Knowledge Management Systems: A Comparison of Law Firms and Consulting Firms

This paper reports results from a survey of Norwegian law firms on the use of information technology to support inter-organizational knowledge management. Two predictors of IT support were significant: firm cooperation and knowledge cooperation. Inter-organizational trust was not a significant predictor. Software and systems most frequently used include word processing, electronic mail and legal databases. It has been argued that law firms are old fashioned and not ready for extensive use of information technology. An impression is created that other professional service firms such as consulting firms are much more advanced. To evaluate the relative performance of law firms in the area of IT support for knowledge transfer an identical survey was conducted among a limited number of consulting firms in Norway. Survey results indicate that the average IT use in consulting firms was slightly higher than in law firms, but the most interesting differences were found in the different systems and software used rather than the level of IT use. Consulting firms are high-level users of general information sources on the Internet, while law firms are high-level users of structured information in databases.