legal issues. Small legal departments must work with the resources they are provided. The existing IT systems can be carefully torqued to provide that additional legal value that all departments want. Using the existing Microsoft Teams forms a critical part of the overall change management of the organization. We incorporated the mind maps as a part of Microsoft Teams to allow staff to interact and chat about the various legal issues they face. Mind maps explain how ideas interrelate. Once a single idea is placed in the centre of the map, various sub-concepts can then be drawn. The mind-mapping L E G A L I N N O VA T I O N N O W KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN ACTION By Gary Goodwin application easily allows mind maps to be drafted and refined. The user easily moves around new ideas and sub-concepts. Using a mind map application allows the viewer to see how various ideas interact with one another. Each idea provides context for other ideas. Providing context for information allows the viewer to move from information to knowl- edge and, hopefully, to wisdom. Simply using a search mechanism for text loses context. Legal departments incorporate legal opera- tions into their overall function and pro- cesses to innovate further and change with the times. Lawyers and law firms sometimes resist change and hold on to the more traditional way of doing things. However, innovation requires trying numerous things to see what potentially works. Knowledge management helps to quickly get legal information to front-line staff. If staff can find the answer to some basic legal ques- tions, then this frees up legal time for other work. This is a form of demand management with limited legal supply. The difficulty in bringing in KM shows knowledge's messiness and how it can be found in all areas of the organization. Trying to get someone to write things down in a systematic way can be difficult. We needed a way to move tacit knowledge; i.e., bound up in people, into explicit knowledge, people talking to other people, who would then incorporate this new knowledge as their own tacit knowledge. Gain- ing wisdom from this knowledge requires both context and overall understanding. The new corporate structures impose another difficulty and hamper KM. A central office allowed a person the opportunity to Simple tools that are used effectively can save thousands. Here's how one in-house department did it @GaryWGoodwin O P I N I O N

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