What is a knowledge lawyer or knowledge attorney?
A knowledge lawyer or knowledge attorney is a qualified lawyer responsible for creating, organizing and curating the knowledge assets that support legal work, including precedents, templates, practice guidance and AI ready content. They ensure quality, consistency and reuse across matters. As firms adopt AI, specialist AI lawyer teams, the knowledge lawyer role is expanding into governance of AI inputs, validation of AI outputs and the design of scalable knowledge ecosystems.
On my recent tour of legal conferences across the US, one theme came up repeatedly: nearly every firm had some form of a knowledge lawyer or knowledge attorney function, yet few could clearly articulate what the role actually involves. Job titles ranged widely, responsibilities varied even more, and outside of legal the elevator pitch often fell flat.
During our Knowledge Feast gathering, a knowledge lawyer admitted that describing the role succinctly remains surprisingly difficult, especially for audiences unfamiliar with KM. That conversation sparked this article. The profession is evolving quickly, and with global firms like Linklaters announcing a dedicated team of specialist AI lawyers, the future of the knowledge lawyer role is being reshaped in real time.
A knowledge lawyer (or knowledge attorney) is a qualified lawyer who focuses on creating, organizing and curating the knowledge assets that support legal practice. These assets include precedents, templates, practice notes, insights, workflows and increasingly the curated collections required for reliable AI assisted work.
The goal is simple: ensure quality, consistency and reuse across matters, while translating deep expertise into operational advantage for the firm.
Common job titles include:
So here is a quick elevator pitch that I like. Knowledge lawyers are the: “Custodians of knowledge that help lawyers deliver their best work”.
Modern legal practice runs on high quality, accessible knowledge. Yet firms today face increasing complexity, fragmented repositories, and rising expectations from clients and AI systems.
The knowledge lawyer provides the structure, discipline and expertise needed to maintain accuracy, reduce risk and accelerate delivery. While they have long been strong organizers and curators of knowledge, the question has now become: how do we use this knowledge to generate insights, improve outcomes and make attorneys better?
Knowledge lawyers typically:
Our KM trend research from 2024 to 2026 consistently highlights the same reality: AI succeeds only when firms build strong, curated knowledge foundations.
Knowledge lawyers sit at the heart of these foundations. They deliver the trusted content, the governance discipline, and the structured ecosystems that make search, retrieval, AI prompting and RAG workflows reliable.
As generative AI becomes embedded in everyday practice, the need for accurate, explainable, high quality knowledge increases—making the knowledge lawyer more essential, not less.
The knowledge lawyer is no longer a precedent author sitting quietly behind the scenes. The role is shifting toward strategic stewardship of the firm’s collective intelligence. Today’s knowledge lawyers are:
This evolution is accelerating, especially as global firms redefine their talent structures.
Linklaters’ recent announcement of a global team of specialist AI lawyers marks a pivotal moment. It confirms what many of us in the knowledge community have known for years that the future of legal practice depends on people who understand both the law and the systems that operationalize it.
This move signals several important shifts:
The strategic value of knowledge lawyers
A well supported knowledge lawyer or knowledge attorney strengthens every aspect of legal delivery. They ensure consistent, high quality work, reduce reinvention across matters, and maintain the governance, classification and metadata standards required for trusted knowledge. Their work accelerates onboarding, improves cross team efficiency and some directly enhance AI performance by providing curated, reliable inputs.
Knowledge lawyers convert expertise into reusable, high value assets, turning what a firm knows into something every lawyer can use.
As AI becomes more deeply embedded in drafting, research and decision making, the role of the knowledge lawyer moves from helpful to indispensable. Firms that invest in this capability will not only improve quality and efficiency today, but also lay the groundwork for safe, explainable and scalable AI assisted practice tomorrow.
The future of legal work will belong to firms that treat knowledge as infrastructure and to the knowledge lawyers who know how to build it.