Luber: Hey everyone, Marc Luber here. Today on JD Careers Out There, we�re looking at
the alternative legal career of being a Legal Knowledge Manager so stick around. [theme
song] Alright, today�s guest is David Hobbie, who left the practice of law to work in Knowledge
Management. Today, he�s a Litigation Knowledge Manager at the Boston office of international
law firm, Goodwin Proctor, and he also sits on the knowledge management peer group steering
committee of the International Legal Technology Association where he co-runs their blog in
addition to his own blog called Case Lines. As you may already know, at JDCOT we help
you find and succeed in fulfilling careers using a law degree by exploring career paths
both in and out of law. Today, David�s going to tell us all about the path of knowledge
management, so let�s get started. David, welcome to JDCOT.
David: Thanks for having me, Marc.
Luber: Thank you for being here, I�m glad you�re here. David, I�m going to ask you
to tell us all about this path, who fits it best, how to break in and how to succeed.
But first tell us this, what does a legal knowledge manager do?
David: At a law firm, there�s a tremendous amount of information that�s accumulated
by the course of lawyers doing work, which is drafting briefs and appearing in front
of judges and having deals and all kinds of things like that. It�s the legal knowledge
manager�s job to organize that information and make sure it�s available to the next
person doing a similar type of work and really, to try and make the attorney�s work as efficiently
and as effectively as possible.
Luber: And so what is organizing that information? Is it just like I mean I save files on my
computer, I just put them away? I�m sure it�s more complex than that. Tell us a little
bit about what you�re doing to make that happen?
David: Sure. Well you�re working both with people and processes and with information.
It�s not just about saving a file. That is your own personal knowledge management
maybe, but at the firm level it�s a lot more complex, as you say, it�s a lot more
complex than that. You might be implementing a search engine, you might be helping to set
up a portal that lets attorneys and staff have information at their fingertips that
they need to do their jobs. You might be setting up business processes to make sure that the
information is being stored in a way that it�s retrievable and reusable later on.
Luber: Give me an example here. Let�s say I�m an associate and since you interact
with associates, I call you on my office phone and say, �Hey David�� what am I saying
to you?
David: �David, my client�s just been sued in Massachusetts state court and I need a
sample motion to dismiss.� And I say, �Well, that�s interesting. Can you tell me a little
bit more about that suit so I can provide a sample that�s closer to�or sample of
resources or information about people who you can talk to who have done that kind of
work before.� And we have a dialogue about that and then I would provide information
about that. Or sometimes it�s just, �Hey, I know this thing is out there somewhere,
can you just tell me how to search for it?� So sometimes it�s a quick consultation.
Sometimes it�s a little more involved. It might be setting up a system for a practice
area to organize their precedents, their work product.
Luber: Interesting. So it sounds like so many aspects of a firm have to revolve around knowledge
management.
David: Well, I don�t know if they revolve around but they certainly can benefit from
the application of knowledge management.
Luber: Alright, if you�re on YouTube, please give us the thumbs up if this was helpful!
And to see the full interview with David about knowledge management, come on over to JDCOT
dot com and you�ll learn lots more about what it�s like to be a knowledge manager,
how to break in to this path, who fits it best and how to succeed. If you�re already
at the site, you can just scroll down to the full video. Make sure you become a member
so you can get access to all the helpful video content. Thanks again for watching everybody.
I�m Marc Luber and I�ll see you soon.