This week, we cover the highlights of the recent Knowledge Management and Innovation for Legal Conference with our guests, Patrick DiDomenico, founder of Inspire KM Consulting and the organizer of the conference; Tanisha Little, Director of Knowledge Management at Simpson Thatcher; and Sara Miro, Director of Knowledge at Sullivan Cromwell. In a time of Generative AI Hype, the basic ideas behind Knowledge Management have never been more relevant. As much as we believe in the future of a technology that can build upon our current knowledge, how we structure and manage that knowledge will determine just how far we can go. Knowledge management has never been more important than it is today.
The episode begins with an exploration of the organizational complexities behind the inaugural conference. Patrick DiDomenico shares his experiences in orchestrating the event, noting the extensive, months-long commitment it entailed, yet expressing satisfaction with the innovative elements introduced, such as breakout sessions.
We then shift focus to the specific sessions led by our guests. Tanisha Little and Jennifer Mendez conducted a “KM 101” session, effectively orienting newcomers to the field. Additionally, an engaging KM Attorney Roundtable, facilitated by Sara Miro and Patrick Dundas, explored issues such as change management and the implications of generative AI.
Our discussion also covers the most impactful sessions from the conference. Key highlights include Andrea Alliston’s keynote on leadership amidst disruption, Jeff Rovner’s presentation on succession planning, and Mark Smolik’s perspective on aligning law firms with client needs. The consensus underscores the conference’s comprehensive value for professionals across all levels of KM expertise.
A significant aspect of the conference was the notable influx of newcomers to the KM field. Emphasizing the importance of foundational knowledge, Patrick DiDomenico notes that such conferences often attract a substantial proportion of first-time attendees. The provision of introductory content is pivotal for equipping these professionals for more advanced discussions in future gatherings.
For our Crystal Ball Question, there is a unanimous agreement on the transformative potential of generative AI, foreseeing an increase in KM specialization, refined use cases, and enhanced emphasis on data curation. Nevertheless, mastering foundational KM practices, such as change management, is deemed essential for fully capitalizing on these technological advancements. The episode concludes with an optimistic outlook on the continuous growth and evolution in the field of KM.
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Transcript
Marlene Gebauer 0:07
Welcome to The Geek in Review. The podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal profession. I’m Marlene Gebauer.
Greg Lambert 0:14
And I’m Greg Lambert.
Marlene Gebauer 0:15
Well, it’s Thanksgiving week as we are recording this, but we managed to squeeze in one more recording before we all go into Turkey coma mode. Do you have any plans, Greg?
Greg Lambert 0:25
We’ve had about 20 minutes of technical difficulties getting started so far for the course. I think hopefully we can get this all out of the way. But yeah, I’m actually in the Fort Worth office at Jackson Walker. This week. I have a new employee that started today. And I don’t know if this is like the best week or the worst week to start, but they get three days and then they get two days of vacation right off the bat. So I think for them, it’s it’s a good time. So, but I’m going to head up to Oklahoma, where I am spending time with all of the family. So this is going to be going to be fun, everybody.
Marlene Gebauer 1:03
Wow. Very good.
Greg Lambert 1:06
We’ll even bring strangers.
Marlene Gebauer 1:09
Anybody off the streets, right? It’s like come on it. So I just got back from an innovation Advisory Board meeting. So I am looking forward to hanging out at home watching Mystery Science Theater, planes, trains and automobiles and diehard as one should. And I should be able to get out on the kayak and the bike. Maybe go to Huntsville State Park.
Greg Lambert 1:31
good. Well, hopefully the weather holds up so I know it’s gonna be in the 30s when I’m in Oklahoma. I packed both of my jackets.
Marlene Gebauer 1:40
Yeah, enjoy that.
Greg Lambert 1:43
Well, today we have some actually new guests on the podcast. We didn’t have to reach into the alumni bag, but I think everyone’s going to be very familiar. To our audience. We have Patrick DiDomenico founder and CEO of Inspire am consulting Tanisha little director knowledge management at Simpson Thacher and Bartlett LLP. And Sara Miro, Director of Knowledge. I love that title, Director knowledge just keep it nice and simple. At Sullivan and Cromwell. So Patrick Tanisha. And, Sara, welcome to The Geek in Review.
Sara Miro 2:21
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Tanisha Little 2:23
Thanks for having us.
Greg Lambert 2:25
So all of you recently participated in the Knowledge Management and Innovation for Legal Conference. That was a few weeks ago, and we wanted to bring you on and do a recap. Yeah. So
Marlene Gebauer 2:38
Patrick, you know, you’ve been a staple in the Knowledge Management Conference circuits for circuit circuit and that circuit for many years. All right.
Greg Lambert 2:49
Isn’t the other.
Marlene Gebauer 2:51
But I think this is your first experience being responsible for running the entire event soup to nuts. And so I wanted to ask you, how was that experience?
Patrick DiDomenico 3:02
Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s something at times it was a circus, quite frankly, to be honest with you. But yeah, so yeah, I’ve been, I’ve been doing it for a long time. You know, whether it was speaking at ilta or ARK KM, for many years, you know, you guys know that. Joshua fireman and I had co hosted the ARK KM conference for many years, you know, then art moved back to Chicago. In 2021, I think. And I think there was a desire for a conference in in New York City. And quite frankly, to be honest with you, I’ve always sort of wanted to get more involved in conferences and the production, I had been doing the sort of co-hosting duties, and that always included selecting speakers and topics and all that stuff. So it’s sort of like the front of the house and a little bit of the production, but not the, you know, finding the venue and, you know, getting sponsors and making sure enough people sign up and all that event, all the event planning, yeah. All the event planning and, you know, boy, I knew it was going to be difficult, because, you know, having done the RKM conference for many years with having you all know, Kevin Kline, you know, is tight with him. And you know, he did all that work on the back end. So I knew that is a lot of hard work. I kind of underestimated I think I thought it would be I didn’t think it would be easy, but I didn’t think it would be so all consuming for you know, you know, at least a few months before the actual event. But I tell you, it was a lot of fun. I love learning I love doing new things. So it was a challenge. But it was it was a lot of fun and then finding the right people in the topics and everything. You know, a lot of it was difficult, but it’s such a strong as we all know, it’s such a strong a generous community and we have people like Tanisha and Sara and many others, who had lots of good ideas. Is and pinions about how things should go. And that’s something I did a lot of I talked to a lot of people. I said, What do you, what do you love about conferences? And what do you hate about conferences, because, you know, a big part of what I wanted to do was in my tagline for the conference was elevate your experience. And that’s a big part of what I tried to do was to take all of the conference experience that we’ve all gone through, and we’ve all had just sort of bring it up to the next level, you know, Speaker wise topic wise venue, the food at the venue, you know, the different types of formats and Tanisha. And Sara good examples of that. We had breakouts, right. So I think for the first time, I can’t think of any of many other conferences that had breakouts. So we had this general session sessions. But these breakouts I thought went really, really well, we got a lot of great feedback about that kind of thing. So really, really happy with how it all turned out. And very, very grateful for everyone’s participation.
Greg Lambert 6:02
Was it a pleasant enough experience that you’re going to have one again, next year?
Patrick DiDomenico 6:07
We’re gonna do with a dekat? Yeah. So yeah, it was great. I think, really on, on all, in every respect, it was, it was definitely worth doing again. So we’re definitely to do it again. Probably around the same time. You know, October, New York, don’t have a venue or an exact date yet. But we’re definitely going to do it again. It was I thought it was great. And you know, all the feedback was great, too. We did some surveys and got some really high scores for today’s sessions, and a lot of happy customers. So we’re definitely doing it again.
Greg Lambert 6:43
I’m sure two of the highest scoring sessions were from Tanisha and Sara, which is why we asked them on as well. So Tanisha, can you talk to us? What was your experience? And then talk to us a little bit about what you talked about? And kind of the reaction that you got?
Tanisha Little 7:02
Sure, sure. Let’s talk about our session that that’s it. It was so much fun doing this conference? You know, Patrick didn’t say I think the first time we did a conference together, I can’t remember what year it was, I believe it was the SharePoint symposium that ILTA use to do. And we were, you know, working together finding speakers preparing session said, you have had the opportunity to work them through that organization. Speaking at ARK KM, I was I was really excited to see him put together this conference and mission. Mission accomplished. It was it was absolutely fantastic. I have to say, I’m so impressed that you did it with a very minimal volunteer structure behind you that was either really, really fun our very, very well done.
Patrick DiDomenico 7:44
Well, let me let me just say there was a lot more behind the scenes than then most people know. And, you know, because we talked quite a lot about the details. And I picked your brain quite a bit. So it wasn’t as individual as it might have seen. Yeah.
Tanisha Little 7:58
Yeah, but look really good. So my session was km 101. And I presented it with Jennifer Mendez, she’s the Senior Director of KM innovation at Fisher Phillips. And we just had a fantastic time doing that session. You know, when we first you were approached by Patrick, we were both thinking, right? Who wants him one on one sessions, like everybody’s been doing this for a long time. You know, what else can we add to the conversation? And I think we were really aggressive. When we walked in the room, there were so many new people, so many new faces, and the knowledge and innovation community that joined us for this session. So it was that a really great opportunity, you know, for us to kind of like dig back and think about, you know, our beginnings, you know, in knowledge management and innovation and really talk about it. So we spent some time just talking about the benefits of knowledge management, the benefits for law firms and their clients. We talked to people about how do you talk to your firm and to you know, to your partners and other attorneys about knowledge management, we found that so many people were in the space of their building or trying to convince their firms to invest more in a knowledge management program. So we spent a lot of time talking about that how to promote km we had everybody we did some little in and we’re homework. Everybody take about five minutes and work on their elevator pitch. Not sure they enjoyed that aspect and now they were going to be actually doing work and we asked people you have to share.
Marlene Gebauer 9:20
They got to work yeah.
Tanisha Little 9:23
Sometimes more but you know how to connect with your trainees about what you’re doing, how to communicate with them about different initiatives and not only the tools and resources that they need to be aware of. I thought really addressing we talked about some of the tools that we use, you know, intranet, experience, matter management, automation, document automation process automation, but the topic that I think we spent more time on than anything else, knowledge banks. That was the hot topic in the room, everyone wanted to talk about how to build knowledge banks, which is something you know, that’s not new, okay, um, you know, it’s not it’s not generative AI ai with That was that the topic, you know, that everybody really wanted to dig into. So overall, it was, you know, it was a great session, I think we had more content prepared than we actually had time to get to because we were really focusing on those things. You know, we want to talk about KM tools and how to prioritize things and Knowledge Management Maturity models, so we didn’t get to those topics. So it’ll be a part two for the workshop next year.
Greg Lambert 10:22
Well, always leave them wanting more. That’s exactly.
Tanisha Little 10:27
It was really, it was the best time that I’ve had speaking at a conference. And in a very long time, there was just so much engagement from everyone in the room absolutely loved it.
Greg Lambert 10:36
Sounds great. Well, Sara, let’s, let’s turn it over you What did what did you get to cover?
Sara Miro 10:43
Sure. And similar to Tanisha, I also was tapped to lead a round table session. And so it was a back to back, two parter session in between the sort of general speaking presentations and when Patrick asked me to, to lead it, at first, I would say thank you, this is sort of unusual for a conference to have this kind of breakout, and I wonder how it’ll be received. But similarly to Tanisha. My session was the KM Attorney roundtable, it was a packed room, it was broken up in two parts. And we had everyone who came to the first session, come back again, for the second session for follow up. It was really a great time to connect with tons of people that were new to the community new to km. And it was it was really great. And we approach it. So I was I was lucky enough to co lead the roundtable session with Patrick Dundas who is a KM partner at Akin Gump. And he and I took a little bit of a different tactic, we didn’t have a presentation, we sort of approached a consultant style, and we had a whiteboard. And we asked the participants in the room to tell us what they want us to talk about. So really think about the previous sessions that they heard at that conference, and come up with some general topic ideas that we could all discuss. And so we came up with things like change management, and the importance of getting buy in for your KM initiatives, listening to Attorney pain points. And then of course, generative AI was the hot topic in our room. And it seems like we had many people in the room that really weren’t new to came about three years or less in the industry. And then we also had some people that were really seasoned in the industry. So we had directors of KM we had KM attorneys at all different levels. And it was a really engaging conversation. We talked about generative AI ai use cases, the hype cycle, we pivoted when we thought we had gone through a topic for long enough, you know, there, we could have gone on probably for another two hours on generative AI, but we put a pin in it. And we talked about things like the importance of getting attorney buy in and the champion at your firm, and how you can listen to Attorney pinpoints the importance of listening tours. And we really hit on a lot of critical ideas within the KM ecosystem. And it was really nice to hear a lot of people’s because we did call on people, we put people on the spot. And so it was nice to give everyone an opportunity to really voice what they thought was important. And I feel like everyone in that room really benefited from what they were hearing, and were able to take something away. So it was it was really positive. And I love that feature of a conference. I think it really gets the participants involved on another level. So well done, Patrick, it was really a smart move to incorporate that into into the first day.
Patrick DiDomenico 13:27
Well, I’ve seen the seen the survey scores. So I should say well done to both of you because Greg was right. Yeah, the these breakouts were among the more popular things that we did at the conference, yours in particular, both of yours in particular, I think we all learned a good lesson there. It’s a nice, especially to break up the day, I think break up the pace. And to your point, you can dive deeply into into various topics. You know, whether you’re seasoned whether you’ve been whether you’re new to the community, or or somewhere in between? Yeah, I heard really, really great things. Joshua Fireman, I think, you know, I think he made comments at the end about how he was surprised that his I don’t know if he said it’s his favorite. But one of the things she really enjoyed was the KM 101 session very much. And he who’s been doing it longer than the Joshua Fireman. So it was great. The feedback was really fantastic about all the breakouts. So
Tanisha Little 14:24
we’ve got a new complex model shaping up. I love that, like nature on adventure, talk about what you want to talk about,
Marlene Gebauer 14:31
it’s always a great experience when you’re feeling the audience engagement and you need like, you know, they’re really, you know, enjoying it and benefiting from it. But I’ll I’ll flip the question. So you know, if you’re a part of the audience here, you know, what were your favorite presentations at the conferences, or at the conference rather?
Tanisha Little 14:48
I’m going to connect the two because they were two they were along the same theme. There were two days right so I can pick two. The two separate topics. I thought the keynote from Andrea Alliston was just phenomenal. Yes, she’s talking about, you know, leadership through change through times of complexity and disruption. So just so incredibly timely for everything that we’re experiencing right now. And she had so many valuable lessons that I think, you know, we’re all struggling to think about it apply. She talked about change leadership versus change management, you know, it’s not just about the tasks and the things that you’re doing and the structures that you’re putting into place when you’re implementing change. But it’s really about the thought, the leadership, the vision behind everything that we’re doing, that was really, really powerful. And it’s the point that she made about decision making in complex context was so timely. So there is, I think what she said, you know, we always think that if I do A than B, it’s going to happen, does not go that way, in complex situations, there are just so many factors that play into it. And so many things that you have to think about, you have to zoom out and look at the big picture, you have to talk to a lot of different people be ready to fail and know that no matter how much spending you do, it is not going to be perfect. So I just thought that that was a phenomenal first day to to really set the stage for everything. My second one was the presentation with Jeff Rovner, Ali Shahidi, and Amanda Brady on that was just a masterclass in succession planning. It was amazing to hear that story. I know that few of us will have the luxury of being able to do what you know what Jeff was able to orchestrate when he was making his plans to retire. But man, if you needed a roadmap, how to do it and how to do it, well, he just laid it out so so beautifully. And I think there are a lot of elements that are a part of that that many of us will be able to, to use and learn from and as we think about our futures as love the way that he was able to do it, because it was so seamless and to have one of our great leaders be able to just leave that legacy intact and have someone come in and help it continue to grow and flow and not just stop dead in its tracks. While the firm will. Let’s think about what we’re going to do when Jeff retires, then it and then he just gets that he just really laid out a phenomenal plan for how it was going to continue. So it’s really appreciated that that lesson from that session too.
Sara Miro 17:29
Sara, how about you?
Sure. Yeah. So there were so many great sessions, and I sort of will pick two also. But they’re kind of related that the keynote on day two, which Mark Smolik from DHL Supply gave, it really resonated, and it was really engaging. And it was great to have an in house counsel perspective on KM and innovation. And I think that really resonated with a lot of people in the room. I know it did with my team to really hear from an a high level in house lawyer, what is important, or them when they’re in discussions with law firms on things like KM and innovation and generative AI and at the approach to technology that really I think was eye opening and should have been eye opening for a lot of people in the room to really know the client painpoints the most important thing to our clients, of course, is going to be risk mitigation. And as law firms, we really should know our clients business and the KM team can really help the law firms in that respect to really understand how can we get as much intelligence about our clients as possible, and then feed it back to them in ways that will help support their business and our business as well so and just foster their relationships. So I thought that was really great to sort of bring it all together because we really are a legal ecosystem and without clients and without the client perspective, you know, we’re missing a piece critical piece of that puzzle. So I thought that was great to bring that all together. And then the session following it was also Mark alongside Evan Shankman, who’s Chief Knowledge Officer at a law firm, really discussing how to best partner with KM teams to really get the best value out of the relationship. So I thought that was just such a nice way to bring together so many different important concepts in the community and really, hopefully open people’s minds within the audience to understand you know, it’s we are KM attorneys and KM professionals supporting our lawyers within our law firm. But ultimately, the client are all of these other entities that we really should think about when we’re delivering KM services, how can we leverage what we know and give our attorneys the right tools so that they can support their clients and in km and technology efforts as well? So I thought that was just really great. Well done.
All right, now, Patrick, I’ll let you wrap up and then I’m going to have to jump off while the rest of you finish the podcast so the Happy Thanksgiving.
Patrick DiDomenico 19:44
Well, my answers probably even worse because I just like asking me to pick my favorite child right? Yeah, I was so involved in all of it, you know, from from day one and thinking about and working with all of the speakers. It’s definitely impossible for me to pick a favorite. I will say, I also look at it from an entertainment perspective as well, especially, you know, working with like someone like with Joshua. You guys know, Joshua, well, he’s hilarious and fun and everything else. So you can imagine. So Joshua did a did a handle called helped me help you becoming an ideal client for your vendors. And that was Joshua, Glenn LaForce, Kate Cain and Kate Meltzer. One of the funny things is that he started, he presented the idea to me and he said, you know, can we do a session where I sit people down and tell them, you know, yeah, just basically school them and tell them how to just do as I say, he wasn’t really saying that, but he was very, you can imagine how funny it was for him to come up with this concept. No holds barred and everything else. And I said, you know, yes, but can we tone it down just a little bit? You know, could we make it a little bit more palatable for people who don’t know you and don’t understand that you’re very funny and you’re not being serious? But you know, I think that actually turned out very, very good, you know, because and with the other perspectives there, Kate Cain and Glenn LaForce both have been vendors and in in law firms, so really effective and had the most F-bombs dropped in the in the session, too, because, you know, of course, Joshua dropped a few I think Kate Meltzer probably dropped a few too. But I liked the entertainment value as well.
Tanisha Little 21:36
I think this conference would win the award for that.
Patrick DiDomenico 21:39
I think so, yeah, we’re, there’s no, there’s no, no contest, I think. But the other one that I really enjoyed with Scott Rechtscahffen’s presentation. He did a presentation called Changing the Game.
Sara Miro 21:52
Oh, How could I forget that one? Yeah. I change my answer, Greg!
Patrick DiDomenico 21:56
I thought it was so crazy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, everybody knows, Scott. He’s been in the in the industry for, you know, 30 years, probably something like that. He’s one of the OGs. And, you know, this came out of a conversation I had with him at ilta, where you’re sitting there having a drink, and there was a ballgame on and I don’t follow baseball very closely. But there’s a ballgame out. And he starts telling me yeah, I’m really enjoying it much more since the rules changed in this, that and the other thing. And I’m like, What are you talking about? So he starts telling me about all these rule changes, and how it’s shortening the game and making more interesting, etc. And like, Scott, don’t you see it? This is your presentation right here. Because he was going to do a different presentation, which was going to be very good, too. I said, No, no, we got to change. You got to do this new presentation. Look at the analogies look at everything else. And you can build suspense and, and he, he killed it. I thought it was great. And so so entertaining, as well. But you know, too many to choose from. But those are some of the fun, the fun ones that I think were really interesting in that respect.
Tanisha Little 23:01
I think we just went through almost all of them.
Patrick DiDomenico 23:03
I know. They’re also good. I mean, boy, I hate I hate the fact that we didn’t mention some of them. Because I mean, everyone got such great scores too.
Sara Miro 23:12
you’re right, that the entertainment factor is so important in a conference like two days, you’re holed up together in indoors, right. I think it was a beautiful day in New York both days. And so you really do have to make it have to make it fun and engaging. And yeah, I mean, now that I’m remembering Scott’s presentation, you know, I learned so much about baseball, and km within the session, it was really well done is very real, it really great.
Tanisha Little 23:42
There was really something for every level, right in your organization, within KM, which is, you know, it’s really hard to find in a conference of this size, but there’s something you know, for people who are new to you to knowledge, people who’ve been in there for many decades, opportunities for those of us who’ve been doing it a while to share our experiences. So oh, it was it was an incredible event.
Greg Lambert 24:05
I’m curious, Patrick on with the the mentioning, multiple times of how so many people that are new ish to the KM profession. What do you think was the draw for them? And how do you replicate that so that they come back next year and bring friends?
Patrick DiDomenico 24:27
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s a good question. You know, it’s, every year when Josha and I were co hosting the ARK KM conference for many years, we would always ask, who’s new who you know, who’s you know, zero to three years out? And there would always be about 30% of the audience that would raise their hand that they were new to the conference and or km and innovation. We did that to make sure people got introduced to other people and felt like part of the community and asked you know, others to Talk to other people. But it struck me a number of times that, hey, if there’s consistently so many new people that come to these conferences, a lot of this stuff is gonna go over their head, because a lot of its higher level, you know. So what we tried to do, of course, to Tanisha’s point, we try to keep it something for everyone. And then especially with Tanisha, and Jennifer’s breakout, let’s do something special for the new folks and have a base and have give them a really good foundation. So now that they have that those folks that come back next year, they’re going to be better prepared to absorb a lot of the more higher level stuff, I think, and maybe join Sara’s breakout or maybe join one of the other breakouts. And we really tried to make there be something for everyone. There always will be too we have to understand that this is a growing community. You know, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the the Death of KM. Every year I’ve been part of it. I heard Yeah. Okay, instead, because one thing or another, but it continues to grow. And this year, we had I think we had 185 people sign up. So that’s not an insignificant number, especially that there’s other KM conferences out there as well, which are well populated. So there’s always going to be something for every level of attendee.
Greg Lambert 26:19
Excellent. Excellent. Well, we’ve gotten to the part of the conversation where we’re going to ask you your crystal ball question. And I’m going to go down the line, Patrick and Tanisha. And Sara, as I see you on the screen here. What do you see on the horizon for knowledge management? Over the next two to five years? Patrick?
Patrick DiDomenico 26:40
You’re going to start with me, huh? All right.
Greg Lambert 26:43
You’re on a roll, let’s keep it going.
Patrick DiDomenico 26:44
Well, that’s good. Well, actually, so to that point, actually, you know, what I see is knowledge management and innovation strengthening, actually, which is kind of counterintuitive, especially given all of the generative AI ai stuff that we’ve been experiencing for a year now. Right? Boy, it’s almost just about a year since ChatGPT came on the scene. And then, as you all probably know, and I don’t know when people are gonna listen to this, but just Friday, today’s Monday on Friday, you know, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, breaking news, everybody was fired from open AI, and everyone was shocked. There’s still news coming in about it. And the last I heard, Microsoft hired Sam, and one of the board members, Greg Brockman is, so who knows where what’s going to happen with all that. I mean, this past year, has been crazy, crazy, crazy. With with Gen AI, we’re still I think people are still trying to figure out what we’ve learned and experience just from that. Who knows what the follow up is going to be. But what I think, and quite frankly, contrary to one of the things I heard at the CLOC Conference, you know, speaking of KM is Dead, Mary O’Carroll at the CLOC Conference, I don’t know if any went but you know, she basically said, now that we have Gen AI, we don’t need knowledge management, we everything’s just gonna be automatically findable. And we’re gonna everything’s gonna be signed, and we don’t need it anymore. And my position was none No, no, this is going to supercharge knowledge management, there should be more people getting into it, there should be more interest in it. So I really see. And I hope next year’s conference will be even bigger, because it’ll be getting more people involved and interested in km. That tool. And other tools that are gonna come down a line are just kind of supercharged knowledge management, I think
Greg Lambert 28:41
Tanisha What’s your thoughts?
Tanisha Little 28:42
Sure. Patrick, I agree 100% with you, you know, I was looking at seeing, you know, recent job openings in law firms, and to the things that I’m seeing knowledge management lawyers, who have subject matter expertise, who can help firms leverage, you know, generative AI technologies, along with all of the other kind of core knowledge management responsibilities, and innovation managers who can help to lead AI implementations and other innovation solutions partner with that, but like data analytics teams, so I think that looks like there are two areas where we’re going to continue to see growth. One, of course, is Generative AI. We’ll see more clearly defined use cases. Right now we’re seeing lots of experimentation firms trying to figure out what are the most appropriate use cases to go after for these tools? I think the legal tools are still developing. Right? We haven’t seen the end of that I think over the next few years, we’re going to continue to see that it just more clarity on when it makes sense. I don’t generative AI ai versus other types of AI. I think we’re just going to continue to grow our understanding within law firms and what the tools are, what’s available to us and what’s the right fit for firms depending on needs. And of course in continuing experience and matter need up that’s a continuing trend at the looking at how AI can make it much easier to get to that information and get to that data will continue to grow. thick that’s gonna continue to be a hot topic for firms. What do we know about what we know? And how can we translate that into actionable insights that our lawyers can use? That is not going to end? Yeah.
Greg Lambert 30:11
Well, we have two really good insights. So Sara, I’m sorry that I’ve made you wait till the end here to clean us up.
Sara Miro 30:19
You’re gonna leave me with no future left. Yeah. So you know, and of course, I agree with the trends with generative AI. But I do think we’re at the top of the hype cycle now. So in two to five years, things will pan out the use cases will come into focus, there will be professionals, but I’m gonna actually do a Back to the Future Type response, I think we’re gonna get back to KM basics right? There needs to be a focus on data collection and curation. To make all of these generative AI systems work, there needs to be a focus on looking at what are we setting out to do here with KM? Did we accomplish it? What needs to change? Where are we, you know, different things related to even just really the KM 101 basics, right? Getting down to basics? What are the pain points? What are the different tools and technologies that we need? And where can we apply AI of all sorts, to make ourselves better, faster, cheaper for our clients. So I think we’re just at the start of it. And I think we need a lot of km professionals to really think about how to leverage all of these new technologies, but use the existing methods change, management, adoption, all of those key words that we hear about all the time, the buzzwords, they’re not going away. And so to hone those skills is really going to be important for the future state of where where we need to be as a as the fall KM ecosystem.
Greg Lambert 31:50
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with you with the the generative AI part brings some creativity. But creativity without a solid footing, that knowledge management can bring puts us exactly where we are right now, which is people are thinking there’s lots of opportunity with a generative AI. But when you actually try and get down to the nuts and bolts of it, it goes back to the data and in the underpinnings of the knowledge that you have. So I think I think all three of you are spot on in it’s a think a pretty good future for us. Well, Patrick, Tanisha. And Sara, I want to thank you all for taking the time for joining us today. Sorry about the technical difficulties and losing my co host due to time constraints, but it was great talking to all three of you. Thank you.
Patrick DiDomenico 32:41
Thank you. Appreciate it very much.
Greg Lambert 32:43
And of course, thanks to all of you, our listeners for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, please share it with a colleague, we’d love to hear from you. So you can reach out to us. LinkedIn is probably the best for Marlene and both of us but we can be reached at on X at @gebauerm or @glambert or on Threads at @mgebauer66 or @glambertpod. Patrick let’s start with you. Where can you where’s the best place to find you online?
Patrick DiDomenico 33:14
Yeah, LinkedIn is best. I’m on X as well as @lawyerKM. And then of course, you could just email me Patrick@InspireKM.com. Those are probably the best places.
Greg Lambert 33:26
Email, classic! I like it. Tanisha How about you as best please find you online?
Tanisha Little 33:33
You can find me on LinkedIn. I met Tanisha Little and what’s my username? Tanlit T A N L I T.
Greg Lambert 33:40
And Sara?
Sara Miro 33:41
I’m also on LinkedIn. Sara Miro you can find me and send me a message.
Greg Lambert 33:47
Awesome. Well again, thanks to all of you. And as always the music that you hear on the pod is from Jerry David DeCicca. So thanks again everybody.