How is Generative AI (GenAI) helping law firms to drive engagement with knowledge? Learn more in this deep dive which covers the evolution of knowledge databases, how GenAI can reduce friction in knowledge sharing, and the potential for a virtuous cycle with GenAI and KM.
Background: GenAI, Knowledge Management and Legal Knowledge Databases
How Is GenAI Used Today By Law Firms?
Since the launch of Generative AI (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT (launched in 2022), our understanding of the future of knowledge work has changed.
For example, Goldman Sachs reported that in the US, “a quarter of current work tasks could be automated by AI, with particularly high exposures in administrative (46%) and legal (44%) professions”. In the EU, 24% of current work tasks could be automated by AI.
Yet, it is not just the transformative potential of GenAI which is understood today. The legal sector is not just aware of the role of GenAI in driving efficiencies and reducing manual efforts; in many cases, GenAI is already delivering results for lawyers in their daily work. A recent report from Thomson Reuters found that “more than a quarter of law firms and legal departments say they are using generative AI (Gen AI) technology”.
Is GenAI Changing Perspectives Towards Legal Knowledge Management?
With the widespread usage of GenAI, many lawyers and senior leaders within law firms have refocused on Knowledge Management with renewed importance, changing their perspectives on the value of know-how and collective expertise. This is partially due to industry movements like ‘IA Before AI’ (spearheaded by Alex Smith, Senior Director at iManage) which have reinforced the need for data to be governed, organised, labelled and searchable (that is, through Information Architecture) in order for tools like GenAI to deliver valuable results.
In the legal sector, client understanding of AI is also rapidly growing, as GenAI is used more broadly. This has led to some clients directly asking firms about the technology used to deliver guidance, querying AI usage and how lawyers are managing risks such AI hallucinations. One way to reduce this risk is to restrict GenAI usage, so outputs can only be generated from trusted sources such as curated internal repositories (i.e. knowledge databases). This is another driving force encouraging firms in the legal sector to secure, structure and surface collective expertise through Knowledge Management.
Building A Legal Knowledge Database for GenAI
Many firms already have versions of knowledge databases within their organisations, whether centralised and governed, or not.
In some cases, individuals may have built their own personal folders or workspaces to store knowledge documents in, such as precedents or memorandums. This is commonplace in smaller organisations where specific systems may not have been adopted yet. Individuals may save key content within the systems they use day to day in order to make their own work easier, e.g., saving content within personal workspaces in document management systems such as iManage). Though this knowledge may not be shared, in essence, this single space is a knowledge database for one.
Equally, many firms have invested in knowledge databases (or knowledge libraries or know-how banks) over the last ten years. Though in some organisations the resources stored may only be accessed and used by Knowledge Management teams themselves, these databases provide a rich, highly valuable source for GenAI to generate results from.
However, whether built by a lawyer, or formed with collaboration from a Knowledge Management team, engagement from lawyers is often vital for building a legal knowledge database to support GenAI. It is incredibly beneficial for lawyers to share resources, provide perspectives, and collaborate with Knowledge Managers so the firm can understand how knowledge resources are used in practice, and ascertain where specific know-how has driven results for clients. Lawyers can provide critical metadata, tags, context and written comments to enrich a document to make it easier for Knowledge Managers to work with the resource, and make the asset more readily retrievable from the knowledge database.
Yet, long before the introduction of GenAI, many Knowledge Management teams have struggled to encourage lawyers to engage with knowledge itself. At Tiger Eye, we have engaged with many firms who face limited contributions from lawyers to a knowledge database, leading Knowledge Management teams to work more proactively to gather knowledge from fee-earners, such as in Lessons Learned reviews or other activities. The reasons behind this limited engagement can vary, but common factors include culture and limited trust, “performance pressure”, the ease of sharing knowledge (e.g., the user experience) and quite simply, the time taken to share knowledge either with a colleague or through technology.
How Gen AI Is Working To Address The Knowledge Engagement Challenge In Law Firms
How is GenAI Reducing Friction In Legal Knowledge Sharing?
GenAI isn’t just being used to support legal work; it is now able to help lawyers to share the very resources – and knowledge – that enable them to get that work done.
Through powerful features enabled by GenAI, it can be made much easier for lawyers to share knowledge with each other and submit resources to centralised knowledge stores such as knowledge databases or libraries.
For example, our AI Curation Assistant in Tiger Eye Blueprint reduces friction for users when submitting knowledge to the knowledge database. Instead of lawyers manually adding document metadata, taxonomy tags, contextual information, comments and other enrichment data to a document, GenAI makes these suggestions on their behalf. Users, however, remain in control, and individuals can override any suggestions made by GenAI as required before sharing their know-how. Ultimately, supported by GenAI, the burden of this task is reduced, and they can more quickly share expertise with the wider firm.
GenAI, Knowledge Management and A Virtuous Circle
With lawyers more easily able to share know-how, knowledge engagement can quickly improve, simply because the process of doing so is easier. With more lawyers engaged with knowledge and submitting resources to the knowledge database, not only will the quantity of knowledge content grow, but so too will the variety of perspectives and experiences saved within the database.
When GenAI draws from this valuable database through connections such as Model Context Protocol, there is a virtuous circle formed, whereby the greater high-quality input that is fed into the system leads to greater results from the AI used to generate from its trusted ground.
As GenAI drives greater high quality knowledge submissions, tagged and enriched for the knowledge store, lawyers can directly access the firm’s collective expertise more easily.
Yet, improved knowledge engagement, supported by GenAI, can also directly improve the outputs of GenAI tools across the business, used by lawyers for other tasks and workflows. For example, through using GenAI to reduce friction for lawyers when sharing knowledge, processes like AI-enabled drafting can be improved, simply because the GenAI drafting tool has more high-quality examples of previous work or templates to reference.
Why Should Law Firms Improve Knowledge Engagement with GenAI?
More broadly, the positive impact of improving knowledge engagement and scaling the knowledge database can be experienced across the organisation.
For example, legal Marketing and Business Development teams can use the variety of submitted and approved content to create external resources such as publications, briefings and presentations. Bids for new work can be enhanced with references to specific resources or templates produced for similar cases. And junior staff can upskill more quickly, understanding how the firm responds, how individuals carry out key tasks – and ultimately, avoiding starting tasks from scratch.
Making it easier for partners and subject matter experts to share knowledge to the knowledge database can help to target specific risks, such as the risk of knowledge loss when individuals leave the business. As Helene Russell, Knowledge Management Consultant, has explained: “When a lawyer departs, they take with them more than just their technical skills; they also carry vital tacit knowledge, client insights, case-specific understanding, and deep institutional memory that cannot be easily replaced.” Encouraging such individuals to share knowledge to knowledge databases, and making it easier for them to do so, can help manage this risk.