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Knowledge Management: A Strategic Role Change for Legal Information Professionals Librarians have been at the forefront of cost-cutting measures since the recession started in 2008. KM Projects That Require Librarian Competencies There are myriad knowledge management projects uniquely suited to the core competencies librarians possess. Intranet Content Development: As librarians have become embedded in practice groups, they have gained institutional knowledge about the internal and external information needs of the practice. The librarian is well- positioned to harness that knowledge to provide practice group lawyers with a well-designed virtual community to support their research needs and help them discover the firm's know-how. Expertise Database Creation: Whether tracking expert witnesses, outside counsel, alumni or other individuals of interest to the firm, law librarians are well- positioned to manage expertise databases that enable lawyers to readily locate the right parties. Database Development and Maintenance: As SharePoint becomes the standard ECM platform within law firms, law librarians can play a pivotal role in SharePoint development and maintenance, tasks which extend well beyond managing practice group pages. Taxonomy Development: One of today's significant pain points for digital content is developing a taxonomy, or controlled vocabulary, that provides easy retrieval of the firm's intellectual capital. Librarians have been cataloging print content for centuries and were the first to create the machine- readable cataloging (MARC) record, which is the standard for digital online catalog records. Legal Project Management (LPM): As LPM becomes ingrained in law firms to provide practice group support in managing alternative fee arrangements (AFAs), embedded librarians may be able to take on the LPM role. It is clear that firms are taking different approaches to LPM. While we are seeing project managers, legal assistants and finance professionals assume these roles, law librarians could be a viable alternative. In Ted Tjaden's article "Legal Project Management for Law Librarians," published in the March 2012 issue of AALL Spectrum, he identifies various roles that law librarians could play in LPM: • Provide education and current awareness on LPM • Assist in the RFP process • Help develop checklists • Help embed precedents and research into project phases • Evaluate and train on LPM software • Support e-discovery management • Assist with after-action reviews • Implement project management on internal administrative projects Search Engine Optimization: Librarians spend their days searching hundreds of proprietary databases and Internet resources. Who is better equipped to help firms AALL/ILTA White Paper 37