Profile: Mark Gould

His name is synonymous with modern and client-centric approaches to knowledge management (KM), so it is no surprise ?that Mark Gould, head of KM at Addleshaw Goddard, hasn’t followed the well-trodden career path of many of his peers. Nor has he allowed traditional thinking in the often insular law firm KM environment to limit his scope.

It is usually a given that those who eventually become professional support lawyers (PSLs) and knowledge managers will have practised law. However, having completed his undergraduate law degree at the University of Warwick and a research masters at the European University Institute in Florence, Gould immersed himself in the world of academia.

“Why didn’t I become a lawyer? I took one look at the book-based learning required and was fairly convinced that I wouldn’t make a success of it,” says Gould. “I probably had a more academic perception of the study of law than my fellow students, so that was where I ?more naturally fitted.”

After lecturing in law for 12 years, 11 of which were spent at the University of Bristol, Gould decided it was time for a change.

“One of the biggest influences was that my wife, who’s from the north, wanted our children to have northern accents,” he says with a chuckle.

“Actually, it was a personal driver to move elsewhere for a better quality of life, as we were looking for almost a countryside existence at the time. And while my research was interesting, it wasn’t earth-shattering. It was time to move on before I became stuck in a rut.”

Creating opportunity

Gould refers to his move to Addleshaw Booth & Co in 2001 as a “lucky break”; a simple matter of being in the right place at the right time. While it was a step into the unknown in that his experience of law firms was limited and he was unfamiliar with the role of the PSL, his existing skillset stood him in good stead for the day-to-day research and training requirements.

“As it turned out, there was quite a lot in the traditional PSL role that was similar to that of an academic,” he says. “The practice group I went into was very much commercial and competition law focused, so I had to do quite a lot of learning on the job from a technical point of view. That was the main challenge, along with getting to grips with the very different working life within a commercial law firm.”

While Gould readily admits that his journey to becoming a PSL was fairly unusual, the role and routes into it have changed radically in recent years. Previously, lawyers may have become PSLs out of a desire to do something different in their practice group, or as a step back from fee-earning work. Then, more individuals opted for careers as PSLs, with some moving firms to practice the same role elsewhere.

“What we have now is something that has evolved, not by design, but because of accidents of history. The commercial and economic pressure we’re under means that we need to think more carefully about looking after PSLs and ensuring they have the right challenges,” says Gould.

“We need to protect the best interests of the firm and ensure it has appropriate resources, rather than happening to be in the right place at the right time. Most firms are grappling with these questions – some more successfully than others.”

Following the firm’s merger with Theodore Goddard in 2003, Gould started working on projects alongside colleagues from other support functions – although he says there was some scepticism from the management committee in the early days as to whether a central KM function was needed.

Each firm already had teams of PSLs and, while there was only overlap in a few practice areas, it was clear that they needed to coordinate and work better ?as a group.

Gould began working more closely with the then COO Peter Smith (who had been appointed from Baker & McKenzie) and the management committee to review the combined information services function, among other initial steps.

“In the end, I kept nagging and the ?firm decided to appoint a central function and a head of KM. So I applied, they interviewed me and I got the job. That ?was partly making something happen ?and partly being in the right place at ?the right time,” says Gould.

“It was also the right decision for ?the firm; we were making sure that we were better coordinated, which has ?been my watchword ever since.”

Balancing needs

Gould says his team have taken a divisional and practice area approach to KM work to ensure that the very different needs of each group are met. For example, teams in highly technical areas such as tax or competition law receive greater levels of support than those in more transactional, precedent-driven areas like real estate.

“Equally, we need to ensure that this differentiation doesn’t result in inefficiency because some groups are getting better support than others, or that the service that some receive is not matched by an investment of equal value elsewhere,” ?says Gould.

The firm still has some practice ?groups which do not have PSLs, either because they have found alternative ?ways of completing the work or because the opportunity to recruit is driven by financial performance.

“This is a universal problem because ?of the nature of law firms,” says Gould. “We invest only after we have seen success, unless we can see strategic ?value in investing upfront to drive a change. That’s problematic for KM as it’s almost inevitable that you need to invest at the outset. You need to have a certain level of income to justify full-time PSL support.”

Gould notes that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach, especially given the current economic climate. The real business driver, he says, should be ‘what does the firm want to achieve?’ not ‘how many precedents do we want?’ This will result in firms reacting very differently in response to their individual objectives, shaping the balance between internal processes and outsourced services.

“KM teams need to be dynamic to reflect this and ensure that people are creating the connections and generating the right knowledge,” says Gould.

“It’s all about breaking down silos and ensuring people are seeing each other’s work, learning from it and finding useful things to apply to their own practice. If we were to be obsessed by reporting lines and maintaining barriers between teams, it would send all the wrong messages and produce negative results.”

Adopting social media

For Gould, the variety of his job and lack of predictability in the current business environment is a challenge that he relishes. However, he says that it can sometimes be difficult to hold the focus required to perform his role effectively, particularly when there is the temptation to chase after a new industry development or technological tool.

“Openness to different influences ?is quite important and it’s one of the ?core things KM is designed to support,” says Gould. “Change is a constant in ?all firms and KM is about helping people ?to cope with that change by feeding ?them the information they need and connecting them with communities that have done similar things – or opening ?their eyes to different ways of doing ?things at a senior level.”

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Gould is a prolific presence on social networking site Twitter and can often be found contributing to trending topics while attending conferences. “Well, it’s the shiny new thing isn’t it?” he says.

Gould was the first to undertake the head of KM role at his firm, so actively sought expertise and experience by connecting with people in similar roles at other firms. This happened largely at conferences and was incredibly valuable.

“The KM community in UK law ?firms is very open and keen to share insights and experiences, but it can be challenging to obtain this knowledge, ?as that group is predominantly based ?in London,” says Gould.

“For me, blogging and Twitter are another way of extending that interaction. It’s important not to be just listening ?and taking things in, but participating ?and joining in with discussion ?and developments.

Twitter has been a social vehicle in connecting with people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. But it’s also a way of exploring ideas in a way which, if you had told me about it two and a half years ago, ?I wouldn’t have believed you.”

However, he adds that seeing Twitter in isolation isn’t the way forward. It makes more sense when it is connected to something else.

“From a social perspective, you can use it in the same way as Facebook,” says Gould. “On a professional level, you can develop deeper channels of communication with people you meet. Most importantly, it’s that continuous conversation. When I’m writing a blog ?or developing insights into a topic, it’s useful to throw my ideas out there and obtain some feedback.”

Gould is a strong believer that social networking, used internally, can be beneficial to law firms. “I think the arguments against its use were initially fairly odd,” he says.

He recalls a note he sent to a project manager around six years ago, suggesting that people share the most knowledge when they gossip. “It was very tongue in cheek but I do think it is where people generate new ideas and not just on a social level,” explains Gould. “If people are comfortable with each other they tend to ask more technical questions, as they have that existing relationship.”

The firm’s intranet was an important first step in starting this level of communication, but the introduction ?of social networking has started to ?remove barriers between teams and ?to allow the know-how and expertise ?in subsequent conversations to be ?more readily captured.

Of course, while the old arguments about loss of control or information risk may be less valid now, there can still ?be reluctance from busy lawyers to join ?the discussion.

“One of the highlights of my career was when I asked our managing partner ?if he would write a blog,” says Gould. ?“He was a little uneasy at first. He understood that blogging required a different tone of voice and felt that, as ?a lawyer, it would be difficult to ‘knock ?off’ a post without multiple checks. But ?a few months ago, he and our senior partner started to blog together.”

Gould says that the blog has yet to reach “tipping point” in that the firm still needs to implement an internal RSS aggregator or similar tool to ensure blog posts are not lost in a vacuum.

“Making the most of social tools is a challenge for every law firm and will remain so until every last partner is embedded in Twitter,” says Gould. “But it’s a highlight for partners at this level to finally feel comfortable about sharing ideas and writing informally.”

Gould is also hopeful that social networking will result in best practices from outside the legal sector being embraced by law firms’ KM teams. “One of the things that can be frustrating about the legal community is that, while it’s very open, it can be inward facing,” he says.

Of course, that is not to say that KM processes on a production line at a large corporation will have any relevance in efficient legal practice. But there are valuable lessons to be learnt. Gould talks of a historical progression, whereby firms which have previously been buried in precedents and know-how have adopted better ways of working. Outsourcing has also helped enormously.

“There was sometimes a view that everything needed to be wrapped up in technology-based know-how systems. So lots of law firms were sold things that eventually became white elephants or were embedded in a service such as PLC, which was better managed,” says Gould.

“Smaller organisations like law ?firms will struggle with large amounts ?of information or keeping content up to date, whereas it can make more sense to allow another organisation to do that, funded by subscriptions.”

The KM party

Many law firms will have gone through different stages of learning and drawn similar conclusions, says Gould. So, KM teams will need to be flexible and responsive to the changing marketplace, increasing competition and client demand for value-added services. This also requires an in-depth understanding of the wider objectives of the law firm and how KM ?can support them.

Gould concludes: “Some firms are ?still late in coming to the KM party, so ?will have to work through that learning ?in an accelerated fashion.”