INTERVIEW ‘‘
Some firms are really pushing to be at the cutting edge. They’re embracing AI and other tech. Some are more conservative, a bit more reluctant and a bit more focused on some of the risks and challenges...” – Mark Ford
Rob Green is Editor of Information Professional.
Exploring generative AI in the legal world
Generative AI is still making waves in the workplace, and for Knowledge Managers there are tools helping to deliver efficiencies and smooth workflows. But in the Legal KM world, where accuracy is a regulatory requirement, there is plenty to consider. Mark Ford, contributing author to The Future of Legal Knowledge Management, Harnessing Artificial Intelligence, talks us through some of the issues.
KNOWLEDGE Management in a legal setting has the same challenges as in other organ- isations but comes with added complexity around regulation. The cost of making an error can have financial consequences and also carry a risk of significantly damaging a firm’s reputation. But done right, AI and KM together can be transformative. “The way I think of it is that law is really a knowl- edge business,” says Mark. “Fundamentally, what law firms are doing is selling their knowledge to clients. So ideally what we want is a situation where lawyers are able to benefit from not only their own personal experience, but the collective experience of the whole firm – of all the lawyers within the organisation.
“If you’re a small firm of 10 to 20 lawyers, it’s fairly easy to do that using informal methods of sharing and collaboration. But when you look at the firms we have today that have hundreds, or even thousands of lawyers all over the world, in order to do that mean- ingfully at scale – to be able to share and collaborate and harness that collective experience – you really need a much more structured methodology. And that’s what knowledge management in a law firm really is.”
Technology has long been a part of the KM process and so the fact that Generative AI is emerging as a useful addition to the suite of KM tools should come as no surprise to anyone. But for many there are still qualms about how and exactly where it should be adopted.
August-September 2026
Mark says he is seeing a mix of responses, saying: “Some firms are really pushing to be at the cutting edge. They’re embracing AI and other tech. Some are more conservative, a bit more reluctant and a bit more focused on some of the risks and challenges, which of course have been very well publicised.” Mark acknowledges that concerns are legitimate, adding: “It’s not that this stuff is easy to adopt and it’s not that it’s without risk, but the reality is that change is happening whether firms like it or not. That’s being driven in large part by clients. Firms know that they have to have a plan, they have to have a story – they’re being asked about this by their clients all the time.”
Mark has shared his thoughts around what a plan might look like, and how to develop it in his chapter for The Future of Legal Knowledge Management, Harnessing Artificial Intelligence. (You can also hear an extended version of this interview on CILIP’s The Info Pro Podcast.)
Mark says that “the context of the book is the evo- lution of legal services and KM within legal services. We are in the third phase – we had a paper-based environment for a few centuries, we’ve had a few decades of a digitally enabled environment with PCs, technology, the internet and automation, and now we have AI.
“The purpose of the book really is to help KM pro- fessionals and lawyers understand and navigate this new world and figure out how it applies to the work that they do. My chapter is intended to be a practical guide to help people assess what it can do for them.
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