Groundwork

Knowledge management and AI for law firms, from people who have done the work

Legal AI runs on knowledge, and most firms haven't tidied theirs.

Groundwork publishes a new piece every Thursday on knowledge management and AI in law firms. Each one looks at what makes this work in practice.

Most of it comes back to two things firms like to skip: getting their content in order, and getting lawyers to use what they buy.

Three layers: knowledge at the bottom, people in the middle, AI tools on top Knowledge location · quality · classification People incentives · habits · adoption AI tools search · chat · agents only as stable as what's underneath

Themes

The ideas →
Location, quality and classification as three panels Location One home for eachkind of knowledge Quality Someone has said it'sgood, final or approved SPA English law Corporate Classification Basic labels: type,jurisdiction, practice

The knowledge tidy-up

Where knowledge lives, whether anyone has said it's good, and how it's labelled.
Seven questions before using AI on a task 1Will I learnfrom it? 2Howmechanical? 3Creative orstrategic? 4How much doesaccuracy matter? 5Cost ortime-sensitive? 6Must it beconsistent? 7Will the readercare a human did it?

AI with your eyes open

Which tasks it helps with, and what it costs the people using it.
Productivity dips below today's level while people learn a new tool, before gains arrive. Push and pull get them across. time today zone of apathy gains push: who's telling me? pull: what's in it for me?

Adoption

A tool nobody opens achieves nothing, so the people come first.

This week

All writing →
· 3 min read

Let the data name your templates

Pick the values in a knowledge type field from what most lawyers already call things, keep one term, and drop any word with two meanings