Law firms that decide to adopt knowledge management initiatives quickly encounter significant cultural barriers to successful implementation. Acknowledging the existence of cultural barriers is the first step to overcoming those barriers. These cultural barriers to knowledge management limit the growth and profitability of your law firm. Overcoming them is fundamental to your firm’s future success.
Having a clear vision of your target culture will help you to move away from the current culture and build the right culture for knowledge management: that is, an environment in which lawyers share their knowledge with others in their practice group and across the firm, and look for opportunities to refer work to others and to collaborate on projects. In other words, the lawyers should think of your law firm (not their practice group) as a business, and seek out ways to use their knowledge to grow that business.
