I've writtten before about using blogs (and wikis and RSS) as knowledge management platforms in law firms, but for my Edge International presentation last week in London, I developed the following diagram which encapsulates my thinking on this:

Three of a firm's most important functions—Knowledge Management, Business Development, and use of Existing Resources—are shown as primary activities, each with some overlap with the others.  The intersections are:

• Where KM meets Business Development, "Scratching the Itch," or being able to show a client your firm's thinking on an issue they are facing at that very moment.
• Where Business Development meets Leveraging Existing Resources, "Showing You Our Thinking," which is not only the most effective but essentially the only credible way to demonstrate your firm's all-around smarts (merely reciting or asserting it cuts no mustard).
• Where Leveraging Existing Resources meets KM, "Professional Development."

Blogs support all these indispensable strategic functions, and are therefore at the universal intersection set.

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Update: 1 Nov, 8:20 am Thanks, Malcolm! [A colleague's take on the above post. Best line: "A resource is an asset with a job."]

Also: Think about your firm's stored repository of knowledge as something your professionals need to be "fluent" in; and profit will follow.