How AI Is Re-Engineering Knowledge Management in Law Firms with Evan Shenkman

In this episode of Between the Briefs, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens talk with Evan Shenkman, Chief Knowledge and Innovation Officer at Fisher Phillips. Evan shares how disciplined knowledge management, clean data, and responsible AI are transforming legal operations, from enterprise search and expert-finding to the next frontier of “ambient AI” that anticipates lawyer needs in real time.

With a decade of experience as a practising labour and employment attorney, Evan Shenkman has become one of the leading voices in legal innovation. As Chief Knowledge & Innovation Officer at Fisher Phillips, he has built and scaled the firm’s knowledge management, data analytics, and AI infrastructure, most notably leading the first firm-wide deployment of Casetext’s CoCounsel, a GPT-4-powered legal assistant. Recognised as ILTA’s Innovative Leader of the Year and among the Lawdragon 100 AI & Legal Tech Advisors, Evan’s work has redefined how large law firms capture institutional knowledge, enhance efficiency, and deliver client value through responsible AI adoption.

Highlights:

[00:00] Intro

[00:53] Evan’s path from litigator to innovation leader

[06:44] What knowledge management really means in legal practice

[08:04] Collaborating with attorneys to prioritise firm knowledge

[10:03] Enterprise search & expert-finding at Fisher Phillips

[12:53] Why good time entries create better data and better experts

[14:27] Cleaning and connecting data across firm systems

[20:21] KM as the foundation for responsible AI

[22:34] How AI reshapes productivity and revenue

[26:54] Driving adoption through training and AI policy

[31:07] Developing, updating, and enforcing responsible AI use

[35:27] Balancing innovation speed with stability

[37:15] Evan’s hottest take: the rise of ambient and agentic AI

Quotes:

“KM is the foundation, the AI and the innovation is the application of that, right? You can't do a fancy AI-powered chatbot unless it's trained on really good information under the hood.”
“The innovation portion, which is just trying to have our attorneys do better stuff, different stuff, be more efficient, do things in a better, smarter, faster way going forward, figuring out what's around the corner, all of that works so much better with a foundation of good KM. And there so many people that say, hey, I would love to now create a chat out of all my firm's information. Great, where is your firm's information? Is it all up to date? Is it all accurate? Or is it all just in a big mush of some stuff is out of date, some stuff is accurate, some stuff is good, some stuff is not… If you're trying to point AI or gen AI at that, it'll do a horrible job.”
“Ambient AI right now that's able to say, know what Evan probably needs because I just heard Adrian say something, Evan needs to know this and here it is Evan, right? … that makes me smarter in real time, right? And I didn't need to prompt, I didn't need to ask, I didn't need to go into a tool… And when you add agentic flows into this, where it can actually make judgment calls… I think is the next big thing.”
“This is the most exhilarating and exhausting time to be in legal innovation…everything is moving so quickly.”