• Alun Davies, Head of Information Services, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
  
• Maggie Taylor, Training & Education PSL, Corporate Finance, Clifford Chance
  
• Jenny Barrow, Professional Support Librarian, Baker & McKenzie

Alun, who joined Freshfields eleven years ago from Allen & Overy, gave a broad overview of how the knowledge management community has been established at Freshfields. Freshfields currently employs over 100 people in the roles of Professional Support Lawyer (PSL) and Professional Support Assistant, together with roles dedicated to intranet development and data management. The majority of Freshfields' knowledge management community is based in London, although overseas offices also employ PSLs, who tend to be more generalist in their scope.

Freshfields has made the decision to carefully define their knowledge management community into three separate areas each with a distinct role: PSLs; Information Professionals; and Librarians. PSLs are directly responsible to their practice group heads and perform a wide range of tasks, including standard form drafting, overseeing the development and growth of precedent collections, producing internal newsletters, and client briefings. Three to five years practice experience is considered vital in the performance of the PSL role at Freshfields.

Every law firm has difficulty finding and retaining good information paralegals, whose task it is to support the PSLs in collating and disseminating current awareness. To address this problem, Freshfields have introduced the title of Professional Support Assistant to give those in this position a long-term career option.

Alun heads up the 28-strong team of Information Professionals, 20 of whom are situated in the London office. This separation between the Information Profession and the Library has evolved in line with the increasing role technology plays in information collation and dissemination, with members of the team specialising in areas such as data management, web development and training. The information team are decentralised unlike the library, are responsible for their own practice areas, and physically sit within their practice groups. Freshfields' increasing use of the intranet has prompted the creation of a team of information individuals with specific intranet publishing responsibilities, and even postgraduate qualifications in Electronic Publishing. All PSLs and other members of the Information team are expected to work closely with the Intranet Development team.

The Library play a central role and are task-focused in their approach, with individuals having responsibility for government publications, cataloguing, and serials management. There is also a dedicated Business Information Manager to oversee all sources of company and business information.

Freshfields have recognised the importance of ensuring that PSLs have the resources to meet their tasks. While PSLs are responsible for the quality of material in know-how collections, the Library and Information personnel are responsible for the organisation of that material. Freshfields' aim is to draw on the experience of both facets and bring them together. One way in which this has been achieved is by providing PSLs and Information Professionals with pro forma job specifications so that each individual can appreciate the roles of others. Available on the firm's intranet, job specifications enable the PSL and Information Teams to work in partnership, and also serves to bring to the attention of the lawyers the many and varied ways in which they are supported in their work through the interaction of teams with the common aim of leveraging, collating and distributing information.

Maggie Taylor joined Clifford Chance in October 1999, having previously worked for Linklaters as a Corporate Finance Lawyer. Maggie is one of the growing number of PSLs who specialise in providing training to a particular practice group. Over the past few years, firms have begun to recognise that in large practice groups, it is impossible for one PSL to cover all responsibilities associated with the professional support function. As a result, some PSLs have become further specialised in their fields, being dedicated to any one of providing training, drafting standard forms, practice notes and boilerplate clauses, or focusing on current awareness and research.

To some extent Clifford Chance have adopted this approach. In addition to Maggie, four PSLs are employed to support each of the four practice groups within Corporate Finance. Although being traditional in the sense that those four PSLs sit within each sub-group in the Corporate Finance department, undertaking drafting and answering queries from any Corporate Finance lawyer, Maggie's role differs in that Clifford Chance have decided to dedicate one PSL to provide training for the group as a whole. Rather than employing paralegals to provide information and research support for the PSLs, Clifford Chance has instead opted to establish a Corporate Information Office, comprising a Manager and enquiry desk staff. This office is a separate entity from the main library and is dedicated to providing support to the Corporate Finance department. Maggie sees her role as a PSL as adding value to the firm and its practice, and within Clifford Chance, PSLs are becoming a more valued commodity.

Jenny Barrow is a Professional Support Librarian at Baker & McKenzie. Jenny focuses on answering queries solely from PSLs, and through this approach has gained experience of how PSLs' information needs differ from those of fee-earners. As users of information, PSLs require information of greater depth, at a higher frequency, and generally covering a wider range of areas. Jenny described the partnership between PSLs as information gatherers and filters of the flow of information, with the information professionals acting as source providers. Jenny views the partnership as a three-way-relationship between the PSL, the PSLs' departments and the information unit. Baker & McKenzie has tried to overcome the occasional confusion that can result by defining each individual's role clearly so as to both create and follow an ethos of the efficient allocation of resources. Following the same line of reasoning as Clifford Chance, Baker and McKenzie are also considering placing a web publishing adviser in each practice group. This role would support the nine corporate PSLs to develop intranet sites by advising on issues such as menu structure.

Jenny gave four examples of the ways in which PSLs and information professionals work together at Baker & McKenzie:

• Weekly bulletins
  The library scan information sources which the PSLs then filter for relevance before circulating within their practice group.
  
• Standard forms and practice notes
  The library will assist PSLs by feeding through information relevant to the drafting of standard forms and practice notes.
  
• Infobanks
  PSLs will collate the information for infobanks and the library will assist in the categorisation and indexing of the contents.
  
• Organising legal training
  The library provides current awareness for the PSLs who can then incorporate these developments in training.
  

In every partnership, each side must benefit equally for it to really work. Jenny believes that both parties gain better feedback and business intelligence, new allies, who are advocates of good information management skills, and new challenges through involvement in cutting edge developments.

Each speaker presented their ideas of how their firms have worked towards fostering the partnership between PSLs and Information Professionals. Freshfields place importance on the clear definition of roles, but with a high level of interaction between those involved in knowledge management. Clifford Chance view physical proximity as of great importance in developing the partnership, with an emphasis on placing PSLs and information offices within practice groups. This apparent "hiving-off" of information staff from the main library is a way forward which many firms are working towards. Baker & McKenzie have adopted a slightly different approach, employing a dedicated information professional to provide support to the firm's PSLs without the physical separation from the library.

Each of the three examples above demonstrate clearly that the relationship between PSLs and Information Professionals varies from one firm to another, with each firm gaining the benefit of that relationship in slightly different ways. What is also clear is that the relationship between those responsible for knowledge management within law firms is one that must be cultivated in an environment where knowledge is not power, but is the key to fostering and maintaining those partnerships effectively.

Katie McCaw is Senior Support Researcher at Norton Rose, formerly Professional Support Lawyer at Simmons & Simmons

Charlotte Russell-Hargreaves , Professional Support Lawyer at Reuters Group Plc