The future of Knowledge Management in the legal industry

With nearly 15 years of experience in knowledge management and digital solutions across international law firms, Hanna offers invaluable insights into the dynamic landscape of legal technology. Moreover, Hanna has been actively participating in a network focused on knowledge management and innovation consisting of the 10 to 15 largest law firms in Sweden. Over the past 15 years, these firms have regularly gathered to discuss relevant issues. In our conversation, Hanna shares insights and best practices on knowledge management.

Jorn Vanysacker
Hi Hanna! We’re thrilled to be having this conversation with you, as the head of Legal Tech and Knowledge Management at DLA Piper in Sweden. I notice that there are legal tech roles and there are knowledge management roles. It’s interesting that you’re doing both.

Hanna Canning
Hi Jorn, thanks for the invite. To me, it’s completely intertwined because legal tech is what enables us to leverage our organizational knowledge. How you use your knowledge and how you interact with your clients, is what makes you competitive, what sets firms apart from one another. So legal tech is much more than introducing a tool. It’s about looking internally at the processes and what knowledge we’re trying to leverage. So the tech is just one end. You can be innovative without using technology as well. That’s why we try to have a broader concept of innovation at DLA Piper in Sweden, and talk about people, processes, and, lastly, tech.

Jorn Vanysacker
You’ve been working in knowledge management and digital solutions in international law firms for almost 15 years. Tech and knowledge management have evolved significantly in those years. How has your industry been moving in the past few years?

Hanna Canning
In my time working in this space, the legal landscape has changed a lot, but we haven’t seen a disruption. I’ve seen it change incrementally. If you look back to 15 years ago, there were no digital signatures, hybrid working, and few collaboration tools,… IT changes such as moving into the cloud enabled legal tech and were a game-changer, especially for law firms. And the pandemic had a strong impact on remote working and increased utilization of tools that we already had but weren’t fully utilizing while in the office. We were on the verge of it, but if not for the pandemic, we would probably have debated the need for clean data and having all our tools in one place for a few more years.

If not for the pandemic, we would probably have debated the need for clean data and having all our tools in one place for a few more years.

I don’t like the so-called notion that lawyers are against change. Legal is just as impacted by technology as any other business. We might move slightly slower, but that’s because we have to be careful with confidentiality and regulatory issues. I actually think lawyers are curious and innovative and when it comes to tech, we have to have these strict parameters before we can jump on it.

But change happens, and I have seen a lot of it. Especially looking at the digitalization of matter management, which is not a very ​‘hot topic’. But it has transformed our industry in a way that now lays the groundwork for being able to leverage knowledge. And that is what is exciting with the upcoming large language models: we’ve sort of all been waiting for it. How to actually use all this knowledge that we’re sitting on in our big digital systems.

Jorn Vanysacker
So for the past 15 years, you’ve been laying the groundwork for what’s coming. Has your job gotten to the most interesting point it has ever been?

Hanna Canning
Yes, although I believe we’re still in the early days, and I also think there’s a tremendous amount of hype right now. But without a doubt, this new type of AI has absolutely revolutionized the way we interact with computers. And we’re probably starting to see what we’d always imagined AI to be able to do. I read somewhere that ​“we don’t have to teach lawyers to speak tech anymore, because we taught tech to speak legalese”, and to me, that makes a lot of sense because now you can prompt it, and ask for what you need or want. And that’s what we always had in mind. So this is tremendously exciting.

Jorn Vanysacker
Are your colleagues tugging at your sleeve on a daily basis to give them access to new tech?

Hanna Canning
It depends. We’re not using publicly available tools in client matters, but many colleagues are exploring these tools in their private life and do see the potential, and it is very exciting. So everybody wants to know how to make use of this type of tech internally. And again, I believe we’re still in the early days. When I open my LinkedIn, it’s just exploding every day and that is exhilarating, but we need to cut through the hype and see what’s real. In general, I believe it will enable us to move faster. If you look at some of the newly developed AI tools that are already available, they have been trained on giant data sets that took years to create – which means you won’t have to do it.

Law firms will need to develop or refine their AI strategies: will they work with a provider to develop something bespoke or will they develop something internally to own the IP rights, or buy specific tools off the shelf? Or a combination? The technology is moving so rapidly, that I think law firms need to start thinking about their use cases and considering ​“what do we want to get out of this?.” I believe we’re going to be seeing thousands of new tools. And just like with the first wave of AI, not all of these tools are here to stay.

We will see more change, but we still have to figure out what it is we want to be doing. And some of it is probably so new that we can’t see the full potential yet. So that is really exciting, and why I think it’s important to find your own strategy and be open-minded as you might find that you will change direction once you learn more. But identify what you believe will be the best use cases for you, and what is the best way to get there. And those needs will be different for different law firms.

Law firms will need to develop or refine their AI strategies: will they work with a provider to develop something bespoke or will they develop something internally

Jorn Vanysacker
You mentioned there’s a huge hype right now. So typically with the hype cycle, there’s a drop-down and then it finds its maturity. So would you say we’re on the top of the hype right now?

Hanna Canning
No, I believe we’re still early on the hype actually. It’s happening at such an extremely fast, expansionary development time so the hype is not over yet. But I do think we’ll see more normalization, and also standardization. We’ll see new ways of using tech in problem-solving, we’ll look at the legal issue at hand and then decide what tech to apply. I believe recent tech developments, especially regarding augmented retrieval generation, will create a huge change in the mindset of how and when to use technology. As AI develops and models are made more readily available and less costly, firms will probably want to use their own knowledge banks for predictive models and cost-effectiveness, to use our own data for insights but I don’t know if this is in the near or long term future. There will probably be increased M&A activity as larger players will acquire specific solutions. It will be very interesting to see how the market will re-shape and how underlying platforms will leverage this.

Jorn Vanysacker
Is the role of the lawyer changing? What are the legal skills required for the future?

Hanna Canning
Well, you’ll still need to be a good lawyer. You have to learn the legal issues at hand. As technological advancements impact businesses, this will eventually turn into legal questions. So depending on what kind of law you do, it might impact the content of your work.

But if you talk more about legal skills in general, this has also been discussed a lot. How do we train talent for the future? This question first came up when we started working with contract automation. Back then, this raised a lot of discussions: the fear was that lawyers would lose out on skills by not doing the routine work, and I don’t think document automation has had that impact at all. In my opinion, it took away low-level repetitive tasks and enabled lawyers to focus on more challenging issues.

Being able to clearly communicate ideas and solutions while understanding the business issue, will always be important. I do however think that there will be a bigger individual responsibility on the lawyer to understand what tools are available and how to use them.

At the moment, that is where my team comes in. But I do think there will be a bigger responsibility on the individual lawyer to know what technology is available and suitable to use in different matters. And I don’t think this is very different from any other sector, but maybe our sector has been safeguarded a bit up until now.

Jorn Vanysacker
In your view, what’s the biggest misconception people have about legal tech?

Hanna Canning
This is really about change management. You don’t become innovative because you buy a tool, no matter how easy the tool is to implement. You still need to look at the problem you’re solving and why you’re doing it. What technology are you buying, and why? If you have a clear use case, you’ll see an immediate return of adapting your process. It’ll be a no-brainer.The first round of AI tools wasn’t as easy to implement as we’d thought. They took time to set up. It wasn’t plug-and-play. They were not really close to the lawyer, which meant they weren’t close to our way of working. This new technology will probably be much closer by impacting the way we actually work.

Jorn Vanysacker
The threshold is lowering every day.

Hanna Canning
Exactly. And the use of legal tech will hopefully help senior lawyers to find new insights in massive amounts of data, and maybe bring new perspectives. And for junior lawyers, it will definitely help them to move away from repetitive tasks.

Jorn Vanysacker
How do you manage knowledge at your firm? Do you see an important role for technology in ​‘knowledge distribution’?

Hanna Canning
As a knowledge manager, what you want to do is twist and turn the knowhow to make it readily available, either to clients or internally to lawyers. So you need digital solutions to enable this. At the Stockholm office, we work very actively with knowledge management. We have an overarching knowledge management and legal tech policy. In each practice group, we have a knowledge partner and a knowledge champion who interact with my team to set an annual knowledge management plan. Together, we set goals on a yearly basis that can help us measure and evaluate since the needs are different for different practice groups. I think that’s also quite important.

In each practice group, we have a knowledge partner and a knowledge champion.

Jorn Vanysacker
What should knowledge management KPIs look like?

Hanna Canning
It can be everything from maintaining existing templates, having a gap analysis, identifying where we need new know-how, working with automated content, internal training to upskill lawyers in a specific area, writing articles, participation in legal tech pilots, and creating thought leadership. It varies depending on the practice group and the maturity of the KM level.If an organization is starting from scratch, you can start by doing a gap analysis and identifying the key knowledge and know-how that is required. Once these are in place, you can look at automation, and you also want to look at training: it’s about creating a broad toolbox, and enabling the practice groups to know which tools they have at hand that are relevant to them and how to use them best. The next level is to look at client interaction and more collaborative platforms as well, in which knowledge also plays an important part​.At DLA Piper in Sweden we register the time lawyers spend on knowledge management, and we consider it billable time. This is important from a strategic point of view: it shows that this is work that we as a law firm consider to be important as it creates value for us and we expect lawyers to participate.

Jorn Vanysacker
How do you deal with frustrations and challenges?

Hanna Canning
I like the concept of the Knowledge Management Partner, but also of the Knowledge Management Champion. The partner is important because this person sets the tone, and puts the top-down approach into the practice group: the role of the partner is to help me steer. Although I manage all the practice groups, I can’t have an ear close to the ground in each practice group. The partner can quickly check if the correct templates or tools are used. They help to convey the message of ​‘this is how we work’.

The champion, on the other hand, should be a senior associate who knows the business, and can help me set the direction of what the plan should be focused on. And the champion is also the person who is the first point of contact in your practice group, to whom colleagues reach out if they have questions. It helps to stay close to the business.

Jorn Vanysacker
So this senior associate gets quite a lot of questions then?

Hanna Canning
Potentially. It depends on the size of the group and how mature the systems are that you have in place. Just because you have a system doesn’t mean it’s being used as it should. And that’s usually the hardest, changing the actual process. So it’s always about people, process and tech.

Just because you have a system doesn’t mean it’s being used as it should. That’s usually the hardest, changing the actual process. So it’s always about people, process and tech.

Jorn Vanysacker
At Henchman we’re talking a lot about something we like to call ​“dynamic knowledge management”.

Today our tool understands how common a clause is in your database and what type of contract you’re working on. But very soon, we’ll be able to understand a lot more, and that will enable us to nudge lawyers. Let’s say that you are working on a share purchase agreement, we’ll be able to say: ​“We notice that you’re working in a SPA, and in 80% of the cases in your database we notice that this clause is included, but it’s not here. Would you like to have a look?”. Do you agree that knowledge management should be headed in this direction?

Hanna Canning
With the Stockholm Knowledge Management Network we had this discussion many years ago. We had a workshop reviewing the status of our KM work, and where we saw ourselves in the future. We had a big discussion about search capabilities and the idea of what you call ​‘dynamic knowledge management’.

At that point in time, we discussed if lawyers were ready to be nudged with suggestions. We thought they’d feel as if we were pushing content on them, especially as we didn’t think that the tech was advanced enough to provide good suggestions. Whereas today, with the advances of technology in this space but also in society overall, and the fact that this type of prompting is very common in our private lives, I think people are much more receptive to this type of tech interaction.

So even if it was possible before, it wasn’t necessarily good enough so the tech needed to improve. Moreover, and also very importantly, the culture around being nudged with information had to change. And that’s another important issue that we will probably hear more about in the near future, not necessarily about nudging/​prompting, but even if you technically are able to do something, should you?

But to answer your question, yes I would be interested to learn more.