The role of taxonomies in legal knowledge management systems

This chapter discusses the use of taxonomies within the legal information sector with particular emphasis on their deployment within law firm knowledge management systems. The general principles of taxonomy construction and use are applicable to knowledge collections in other legal areas such as government departments, professional organizations, barristers' chambers and companies. Information professionals are ideally suited to work on taxonomies because of their training in the principles of classification and cataloguing. It is most important that the future users are consulted and therefore representatives from the different departments within the firm should be involved. In larger law firms where professional support lawyers are employed, they should be consulted but they should be discouraged from working on the actual construction. Taxonomies can be either poly-hierarchical or mono-hierarchical. There is an ongoing argument which states that software will make the intellect redundant in taxonomizing knowledge assets.