Date: April 12, 2013 Topic: The Shrinking ... - Georgetown Law

Table 1: Representative Excerpts from Interviews
Theme
Positive general
view of KMS
Negative general
view of KMS
KMS increases
amount of
workplace
collaboration
KMS reduces
amount of
workplace
collaboration,
with positive
consequences
Uncertain impact
on amount of
workplace
collaboration
KMS reduces
amount of
workplace
collaboration,
Excerpt
Informant: You know, people are curious to see, for such and such partner
or manager, what types of engagements they have worked on. We see lots
of searches by client’s name, or searches by lawyer’s name. …it helps
people find out what everyone is working on and find out who they want to
work with.
Interviewer: So before [the KMS], if I understand you, people knew what
their colleagues were working on?
Informant: Exactly. Everybody knew who was doing what. People
communicated a lot. Because we had to…. So when you gave someone a
job to do, you told him: “Go and see Dupont, I think he’s already worked
on that issue.” Or you said: “I already did something similar last year; look
at client file X.” And it worked very well like that. Because people talked
to one another…. I think that the overall quality of our knowledge sharing
could have been improved through investing in people rather than in
machines.
Interviewer: Do you use it to save time on well-known recurring issues or
do you also use it when you are stuck on new questions, I mean, technical
questions that you have never addressed before?
Informant: It depends. When I am stuck on a technical question, I try to
search the database to see if someone already took a stand on comparable
issues…. If I find someone, I usually call him and ask what he thinks.
Informant: I also use the knowledge base as a consumer, including anything
that is securities law…. I just sold two client projects by the existence of
these [KMS] documents that I would never have sold otherwise.
Interviewer: Did you involve the authors of these documents, in both
projects you sold?
Informant: It was not necessary. At least not at this stage, but it’s all very
recent and I have not finalized my team.
Informant: If I have an idea of the person who worked on it, yeah, I think
I’ll go see the person after watching what she has in the knowledge base.
After hearing about “So and so had to do this or that” well I’ll go see the
person.
Interviewer: Even when you do not know her well?
Informant: Well, no, he must already know that I (pausing), I will have an
easier time knowing what they did and then go to the people if I know
them. If this is someone I have absolutely no idea, there it is more difficult.
Informant (Discussing the outputs from a specific client project): I think
that everything we did is in the knowledge base. And I know it’s already
been used.… When I browse the knowledge base, I realize that some of our
things have been reused.
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