Matthew James and Aileen Johnson interviewed by Briefing on the firm's innovative approach to knowledge management

Matthew James and Aileen Johnson spoke to Briefing on the firm's innovative approach to knowledge management, following the decision nearly three years ago to bring the Knowledge team under the wider marketing and business development (MBD) umbrella.

Director of Business Development and Marketing, Matthew James explained that the decision was sparked by one main question: “What other things, from a legal or a market knowledge standpoint, are affecting clients and the industries they work in? From the MBD standpoint, it’s about being able to leverage the knowledge we have in our KM team around what’s going on in different areas of law and how it affects certain clients. We’re trying to be a bit more commercial about utilising and leveraging that knowledge.”

He continued: “Trying to hoover up what data you have across the business and collate it in a fashion where you can see it all in one place and see it from a client view is the end goal – we’re not there yet in terms of how we do it,”

Aileen Johnson, Head of Knowledge added: “When I look back 20 years and I was a PSL, we were at a different stage of the evolution of knowledge. People wanted to codify all their documents and clean them up, so that was very much the emphasis. We were all happy doing that, we could see the value of it and the efficiency benefits to the clients – but there’s so much more that we can be doing and that we should be doing. Bringing MBD and KM together is a natural evolution of that effort.”

On the recent appointment of a knowledge lawyer focused on ESG, she added: “We can see what’s coming over the horizon, how quickly things are moving and how badly our clients really want to be on board with all of the issues around carbon net-zero and everything that they will have to comply with.”