This series introduces BRIDGE, a framework for sustaining knowledge continuity in legal information and knowledge management environments. It focuses on transition rather than departure, and on how organizations sustain what they rely on—before experience has to be rebuilt from scratch.
I entered the library profession at a time when technology was reshaping how information work was done. In law firms, librarians were often responsible for translating new systems into established ways of working—introducing CD-ROMs, online research, and email, while ensuring that service, trust, and continuity were maintained.
This evolution mattered because organizations need to keep pace with technological and environmental change. Continuity doesn’t happen independently—it has to be actively maintained when change accelerates. As these challenges evolve, legal information teams are operating under a new set of pressures that make continuity harder to maintain:
- Long-serving staff are retiring or changing roles.
- Physical library spaces are shrinking or disappearing.
- Digital tools and AI are taking on greater prominence.
Together, these pressures increase the risk that critical organizational knowledge—the reasoning, relationships, and context that keep information and knowledge services running smoothly—is lost during transition.
Setting the Direction for This Series: Why Knowledge Continuity Matters
Over the past few years, I began to notice small but consistent shifts. Friends and former colleagues started talking about retirement. Job titles changed as technology opened up new possibilities. Careers stretched sideways rather than upwards. New faces appeared and began shaping the KM and legal innovation conversation.
That raised various questions. Was this simply the long view that comes with time in the profession, or evidence of something more structural? Were librarians really retiring in large numbers? Were professional bodies seeing a shift in membership age and experience? Or was this another familiar cycle of succession anxiety, repeated without clear evidence?
Rather than assume answers, I wanted to ask questions—and to look beyond retirement as the only lens for understanding what is happening.
What Existing Research Predicts—and What It Misses
For more than two decades, library and information science literature has anticipated a significant wave of retirements. Studies repeatedly point to an aging workforce and warn of large numbers of experienced professionals leaving the field. On that point, there is broad agreement: librarianship is aging, and has been for some time.
What the research is less clear about is scale and timing. Many of the predicted retirement “cliffs” were delayed, softened, or unevenly distributed. Economic pressures, job satisfaction, and personal experience all played a role in keeping people in post longer than expected. Much of this research also focuses on US academic libraries, which does not map neatly onto the UK legal information world.
However, the anticipated collapse never really arrived. There was no single moment when large numbers of librarians left en masse. Instead, roles have been reshaped or absorbed. Individuals left without formal handovers because there was no clear mechanism for one.
What disappeared wasn’t simply the headcount, but continuity.
The reasoning behind long-standing practices went undocumented. Vendor relationships, workarounds, institutional memory—the accumulated knowledge that makes organizations function smoothly—dissolved rather than being deliberately transferred.
From Retirement to Continuity
I wanted to know more.
Given the scarcity of research that speaks directly to the legal information context, I contacted various individuals who had recently retired or were approaching retirement. I wasn’t looking for nostalgia. I was interested in what people felt was hardest to pass on, what they worried might be lost, and what they hoped would endure.
Several themes emerged:
- Much critical knowledge lives in relationships rather than documents.
- Handover is often improvised or accidental.
- Exit interviews tend to focus on people-management matters, rather than organizational knowledge transfer.
- Organizations rarely make time to ask what knowledge should be carried forward, rather than simply who will replace whom.
This is less a “retirement crisis” issue and more a continuity problem. What kept recurring—across organizations, conversations, interviews, and my own earlier writing—was not a fear of people leaving, but a lack of shared language for what should remain. Knowledge was expected to persist by default, rather than being actively sustained.
Introducing BRIDGE: A Framework for Knowledge Continuity
This series is an attempt to think carefully about knowledge continuity while there is still time to do so deliberately. It isn’t a how-to guide, a lament for lost libraries, or a manifesto about technology. Instead, it offers a practical, reflective exploration of what organizations rely on—and what is put at risk when continuity is left to assumption rather than design.
Each post will take one element of BRIDGE in turn, drawing on lived experience, research, and conversation to explore how knowledge is sustained—or lost—during periods of transition. The aim is simple: to notice what matters, and to begin the work of transfer before experience walks out the door.
Most organizations don’t lose knowledge suddenly. They lose it slowly, while everything still appears to be working. The next post, Begin Early, examines the warning signs organizations tend to miss or ignore until it’s too late—and what they could notice and act on much sooner.
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