By Gwyn McAlpine, Knowledge Management Director at Perkins Coie LLP

Among the Knowledge Management (KM) community, one question we commonly hear is this: “How can I use artificial intelligence (AI) to populate KM repositories?”  I have good news and less good news.  There are pockets of success out there, but you need to be realistic about what AI excels at today.

The Problem

KM can involve significant manual effort that entails subject matter expert involvement.  Developing forms banks, practice-specific content, and matter and experience databases requires someone familiar with the area of law to parse through documents and matter information to identify standard practices and relevant data points.  Because our subject matter experts are often timekeepers or otherwise have limited bandwidth, initiatives that require their input can often stall.

Not surprisingly, as technology advances, inquiring minds want to know if AI can replace some of this manual effort.  The…