Many law firms have been seriously over-investing in ‘big technology’ knowledge management (KM) systems to capture, store and manage their internal knowhow. At the same time they have neglected the much cheaper IT systems that could help them gain more value from their substantial investments in tried and tested legal and business information from publishers such as Butterworths, Sweet & Maxwell, PLC and LexisNexis.
Law firms are notoriously reluctant to divulge how much they spend on subscriptions to external content. Our research shows that the annual cost, in a top 10 UK firm, of subscriptions to essential legal and business online information sources will be about £500,000 and more than this in the magic circle firms. Printed journals and hard copy publications will increase the total subscription budget to more than £1m. Add to this the cost of library and information staff, infrastructure, IT services, training and support and the firm’s total investment in external content will be doubled or trebled to £2m-£3m or more.
