Legal Knowledge Management projects can fall apart before they start when there is no strategic value to the lawyers. When establishing a KM project, you must begin with the end in mind:

• What is it the firm is trying to achieve?
• Are you trying to communicate internally (portals) or externally (extranets)?
• Are we trying to increase revenue and by what percent?
• Are we looking for better ways to cross-sell?

These are just a few key questions a KM team needs to ask. Leaders should think about running their department like a business and thus develop measurable projects to ensure not only current success, but future buy-in from firm leadership as well.