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#1 and I were chatting (not quite at 3 Beers) and he made a statement that really made me think.

Damn him.

We were talking about whether lawyers will embrace internal messaging apps or any other type of social media apps as KM or just communications tools. I commented that IT

You’ve all read/heard my take on aggregators here at 3 Geeks, and how there was a time when having access to information was in and of itself a competitive advantage. Simply knowing what your competitors or market were doing was currency. We all have more access to information today than any of us dreamed was

Leading up to this final installment in our series – we have defined profitability for firms, described the four profit drivers and looked at how the market is pushing on all of this. In this post we take on how Legal KM can re-focus its efforts to help firms respond to all of this pressure.

The Hill

I had the honor and pleasure of sitting between Mary Abraham and John Gillies at the ARK KM Conference in New York City over the last two days.  Mary and John are two of the most prolific and talented live tweeters on the planet. They attend conferences and tweet nearly every word coming from the

Having defined profitability and categorized the four drivers of profit for firms, in Part 4, we now turn to the market’s impact. 

Why Does This All Matter?

Over the past five to ten years, there has been a significant shift in the economics of the legal market. Previously law firms were able to raise rates to increase

In Part 2 of this series we explored the impact of Rates and Realization on law firm profits. In Part 3 we look at the other two drivers: Productivity and Leverage.

The Profit Drivers:

Productivity (a.k.a. Utilization)

Productivity is the number of billed hours per timekeeper  Most firms will have a benchmark productivity of 1800 or 1900 billable hours per

In Part 1 of this series, we introduced the concept of tying Legal KM (LKM) closer to a law firm’s bottom line  We also introduced the concept of law firm profitability  In Part 2 we explore the first 2 (of 4) profit drivers for firms: Rates and Realization

The Profit Drivers:

Rates

Although obvious, the point needs to be made. Billing Rates

For my role in the 2012 Ark-group KM Conference, I am talking about the economics of the practice of law to set the stage for how KM can better align itself with the bottom line. This series is from my materials for that conference. The first part describes the challenge for Legal KM and then moves to the economics – specifically talking