Legal Research

There is no ?right way? for lawfirms to adopt social software

By scott

I was alerted, by James Mullan , to a post on social software adoption in law firms on Michael Idinopulos’s blog.

Michael’s view is that most law firms take exactly the wrong approach to social software rollout. “They try to “chip away” at social software implementation by starting with “easy” use cases like know-how. In my experience, however, firms are most successful when they introduce social software right into the heart of their business: Client-specific collaboration.”

First off, I’m not sure I would call the know-how use case ‘easy’, as in practice it tends not to be. Secondly, there really isn’t as much client collaboration as people outside of law firms tend to think there is, which is why client extranets and deal room platforms have tended to be regarded as being unsuccessful over the years. . I will admit that these expensive platforms can now be created cheaply, and for lawyers and their clients working on a draft of an agreement, there seems little reason why this could not be done via a wiki, with the document formatting done at the end of the process.

This adoption is likely to be client lead though, with specific clients asking the law firm to work this way, rather than the other way around. Indeed,what is perhaps more interesting is that clients are now wanting more access to their law firms knowledge - with many wanting some form of access to a firm’s know-how. This makes finding ways to make that know-how more accessible, structured, and current more, not less important.

I also think the post makes the mistake of equating success of law firm social software adoption with lawyer adoption. Around half (or more) of most law firm staff are non lawyers/support staff/business services staff. The use of social software can greatly enhance the way many of those staff do their jobs within the firm, which in turn will provide benefits to the firm as a whole. For example, even something as simple as using a wiki page for online meeting agendas and subsequent meeting minutes writing up, can cut down on email traffic and save time.

I would, however, agree with the point Michael makes about self interest. Indeed I would go as far as the say that this is the key to social software adoption, full stop. The way most people see the value of things such as tagging, social bookmarking etc is when they can see the value to them - not the value to the firm or anyone else: if they can see the added value to the way they work and operate they will then adopt something and the by-product of that is the wider benefits that can be derived from that self interest. Encouraging people to care about personal information management can help bring about a social software revolution.

Full post as published by Information Overload on March 23, 2009 (boomark / email).