Artificial Lawyer – By Sam Grange, Senior Knowledge Engineer, iManage. “Standards and structure matter a lot. This article is composed of words that combine to form sentences, which can be grouped to form a paragraph. According to widely accepted conventions, these and other linguistic devices provide meaning and clues as to what is being said within or when one thought connects or flows into another. Without that normalisation and the existence of language conventions, comprehension would be significantly reduced or impossible… What if there was a standardised way for law firms to structure, organise and utilise their knowledge? One where the taxonomy is shared between firms so that software solutions don’t have to be tweaked to fit and the learning curve for new hires is minimised. There is a move towards this kind of standardisation. At the moment, it is small, concentrated among just a few larger firms, but the momentum is growing, not least because the firms involved can see real benefits. For such a system to be helpful across the whole sector, it needs not to be owned and developed by any particular practising law firm but rather by an external body which has the technical expertise to build and maintain the taxonomy and the commitment to be in this game for the long haul…Explore the knowledge opportunity in our updated Making Knowledge Work research report.”