If Knowledge Management is all about not reinventing the wheel, then finding the person who invented the relevant wheel is important. And as firms get larger (particularly internationally and through mergers) and as client work gets more complex it is harder to know what your colleagues know. Quickly finding the right person to answer a specific query from a client, or assembling the right team to deal with a new piece of work can be frustrating. Or you can end up with the wrong person, only to find out when it is too late that there was someone else in the firm who had some far more relevant expertise.
{Our session on 22 October: http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ev38511} will look at the different ways in which firms have addressed this issue and how technology can help, without requiring each lawyer to update their expertise each time they gain experience in a new area. In anticipation of the session, we would be really interested to hear from members who have looked at this issue, both in terms of identifying the difficulties and also finding the solution.
