More on KM in Law Firms - Australia Style

For me, the key graph in Lucinda Schmidt’s piece in BRW is this:

[Consultant Graham] Seldon says law firms went through a similar change about five years ago, when marketing began to be taken seriously. “Initially, they just saw marketing as events, brochures and Web sites,” he says. “Then it became more strategic, and moved into client development and business development.”

In other words, the key link between marketing and KM in a law firm is CRM.

Bing!

By the way, wouldn’t it have been nice for the piece to actually identify the 16 “big law firms in Australia, the UK and US” that the consultants surveyed? Without knowing that, it’s hard to put any of the conclusions into context: much is known about Brobeck’s successes (and subsequent craters) in California, Freshfields and Clifford Chance in the UK, Davis Polk in NYC. But what if the consultants talked to other firms?

I guess asking an article about KM to actually share knowledge might be pushing my luck.