Novel Practice Profiles: Sarah Lulman
Insights from a Knowledge Management Lawyer
Sarah Lulman currently serves as Professional Support lawyer for Disputes at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP. She generously met with Law Matters to shine light on the great work she does in a non-traditional legal role.
Sarah is an experienced Knowledge Management lawyer. She describes her role as the best job in the legal industry. As a knowledge management (KM) lawyer, she assists with a range of critical tasks. These include:
- creating and maintaining precedents,
- creating resources for specific practices groups or areas of law
- obtaining, piloting and facilitating adoption of legal practice technology, including AI tools,
- legal project management and process improvements, and
- related training.
KM work also often encompasses legal research, procedural issues and assistance in triaging support from other business or service groups within a firm. KM lawyers are often a critical brick in the foundation that supports effective legal practice.
KM lawyers come from a diverse range of practice backgrounds, skills, and traits. The role requires lawyers who want to continue to learn about the law, are organized, goal oriented and tenacious. Sarah notes that the work is project-oriented and not limited by court or client time. This means the role provides the opportunity to explore decisions, legal issues or current awareness subjects in greater depth than traditional private practice roles typically allow.
We asked Sarah what she would like other lawyers to know about KM lawyers and how we can add value when working with a KM team. Sarah highlights the broad scope of work in a KM career that can lead to connections with practicing lawyers, support staff, courts, regulators and sometimes clients. KM lawyers are often excellent sounding-boards and mentors. A KM lawyer can help a junior lawyer with a question they might not be ready to ask of senior counsel. Sometimes this means answering the question, sometimes it means helping the junior lawyer to hone and refine their inquiries so they can be better prepared for the conversation with senior counsel. KM lawyers often have practical or strategic suggestions arising from the breadth of their work that can help all practitioners thoroughly canvas options to provide even better service to their clients.
When working with a KM lawyer, remember they are there to help. Sharing your precedents and practice resources enables the KM team to help keep resources organized and place the best quality resources in your hands and in the hands of the colleagues you work with. Engage with your KM team. Suggest resources, projects or practical goals you would like some help with. Invite them to practice group meetings or lunch & learns. Ask for help with technology. An informed KM lawyer can bring together teams, tools and resources to empower positive changes in your practice while you focus on client or court-oriented work.
Sarah sees the potential for some shift and evolution in KM work over the next 10-15 years. As artificial intelligence tools improve, the day-to-day work of a KM lawyer will change significantly. Sarah is intrigued about the potential for innovative technology to expedite certain KM tasks, making more time available for efforts that require a human connection. In addition to a shift in the nature of the work, Sarah thinks there may be a shift in the geographic concentration of KM lawyers in Canada. Currently, the KM community is concentrated in Toronto. As awareness and understanding of the KM role grows across the country, Sarah sees a high likelihood of more people working in KM who are based in other provinces.
Sarah encourages lawyers interested in moving into work as a KM lawyer to join the KM community. She describes a KM career as the best of both worlds: an opportunity to bring your skills, training and experience as a lawyer to a role with the time and bandwidth to think deeply, be creative, play with technology and innovate. KM is a service-oriented role with lawyers as your clients.. Sarah’s experience as a client-service lawyer, in private practice, helps her understand the importance and quality of responsiveness, clarity and engagement required to serve the lawyers she supports.
KM is not limited to working internally at a large firm. Sarah knows KM lawyers working at small, midsize, and regional firms, as members of in-house legal teams and even independently as external service providers enabling firms to outsource specific KM services. A KM team helps ensure consistent quality outcomes across an organization, which means a wide range of firms and organizations can benefit from the work of a KM lawyer.
Working in KM also means being part of a supportive community. Sarah offers her gratitude to all the KM lawyers and leaders who gave her a chance to do this work and provided the guidance and enthusiastic support that have helped make this an amazing career for her.
We offer our gratitude to Sarah. In addition to sharing her time and insights with us for this article, Sarah shared resources and an invitation to anyone curious about exploring KM work to contact her. If you are interested in learning more about the work of Knowledge Management lawyers, Sarah recommends these resources as a good starting point:
