Stark choices face professional service businesses in today's global marketplace, where time and location are largely irrelevant.

Law is no exception, although typically it has been one of the sleepiest, most conservative and complacent.

That has begun to change.

Today, firms must acquire, assimilate or absorb new expertise, and revel in reinventing themselves, or mosey on down to the morgue.

If they do not, more agile and client-responsive competitors will attract smarter, more sophisticated and more promiscuous clients, who will be willing to pay for better, faster, more convenient service, using delivery methods that they prefer, and tailored to their circumstances.

For that reason, you can expect to see a major shakeout of law firms over the next five years.

Increasingly, clients expect to do business with lawyers digitally, perhaps using face to face contact only for key stages in the transaction.

They will also want 24-7 real time access to their transactions.

Prospective clients will expect delivery of basic legal expertise over the Internet, especially for more routine, `cookie-cutter' or commodity-like transactions such as wills, conveyances, divorces or debt collection.

More complex transactions require specialist expertise and know-how that is already buried in the firm's collective brainpower, or is acquired as a transaction-specific resource.

In time, it becomes absorbed into the firm's store of intellectual capital and can be reapplied or recycled in other transactions.

Law firms are thus excellent examples of knowledge driven businesses.

Knowledge applied to solve clients' legal or business problems becomes know-how.

Know-how applied repetitively becomes experience, insight, and eventually, dare one say it, wisdom.

The accumulation of all this expertise, when combined with the knowledge of specific clients - what keeps them awake at night, their industries, sectors and competitors - builds up into a formidable competitive resource, which a firm needs to harvest and husband like any other.

Enter `knowledge management', which is part of the secret life of a law firm and indeed the secret weapon that helps to distinguish and differentiate the best firms from their competitors.

Well-managed knowledge takes time, skill and careful investment so that it can be leveraged for the benefit of clients. It does not happen overnight.

Lawyers are too busy to do it themselves, so you need clued up professionals with a feel for legal business and a strong client service ethos, to make knowledge management happen.

Knowledge management is more than just information technology, specialist software, an internet, a new name for research or library functions, or the management of a firm's best practices and procedures.

While it does include all these components, it is much wider than each of them and more than their sum.

It is more helpful to think of it as a firm-wide way of life, a social practice in which everyone is a contributor, stakeholder and beneficiary.

It takes account of a firm's culture, atmosphere, values and beliefs.

It recognises the political nature of some knowledge - why people hoard it or conceal it rather than share it.

Close cross-disciplinary collaboration is also necessary, between managers in the marketing, information technology, human resource and finance departments.

Each of these areas has knowledge that can benefit others in the firm and contributes to the value chain that ends with something useful for the client.

For example, both simple and complex transactions are forms of project management.

The mix involves the interplay and recombination of client contact and financial information, any previous work done for them, attorneys' expertise and legal research, the fusing in of critical intelligence or know-how from internal or external sources, key documents, and possibly foreign language fluency for international deals.

One lawyer, or a group of lawyers, does not a law firm make.

Behind every engagement with a client, every beauty parade, business development trip, article written or presentation made lurks a vast flow of expertise and intelligence.

In helping the client, good lawyers combine professional and personal strengths acquired over the years - through education and experience - with a range of other knowledge based resources which are up to date, reliable and often innovative.

They act more as business counsellors and less like legal technicians or mechanics.

Lawyers must reinvent themselves as clients increasingly look to them to deliver their services in this way.

The client pays for an effective solution that distils and delivers synthesised, focused knowledge. That is the value of the transaction to them.

Is that the kind of service your lawyer is providing for you? And what will your law firm be doing for you in five years time? Chris Maiden is the Knowledge Manager at Appleby Spurling & Kempe. He publishes and speaks internationally on knowledge management issues. You can write to him at cmaiden yask.bm, or contact him directly on 298-3295. Copies of Mr. Maiden's columns can be obtained on the Appleby Spurling & Kempe web site at www.ask.bm.

This column should not be used as a substitute for professional legal advice.

Before proceeding with any matters discussed here, persons are advised to consult with a lawyer.