Editorial

March 1, 2004

Legal Knowledge Management Group

Plans for the creation of this new Interest Group are now well advanced. It is to be formed in March and the prime movers behind its creation are looking for interested SCL members to contact Caroline Gould to register their interest. Both ordinary members and those with a real commitment to the need for such a group who might be interested in serving on an Advisory Committee are sought. Dave Cunningham and Simon Levene, consultants with Baker Robbins who have agreed to act as Group facilitators, are looking for a Group that does more than talk shop. They want to see the Group declare a series of aggressive objectives.

Objectives might include:

· analysis of the impact of KM on different aspects of the law firm

· identifying the roles, responsibilities and activities which are needed for a law firm to benefit fully from KM

· comparing the legal business view of knowledge management with relevant Law Society guidelines

· compiling a guide that can be used by law firm decision makers to understand the value their firm can gain from effective knowledge management

International Federation of Computer Law Associations

London may miss out on the Olympics and the circus might not come to town, but there is still cause for celebration: IFCLA will be in Oxford in July.

I have now seen the excellent package for the speaking and social programme for the Conference, although the final touches are still to be applied. It is an impressive list of topics and speakers, and the punting, the inklings tour and the pub crawls sound pretty appealing too. The topics to be covered include outsourcing – now there’s a topic that cries out for an international context – and data protection and e-comm/m-comm, both of which also benefit from the context of an international panel of speakers and attendees.

The keynote address entitled “Iron laws of cyberspace?” is from Professor William Dutton, Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, but I confess that my favourite title is from Robert Zahler of Shaw Pittman: “Evolving sourcing through value-chain analysis”. Why? Because I was so pleased with myself when I realised that I knew what it meant.