When you encounter friction in your practice, it’s tempting to try to fix it quickly, sticking a band-aid on the problem without analyzing why it’s happening. But band-aids are superficial. Unless you address its root cause, your problem is going to keep coming back.

Last week, we looked at three possible root causes of inefficiency in a law practice. This week, we were going to look at three more, but I’ve got quite a bit to say so I decided to break it up and focus on only one.

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Welcome to Gimbal’s Tip of the Week, where you get practical, actionable advice you can use right away to start building a more productive and profitable legal practice.

Here’s a quick recap: in service and knowledge-based businesses like law, root causes tend to fall into these 6 broad categories:

1. Methods
2. Environment
3. Technology
4. Knowledge Management
5. Clients
6.  People

Last week, we looked at Methods, Environment, and Technology. Today, let’s look at knowledge management (or KM).

Knowledge is one of the greatest assets in a law firm. It often includes years of research, agreements, briefs, opinions, memos, and motions. Problems arise when people can’t find or access that information.

You’ll hear complaints about reinventing the wheel, wasting time searching in “the system,” or emailing colleagues for the last best version of an agreement or a brief. You’ll encounter documents containing outdated clauses or information left in from a previous matter. You may even end up starting a new deal with a precedent that actually represents a final, negotiated position.

When you see issues like this, it’s time to look carefully at the processes and systems you use to capture, update, and access your firm’s accumulated body of knowledge. Fixing the root cause at the KM level will eliminate many of the symptomatic frustrations in day-to-day practice.

KM-related root causes are often tied to others, especially technology. For example, you may not have a robust search function, making it hard to filter out the noise and find the right information. Your platform may require too many clicks to open or save a document, or it may be difficult for people to find and access the right functions.

This week’s tip is that poor knowledge management is a common root cause of errors, delays, frustration, and wasted effort in every law practice.

Your action item: set aside time on your calendar to look at how you manage knowledge. That’s a big topic, so start with ONE type of information that you look for regularly. For that ONE thing, ask yourself and your team members just two things:

• How could you make it easier to find
• How could you make it easier to update

When you have the accumulated knowledge of your entire firm at your fingertips, you can work more quickly and more accurately. You’ll deliver more value for yourself, for your firm and, most importantly, for your clients…and that will increase your reputation as a value-driven legal professional.

Improving your knowledge management practices is just one thing we work on inside the Practice Accelerator coaching program. This small-group coaching program helps you build a stronger firm, and provides a community, accountability, expert advice, and ongoing implementation support.

Join us next week for more on solving root causes of inefficiency! Sign up so you don’t miss it, and don’t forget to check out Practice Accelerator. We have a few spots opening up.