Those who follow The Vue Post with a knowledge management focus, would know I am a huge fan of Janders Dean and their legal knowledge, innovation and technology focused work and conferences. Janders Dean has been at the cutting edge of legal knowledge and innovation for years now, and their annual conferences in Sydney have attracted high-calibre presenters and sold-out audiences. I attended the last two of these events and found them extremely informative and useful:
- 7th Annual Janders Dean Legal Knowledge & Innovation Conference
- 6th Annual Janders Dean Legal Knowledge & Innovation Conference
This year Janders Dean pulled a rabbit out of the hat and announced an invitation only Legal Knowledge & Innovation Thought Leadership Forum in London. My invitation did not arrive and I can only assume a serious mix up at Her Majesty’s Royal Mail. In light of this grievous postal service error, the only option left to me was to be a #HashtagAttendee at this latest Janders Dean event. Fortunately, social media is becoming very popular at legal knowledge, innovation and technology events, making it easy to get a valuable insight into the themes and topics of interest that are being discussed globally.
Judging by the ‘#JDKMConf’ hashtag, the London conference was another vintage Janders Dean event with amazing speakers and an engaged audience.
I curated below what I consider to be the best tweets from the Conference. These tweets offer an interesting insight into current themes and issues in legal knowledge, innovation and technology, which appear to be largely consistent with the Australian experience:
- the need to focus on creativity and innovation to satisfy changing client expectations;
- the need for design and collaboration as part of the innovation process;
- the role workplace design can play in improving efficiency and productivity, and in facilitating collaboration and innovation;
- how document automation can help in increasing efficiency and productivity;
- the increasing role of technology in law and the delivery of legal services;
- the significance of ‘non-lawyers’ and other professions in the success of law firms, a topic that was also prominent at the recent US National Summit on Innovation in Legal Services;
- the importance of adding value in law, and the knowledge management function, to ensure client satisfaction and the underlying need to understand what the client values and what their motivations are; and
- the role of continuous improvement in ensuring client satisfaction and business success.
One of my more unusual outtakes comes from the presentation by AFK Studios: get some funky pillows and lights to get knowledge sharing happening. Only if it was that easy … or could it be that it is?!
A particularly interesting presentation was given by Dr Viktor Dörfler, Senior Lecturer in Information and Knowledge Management at the University of Strathclyde Business School, exploring how knowledge is created and nurtured, and its relationship with competence.
Dr Dörfler noted, among other things that creativity in an organisation can be stifled by systematisation and standardisation, and when it comes to knowledge, consisting of facts, skills and intuition, it’s important to remember that it can be less a science and more an art.
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