How Are Law Firm Knowledge Management Teams Evolving? Key Trends and Insights

Knowledge Management (KM) is becoming a more strategically visible function within law firms. What was once primarily associated with precedents, legal research, professional support and knowledge-sharing increasingly overlaps with artificial intelligence, data, legal technology and the delivery of legal services.

However, there is no single organizational model.

Some firms appoint a partner as Global Head of Knowledge. Others have a professional Chief Knowledge Officer or combine KM with innovation and technology under a broader executive role. Knowledge Lawyers may be embedded within practice groups, while research and knowledge systems operate centrally.

This diversity makes three apparently straightforward questions difficult to answer: How many firms have a dedicated KM leader? How large are their teams? And to whom do they report?

A review of 50 UK- and US-led commercial law firms provides useful evidence of how these functions are organized. It also highlights why meaningful benchmarking requires more than counting job titles.

What the research establishes

Comparing KM teams across law firms offers an interesting perspective on how firms prioritize knowledge management. However, team size alone doesn't tell the whole story.

A larger KM team doesn't necessarily mean a more effective knowledge management function. Equally, a smaller team may be able to deliver significant value when supported by the right processes, technology and firm culture.

Several factors can influence how a law firm structures its KM function, including the size of the firm, the complexity of its practice areas, its geographic footprint, the maturity of its technology infrastructure and the extent to which knowledge management responsibilities are distributed across different teams.

To investigate, we did a review of publicly identifiable KM structures of 50 commercial law firms across the UK and US, covering firms ranging from 200 lawyers to global firms with thousands of lawyers. 

The review identifies three patterns.

1. Formal KM leadership is well established among major commercial law firms. Titles vary, but several large firms publicly identify a Global Head, Director or Chief Knowledge Officer responsible for firmwide knowledge strategy.

2. UK and US firms demonstrate different approaches to organizing knowledge. The UK examples place particular emphasis on specialist Knowledge Lawyers and Professional Support Lawyers (PSLs). Several US examples integrate KM with innovation, data, research and legal-service delivery.

3. AI is expanding the strategic scope of KM. Recent appointments and technology deployments demonstrate closer connections between knowledge strategy, AI adoption and the management of proprietary legal information.

Please note that these findings describe the firms examined and they do not establish market-wide prevalence rates or statistically representative UK–US differences.

How does KM change with firm size?

The relationship between organizational scale and KM maturity is not new.

Historic ILTA research found that larger firms were more likely to operate KM as a separate department with its own budget and more likely to appoint a Chief Knowledge Officer or equivalent. Smaller organizations were more likely to have practicing lawyers leading KM.

Our review suggests that basic relationship remains visible today, although the function itself has become considerably broader.

A useful contemporary framework is:

Please note that these are patterns observed in the sample rather than industry headcount averages. Precise KM staffing is rarely disclosed consistently enough to support a credible market-wide FTE average. A firm may have eight people labelled “Knowledge Management” but another 20 Knowledge Lawyers embedded in practices. Another firm might place research, innovation, legal technology and data inside the CKO's organization.

Comparing the eight-person KM team with the second firm's 30-person function would therefore be meaningless without understanding what sits inside each perimeter.

The UK model: knowledge lawyers remain central

The most distinctive characteristic of UK law-firm KM is the continued importance of lawyers whose principal role is knowledge rather than fee earning.

Freshfields provides a clear example. The firm has Co-Chief Knowledge Officers, who describe co-leading a global team of Knowledge Lawyers and other knowledge professionals and being responsible for the firm's knowledge strategy.

At Macfarlanes, the Head of Knowledge is responsible for coordinating the firm's knowledge function, information resources and corporate knowledge team.

At many UK firms, the knowledge team is better understood as:

Head of Knowledge → central KM → Knowledge Lawyers/PSLs embedded in practices → Information/Research 

The same pattern appears further down the size spectrum.

At Forsters, the Head of Knowledge leads specialist Knowledge Development Lawyers and Library and Information Services professionals. She also works alongside the firm's CIO on legal-technology implementation.

At Farrer & Co, Head of Knowledge Management explicitly includes the core KM team, KM systems and processes, and Library and Information Services.

KM leadership also appears at smaller firms too and places knowledge close to firm strategy and operational leadership.

The US model: the rise of the broad CKO

The US market looks different. Knowledge lawyers and KM attorneys certainly exist, but the most striking characteristic among sophisticated US firms is the breadth of the executive portfolio surrounding KM.

Ogletree Deakins' Chief Knowledge and Innovation Officer oversees the firm's KM department alongside Research Services, Data Analytics, Practice Intelligence and Legal Project Management. The firm lists the CKIO among its administrative leadership.

Littler demonstrates another version of the model. The Chief Knowledge Officer heads a dedicated KM department supporting a firm of more than 1,200 lawyers. Littler describes its KM organization as bringing together full-time knowledge-management attorneys with researchers, technologists and other specialists.

DLA Piper also maintains an identifiable CKO role.

At the recent KM&I for Legal conference, the broad remit of the CKO role was mentioned in several of the sessions.  The US market is not necessarily investing more or less in knowledge than the UK. However, it is often drawing the organizational boundary around KM differently.

UK vs US KM architectures

This should not be interpreted as a rigid distinction especially since global firms blur the boundaries considerably.

It does, however, provide a useful way to understand why two apparently similar firms can have very different KM organization charts.

Historic ILTA research also found that KM departments tended to report to senior management, particularly as firms became larger.

There is still a legitimate CIO model, particularly where knowledge architecture, search, data and systems dominate the portfolio. The reporting line increasingly tells us something about what the firm believes KM is for.

A function reporting through IT can naturally concentrate on platforms and infrastructure. A function sitting close to the COO or Managing Partner is more likely to participate in questions about service delivery, lawyer productivity, client value, AI adoption and operating-model change.

Neither arrangement automatically determines performance but one could argue that the signal is meaningful.

A more useful approach to benchmarking

For firms conducting their own review, the most useful benchmark is therefore not simply headcount, but to also keep in mind the below:

• Scale: Number of lawyers, partners, offices and principal geographies.

• Leadership: KM leader, exact title and whether the role is lawyer, professional manager or executive.

• Reporting: CEO/Managing Partner, COO, CIO/CTO, practice leadership or another function.

• People: Central KM, Knowledge Lawyers/PSLs, research/information and knowledge/technology specialists such as legal engineers.

• Scope: What KM owns or materially influences.

• Governance: Whether KM sits on, reports to or regularly participates in executive or management committees.

What the research suggests about the future of KM

The most significant finding is not that KM departments are necessarily growing but that the boundary between knowledge management, technology, innovation and legal-service delivery is becoming less distinct.

The direction of travel is increasingly clear that the quality of institutional knowledge is strategically important.

Law firms historically created KM functions because legal expertise was expensive to recreate and difficult to share. Now, they need mechanisms for determining which knowledge is authoritative, current and reusable.  Lawyers also need training and workflows that allow them to use those systems appropriately. Those are all problems with which sophisticated KM teams are already familiar.

This potentially changes the strategic value of the function, and the type of leader required to run it. The evolution from Head of Knowledge to Chief Knowledge & Innovation Officer, and now to Chief AI & Knowledge Officer, is therefore more than title inflation.

It tells us how leading firms are beginning to rethink the relationship between their lawyers, their collective knowledge and the technology through which legal services will increasingly be delivered.

Research methodology and limitations

This article draws on an exploratory review of 50 UK- and US-led commercial law firms, supported by public biographies, firm announcements and specialist legal-industry reporting.

The sample was selected for comparative insight and is not a random or representative sample of the wider legal market. Firm sizes and leadership arrangements may change following mergers, appointments or reorganisations. Global firms also complicate national classification.

A title or reporting line was treated as verified only where supported by an identifiable source. A role that could not be identified publicly was not treated as evidence that no such role existed.

Due to comparable KM headcount disclosures were insufficient, the review does not claim to establish national averages, market-wide leadership prevalence or staffing quartiles.

Product-specific claims are attributed to the firm or published reporting. Deployment, adoption, technical capabilities and independently measured outcomes are treated as separate forms of evidence.