KM is irrelevant and academic?

Joy London at Excited Utterances heard an unfortunate comment that KM is an Irrelevant Academic Exercise. 

At a recent MBA in legal practice workshop, facilitated by Insider Charles Christian . . . it emerged that the subject of KM had become so strongly associated with search engines, black letter law, documentary precedents and—in the words of one delegate—"had been hijacked by professional support lawyers" that it was increasingly viewed by partners and fee earners as an irrelevant academic exercise.

Outside of the law world, I have seen people talk about "KM" as being hijacked by one vendor or another.  It's unfortunate, but these things do happen.