‘Knowledge Hoarding’ Hurts the Legal Profession, and Tech Alone Isn’t the Answer

The legal profession relies more than most on efficient knowledge sharing – that is, the exchange of information, skills, or expertise between people. However countless research studies have shown that many organisations of all types fail at the basics. Below Peter Veash, CEO at The BIO Agency, discusses with Lawyer Monthly a range of solutions on the horizon.

For an industry – and corresponding business model – built on the ability to retrieve precedents and other information, investing in knowledge sharing makes sense.

Historically, organisations have endured (but rarely admit) costly failures because of a belief that a technical solution is all that’s needed, but this ignores the fact that knowledge sharing is dependent on social relationships between individuals. The ‘build it and they will come’ approach doesn’t cut it. Implementing a technical solution without considering organisational climate, behavioural psychology, customers and culture may mean there is little benefit at all, and it might even be detrimental.

This is starting to be understood for most, if not all, major digital projects across industries. Providing first-class electronic repositories doesn’t affect quality of work – especially if significant reworking of documents is required. Instead it has a positive impact on the time spent searching for information. In turn, drawing knowledge from experienced colleagues has been shown to improve work quality and signal greater competence to clients, but has a time and relationship cost attached to it.

The bigger issue, though, is ‘knowledge hoarding’ – the guarding of information accrued and reluctance to share it with others internally. It’s a long-term pattern noted across multiple industries for employees to withhold knowledge, consciously or otherwise. We’ve encountered this to varying extents when working on big service design projects with clients, and we understand the value of a holistic solution. We take care to apply this to our own set up, too.

With so much of our day-to-day business happening via email and with individual documents, for many organisations finding a piece of tech to pull the threads together seems to be the logical solution. And it’s often the most visible manifestation of ‘progress’. So, why exactly is a tech solution insufficient on its own? Because it can only address a single one of the multiple reasons why knowledge is hoarded – it can create the opportunities to share (but no more than that).

Research has shown that people use technology to share when it enhances their professional reputations, and because (or when) it’s enjoyable. That fits with what we find on the ground, when working with companies to find a tech solution that actually works – that is, gets used! It’s as much about changing behaviour and culture as it is about a tech solution. In fact, you can’t really have the latter without the former.

We see the same problems and patterns come up over and over:

• Employees feel that sharing their knowledge may diminish their own importance
• The organisational climate doesn’t encourage knowledge-sharing behaviours
• Employees are ‘afraid to fail’ by sharing incorrect information
• There aren’t enough opportunities to share, or there is a lack of trust.

Even with the issues of confidentiality, potential client conflicts and the thicket of NDAs that lawyers must deal with, these issues are can be damaging in the legal profession. The swift transfer of both electronic and physical documents, as well as verbal exchange of knowledge and information, is vital.

So, how can we develop better knowledge sharing?

• Design, build and foster an organisational climate that encourages trust and corporate citizenship. This takes time and commitment – particularly from leadership – plus a willingness to challenge the existing behaviours and processes that hold things back.
• Co-create technical solutions with the widest range of end users you can manage. A true user-centred, iterative design process enables voices (and use cases) from right across a business to feed into a solution and, crucially, builds buy-in from the start.
• Establish expert groups that people can rely on to provide specific knowledge. This is a powerful signal to an organisation that knowledge sharing is a normal, and valued, part of how the business Acknowledge and support self-organising groups of expertise.
• Take the time to identify and support knowledge sharing behaviour. Make it part of employee reviews, and find ways to make it visible (be wary of focusing on extrinsic rewards though, evidence has shown these can have a negative effect.)
• Make sure people know they are valued beyond the knowledge that they exclusively hold. Break the link between ‘what I know’ and ‘what I’m worth’.
• Look closely at how to improve onboarding and ‘outboarding’. When new people arrive, as well as when they leave, are critical moments for disseminating and capturing knowledge.

Ultimately, effective knowledge sharing cannot be forced, and in some scenarios knowledge sharing is particularly difficult, for example, where there is high competition or perceived competition between business units. The future is indeed digital, but tech-only solutions are not enough. Holistic solutions designed around employees, integrating technical and cultural changes, are best placed to deliver real value.