Sound Knowledge Strategies

New Knowledge Tools for Lawyers

My colleague Patrick Hindert, Managing Director of S2KM,  posted a revised version of "Web 2.0 for Lawyers" in his blog yesterday. Web 2.0 for Lawyers is a resource-rich visual knowledge model that provides an overview of web 2.0 and its implications for lawyers and law firms.

The embedded podcast provides a guided tour of the suite of concept maps.

How can visual knowledge models such as this one create value for attorneys and law firms? A portfolio of concept maps I have created to assist small businesses to increase employee effectiveness provides a couple of examples.

One promising use is to help juries understand the conceptual landscape and inter-relationships among the key points key arguments presented during a trial. The current standard methods for summative presentations to juries are PowerPoint and graphic drawings on flip charts or presentation boards.

The limitations to these methods are:

1) the "recency effect" means that the last point is the one that people tend to remember and while that may the most important, the "beyond reasonable doubt" requirement means that the jury needs to feel comfortable in adopting that final point.

2) it is difficult to impossible, using these methods, for the jury build a cognitive model of the case and arguments that in any way approximates that of the defense or prosecuting attorney. The cognitive load is simply too great.

Imagine that as a defense attorney, when you made your summary presentation to the jury, the presentation could unfold a conceptual model of your arguments that made clear the high-level concepts and the key inter-relationships?

What if photos, diagrams, audio or video recordings could be displayed in the context of this model, so that the impact and implications of their content would be apparent?

What if, as defense attorney, you could bring the jury along during the trial to support them to develop a "mental model" of the case that corresponds to your mental model?

Concept mapping software, and the embedded presentation tool, accomplish this by being constructed of "knowledge claims" or propositions. Cognitive research has revealed that the brain stores knowledge in the form of propositions - two concepts connected by a linking phrase, i.e., "Knowledge" "is" "Power." Propositions are the bite-sized chunks the brain uses to build internal knowledge representations.

Patrick Hindert has been using concept maps to define the business landscape for the structured settlement industry. He has been able to share his insights about new opportunities created by regulatory changes as well as to clearly communicate how different industry players perceive "hot issues" such as factoring.

The concept mapping tools my firm uses differ from other so-called concept mapping and mind-mapping tools in the extensive cognitive research that informs their design and the use of propositions as the core unit from which the concept map is constructed.

As pre-eminent knowledge workers, lawyers deserve the best knowledge tools and knowledge assets available. Concept mapping tools, such as InsightTM and CmapToolsTM, offer great promise.

Web 2.0 and Concept Maps

What does the term Web 2.0 bring to mind for you?--MySpace, podcasting, LinkedIn, Skype, Google maps, wikis, flickr and blogs? Or Technorati, Ajax and mashups?  It's challenging to keep the list of tools and technologies up-to-date because new ones are appearing all the time. And what if, like me, your primary interest is knowledge creation, knowledge sharing and sense-making.

I had a chance to grapple with these questions over the past couple weeks as Patrick Hindert, Managing Director of S2KM, Denham Grey, Knowledge-At-Work and I developed web-based knowledge resources for a presentation Patrick made on September 6 to the Cincinnati Bar Association. We worked as a virtual team supported by primarily by SocialText, Skype, and concepts maps.

"How Does Web 2.0 Impact Lawyers" is the title of the root concept map of a rich knowledge model  designed and produced for Patrick's presentation. I invite you to explore the root concept map and the other concept maps and knowledge resources attached to it.  It's an example of the functionality that concept mapping offers in the Web 2.0 space:

1. Concept maps can increase the effectiveness of virtual teams. They help align everyone in a team or workgroup so that there is a common shared vision--the vision is made visible in the form of the concept map. Patrick, Denham and I worked together asynchronously with SocialText, Skype and concept maps as our primary tools. The organization of the initial draft concept map changed quite radically as we better understood and re-formulated the hierarchy of concepts, sub-concept maps, and discerned inter-relationships.
2. Concept maps facilitate sense-making. The content is organized hierarchically--the most general concepts at the top, and particular examples at the bottom. The context is extablished by a focus question. Key relationhips among concepts are made visible. The units of meaning that concept maps are built from are the same units of meaning your brain uses to store knowledge, i.e., propositions--two concepts connected by linking words that describe the relationship between them, e.g., "Web 2.0" "is defined by" "Communities and Social Networks."
3. Concept maps facilitate innovation and insights. It sounds paradoxical, but having an organized knowledge framework enables people to see connections and inter-dependencies that would otherwise remain invisible. In the rapidly changing social and business environment driven by Web 2.0, this is a core benefit.
4. The CMapToolsTM software used to create concept maps is free to schools and universities. It can be obtained from the CmapToolsTM webpage of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, the developers of CMapTools. The commercial version, Insight, is available from Ceryph.
   

There are links from the concept maps in the "How Does Web 2.0 Impact Lawyers" knowledge model to the Weblaw20 wiki and from the wiki to the concept maps. These linkages create a new virtual knowledge structure, one that's enriched by the wiki's support for collaboration and content development, and the visual knowledge organization and inter-relationship benefits of concept maps. Explore the wiki, click through the to concept map, and back to the wiki.

After your exploration, I'd be delighted to hear from you--your comments, questions and insights.