subject: Book Review: The Lawyer's Guide to Working Smarter with Knowledge Tools [print this page] Book Review: The Lawyer's Guide to Working Smarter with Knowledge Tools
In The Lawyer's Guide to Working Smarter with Knowledge Tools, Marc Lauritsen, President of Capstone Practice Systems (an Exari Document Automation Services Partner), outlines best practices for leveraging technology to maximize your "return on effort."
"Knowledge tool is not yet a common or standard term. I use it to refer to software with significant knowledge content that does something, that applies to or processes knowledge, beyond just storing or moving it."
In a post on the Exari blog, Andrew Davis introduced readers to a set of criteria to consider when choosing a document assembly system. Lauritsen's book, however, goes beyond the process of choosing software applications, delving deeper into the financial and functional benefits of technologies like work product retrieval, document assembly, and interactive checklists. The book skips the boring technical jargon, and explains the many benefits and features of different technologies in a way that will prove to
"My emphasis is on the aspects of legal work that can be systematized and the functional possibilities of knowledge systems - not the technical details."
Proper utilization of knowledge tools, according to Lauritsen, can help lawyers and other professionals, avoid "unnecessary motion" by reusing previous intellectual investments. "Usually the cost of recording, preserving, and retrieving knowledge is less than the cost of reacquiring it."
Lauritsen's goal is to find ways to get more done with less. One way to accomplish this is to reuse work and information, rather than redo. "What we're talking about here," he says, " is gaining an edge - getting a better return on effort."
