Predicting and preparing for risk is second nature to a lot of law firms. But how many have planned for economic risks as well as legal ones? At the “How to Lead a Knowledge Management Program Through a Recession” panel at the International Legal Technology Association’s ILTACON 2019 conference, knowledge management (KM) professionals highlighted strategies their teams deploy to weather the next economic downturn.

To be sure, many KM teams likely have been through a recession once before in 2008. But not all experienced it the same. “We talked to a number of our peers because we knew they had gone through the last recession, and one of the things we learned was that the recession as not universally bad for KM,” said Dora Tynes, director of knowledge and research services at Stoel Rives.