Wikis and Blogs at Law Firms by Matthew Parsons

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Implementing blogs and wikis - web 2.0.

Matthew Parsons & Associates

Web 2.what?

Tim O’Reilly.

Conference 2005

Web 2.0?

Read-write web.

User generated content.

“Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.”Tim Berners Lee

“if Web 1.0 is symbolized by Encyclopaedia Britannica and similar expert organizations, Web 2.0 is about Wikipedia, and content generated by users who may or may not know what they are talking about.”Tom Landry, CTO Adesso Systems

User generated content.

web^

User generated content.

Reusablev

web^

User generated content.

Reusablev

web^

User generated content.

in perpetual beta.

Are the tools and approaches relevant for law firm KM?

Wikis | Blogs

Wiki 101

Magic...Anyone can createNetwork effects with large numbers of peopleOrganic growthEase of creation and useFolksonomy

But not without governance and weeding.

Wiki’s - a lightweight tool that enables rapid content build and may be vastly simpler than the organisational “intranet”.

[[new pagename]]

Ease of creation can easily create knowledge landfills.

Ease of creation

Low High

High

Low

Web enabled content

intranetintranet

AccuracyTrustCurrency

AccuracyTrustCurrency

Low High

High

Low

Web enabled content

SecurityGovernance

SocialEmergentSilo

intranetintranet

Ease of creation

Low High

High

Low

intranetintranetSecurityGovernance

SocialEmergentSilo

Web enabled content

AccuracyTrustCurrency

Ease of creation

MeetingMeetingss

Trusted Trusted contentcontent

“Wild West”

Web Web based based collabcollab

DMS DMS contentcontent

Enduring KM is demand led.

Great value as content publishing tool for PSLs and allocated governance. Lawyers are predominantly consumers not authors.

Great for building, where that fits culture, but cannot depend on network effect for accuracy.

Clearer fit in back office where less risk and baked into jobs.

Need to address relationship with other internal web content.

Success conditions

Technologies Tools are intuitive and easy to useTools are egalitarian and freeformBorders seem appropriate to usersAt least some of the tools are explicitly socialThe toolset is quickly standardized

Support for the InitiativeIncentives exist, and are softExcellent gardeners existPatient and dedicated evangelists existEnergy and activity are primarily bottom-upEffort has official and unofficial support from the topGoals are clear and well-explained

Andrew McAfeeAssociate ProfessorHarvard Business School

Success conditions

CulturePeople are trustedSlack exists in the workweekHelpfulness has been the normTop management supports lateralizationThere are lots of young peopleThere is pent-up demand for better information sharing

Andrew McAfeeAssociate ProfessorHarvard Business School

Forrester

"What we recommend is to start with a very specific problem and work your way up from there. For example with a wiki, you can't have everyone try to use it at once. You should start on one team individually and then move on when that team is successful."

"Web 2.0 not critical 'must have' for any company at this point, but it's more than likely that your competition is using it and is showing faster results because of it,"

Blogs.

Primer...

•Reverse chronological stories

•Tags for easy findability

•Search

Major values... reputation building, content findability, thought provoking for a domain.

So what?

Should lawyers blog internally?

Blogging takes time and thought.

Answer relates to the knowledge needs of the team.

Experiment and review.

Avoid proliferation of low quality.

Sense of community - better method for news distribution.

Enduring KM is demand led.and requires gardening

In web 2.0, old KM learnings still apply...

Content takes effort and investment to create and to maintain.

It is more about practice leadership than tools, but the tools are getting easier which may change priorities.

KM people are essential to helping with what’s possible, good practice and the importance of governance.