Legal Technology Journal

Brodies’ IT director shares his practical experience of making Web 2.0 work in the law firm environment.

There are a variety of tools that come under the banner ‘social software’, the catch-all term for the technologies that underpin Web 2.0, and the common thread is usually what is referred to as ‘user-generated content’. What is new about it is not just the fact that users of systems are generating content, but that they are sharing it on a massive scale.

By now, you may be sick of hearing about Web 2.0 and how it is revolutionising just about everything. No longer a bleeding-edge concern, established corporates are starting to sing the praises of ‘mash-ups’ and service oriented architectures as a way of opening up their data and boundaries, and collaborating with their customers and suppliers. Social networking is being woven into organisations’ systems as a way of getting staff and customers alike to connect and share. A sea change is taking place and in many sectors there are exciting initiatives underway, but it could be argued that a lot of this is more applicable to high-tech, design or number-crunching areas than to law (though there may be niche areas where they can indeed be used innovatively). Unsurprisingly, in a sector that relies so heavily on the written word, of all the social tools it is the humble blog and wiki that are flourishing in the legal world. Inside organisations, a liberation of the publishing process is occurring; so how are these changes affecting the legal sector, and how can the tools be used to good effect?

It is probably fair to say that knowledge management professionals have led the game when it comes to social software. Knowledge management is all about encouraging knowledge sharing and collaboration, and social software provides enabling tools for this purpose that are both technically simple and intuitive. Traditionally, ‘knowledge management systems’ have been expensive and had mixed degrees of success, which probably has more to do with cultural rather than technical issues. The return on investment is often hard to measure, and with belts being tightened, they can be seen as nice-to-haves, rather than essential. So it is not hard to see why the new ‘social’ tools have been enthusiastically embraced by knowledge management: they are cheap (or free), facilitate collaboration and sharing, and are quick and easy to both implement and use. The cost of failure is low, and any sort of take-up means a return on the minimal investment.

From readers to publishers

Traditional websites and intranets are primarily broadcast mediums – the communication is one way and the content is usually filtered and quality controlled centrally, slowing down the publishing process. Social media turns this on its head, so publishing is open to all, and the readers can become creators and editors. While on the face of it, this would appear to be a real worry in terms of governance, in practice it is less so for various reasons:

• on the web, anonymity can be a problem – popular blogs can be inundated with nasty comments or spam, wiki content can be defaced or deleted anonymously – whereas within the firm, user identity is known and trackable, so any misuse is obvious;
• internal blogs can be locked down so that only certain individuals can post while everyone else can comment, or each can only edit their own post
• access to internal blogs and wikis can be restricted to particular teams; and
• any change made on a wiki is stored as a new version and the page can be reverted to a previous version with a few clicks.

Another concern with opening up the publishing process is giving a platform to people to speak their minds – you never know what they are going to say. However, lawyers, who are by nature reluctant to commit to a position unless they have thoroughly researched and refined their opinion, are likely to be more wary of committing their thoughts in such a forum than most – indeed, getting them to contribute in the first place may be the real challenge.

There is a balance to be struck with social media, between encouraging and controlling the use of the new tools: try to control too much and you may discourage participation; give too free a rein and you may end up with them being used in ways you would not have liked. Such systems can be self-policing in that the users will try to maintain a productive and civil atmosphere, but as with any disembodied c o m m u n i c a t i o n s medium, it is easy for misunderstandings to escalate. Therefore, it may be sensible to offer some simple commonsense guidelines for use, such as to respect the opinions of others, keep to the topic, do not use the content wholesale without first checking its veracity for yourself, and so on.

Linking content and people

So when should a blog or wiki be used? Social media should be seen as complementary to existing tools, rather than replacing them – they are appropriate for certain uses, and should be viewed as a useful option, rather than something revolutionary. Personal blogs provide an informal communications medium, allowing short bursts of information to be posted with links to further information or sources. Team blogs are good at replacing roundrobin e-mails – the information is gathered centrally rather than being stored away in people’s inboxes – and provide an area to record ideas, post questions and provide updates. Wikis work well for unstructured but connected information – for example collecting information about ongoing projects or processes, drafting policies or research. The easier you make it for people to record their thoughts and experience, the more likely they are to do so. While a traditional document management system is great at storing client matter data in documents and e-mails, it is less good at linking content together, making it accessible and notifying people when it has changed. A wiki provides a simple means of collaboratively producing and connecting pages with hyperlinks. Since the text is on screen and immediately editable, it can be rapidly modified without having to locate, open, save and close documents. Rather than having to worry about where to file content, it is posted to the blog or wiki and tagged with keywords that describe it. Tools such as RSS feeds and e-mail alerts offer a neat delivery mechanism to notify users of changes to blogs or wikis, and with RSS readers built into Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 7 and higher, for example, such feeds will become ever-more commonplace.

Involving users

There is often a contribution imbalance in the use of social media, and an emerging rule of thumb is that of 100 people online, one will create content, ten will ‘interact’ with it (commenting or modifying) and the other 89 will just view it. In the example of Wikipedia, over a fixed period, 70% of articles were written by 1.8% of the users, while half of the edits made to the site were made by 0.7% of them. However, internally, levels of contribution should be much higher, since those using the resource are closer to the content and working in teams. But users have to feel they will get some benefit for using the tools, such as learning opportunities, knowledge transfer with colleagues, recognition (both in terms of kudos and in their appraisal), or just plain help with doing their jobs. Otherwise, why should they distract themselves from their ‘real’ work? They are more likely to feel comfortable putting their name to their work internally, though there may still be reticence. The younger generations (‘Generation Me’, ‘the Millenials’) may be more ITliterate and comfortable with social networking tools, but might lack the confidence to contribute to a blog or wiki at work, where the content will be judged by their bosses and colleagues.

The effort and cost involved in setting up an internal blog or wiki is negligible, and while the collapsing of barriers to entry for publishing can be seen as a positive step in democratising the intranet, the very ease with which a blog or wiki can be created can be a pitfall. A proliferation of sites produced in a fit of interest can quickly go stale and lie dormant as enthusiasm wanes. An approach adopted by some firms to minimise this has been to require a business case for setting up sites, and even to charge a set-up fee. Creating a barrier to entry may seem anathema to the ethos of the social software revolution, but ensures due consideration is given to the purpose of the site, and prevents a sprawl of half-baked and unused sites. Aside from anything else, if people have had to stump up some budget for a tool, they are more likely to ensure there is a real business need, and that it will be used.

While Brodies is by no means the first law firm to use blogs and wikis, their use is beginning to take off, due in no small part to the firm’s culture, which is conducive to sharing. The challenge when trying to introduce new tools such as these is to demonstrate the benefits to prospective users. For some, the mere mention of ‘blog’ or ‘wiki’ causes their eyes to glaze over, since they assume it is terribly geeky and difficult, but once you can demonstrate it in action with real content, it starts to make sense. When being shown how to categorise a blog post, one user explained that they were not very technical, but then exclaimed: ‘Oh, it is just like tagging my photos on Flickr!’ – an example of how users can bring social software skills learned at home to the workplace. In our experience, the key message is that these are just new tools that might be of some help or they might not depending on the requirement.

It is not the case that we must use wikis or blogs, but that we can use them; and we should only do so if it is the most appropriate tool for the job. In order to try these new technologies for size, like many others, we have used Microsoft Windows Sharepoint Services, as it is free, has blogs, wikis and RSS built in out-of-the box, and simple and intuitive interface. Users cannot currently create their own blogs and wikis, as we have found it more useful to discuss what they need and then advise on the appropriate tool for the job – which may not be a blog or wiki in every case.

Walking the talk – Brodies IT blog

Having been an enthusiast for these technologies and wanting to promote their use, I finally decided to put my money where my mouth is and recently launched my own blog internally. The idea was to provide updates on Brodies IT projects, information about technology generally, and links to interesting or quirky articles. Not only does the blog provide a new communication channel to the business about the work that we do, but it is also a showcase for the tool. It is much easier to demonstrate social tools if you have good working examples; without them, it is difficult to get people enthused.

An empty blog or wiki is like an empty book, and it can be hard to imagine what can go in it. Ensuring people visit the site was always going to be a challenge, so occasionally a teaser news item is added to the home page of the intranet with a link to the blog, drawing people to the site. Adding a link to the blog as a signature to internal e-mails has also helped to promote it, and the planned addition of RSS feeds from the blogs to the news area of the intranet will further improve visibility. The advantage over an email is that if someone goes to the blog to look at one post, they can easily see all the previous posts, and browse by category. The IT blog is still very much in ‘broadcast’ mode – although some people do post comments, it’s generally a fairly one-sided channel due to the size of the audience. However, where smaller project or sector teams are working together, we have been finding team blogs to be a very useful communications method. Rather than have e-mail sflying back and forth, with each team member having to read and file each one, a team blog is a central space for people to post their findings, thoughts and questions. Ironically, this only really succeeds in dragging people away from using e-mails if you set up daily or weekly e-mail alert, with a summary of the latest posts and links to the blog.

Wikis at work

Wikis are proving useful in IT as an alternative way of producing documentation, as documents tend to get filed away and forgotten. One of our partners really ‘got’ the wiki concept, and has started using one to, in his own words, ‘brain dump’ what he finds out about a particular niche area. After building up an initial batch of pages, it is now open to the rest of the team, so not only can colleagues learn from it rather than it being stuck in one person’s head, they can add to it. By keeping a record of the process of researching a topic, both the tacit and explicit knowledge can be recorded for future reference. This first site has led to the team using a wiki to track business development activities and, due to the flexibility of the tool, other content areas are to be planned going forward. When users see the value of one wiki, they can imagine how else they might be used, and when a partner buys into using the tools, it inspires the rest of the team to overcome any reluctance and get involved.

Blogs and wikis can complement existing systems by providing a fast and informal medium for colleagues to collaborate, and their success tends to be viral – successful sites breed more sites, as people see the benefits and want to get involved. While embarking on a public blog or wiki strategy may involve an element of risk and need a good deal of planning and preparation, setting up these tools internally is painless and straightforward. They are not inherently useful in and of themselves, and you only get out what you put in, so encouraging contribution is essential for success. If they are not adding value, they are unlikely to be used, so the challenge is demonstrating how they can complement existing tools and help people collaborate and share. But whatever the challenges, it looks like blogs and wikis are here to stay and will be part of the IT furniture for the foreseeable future.

Damien Behan is IT director at Brodies.