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Tips on setting up a worldwide legal office using a wiki.
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INSIDE:Latin
American Briefings
April 2011
Independent Contractor Status
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Are International
SE C ON DME N T S Foreign to You?
ACC Docket 16 April 2011
HEARSAY
FRANK FLETCHER is general counsel for Nero AG headquartered in Karlsbad, Germany with subsidiaries in Hangzhou, China; Yokohama, Japan; and Glendale, California, where he usually can be found. Fletcher can be contacted at [email protected].
“The Times They Are a-
Changin’,” or so wrote
Bob Dylan. I am not
sure he was writing
about in-house legal counsel then,
but the words ring true for us today.
The biggest changes are brought by
technologies, one of which I have used
successfully over the past three-plus
years: the wiki.
I have often thought about how
I could establish a successful global
legal department for a company with
offices in Germany, the United States
and Asia — a company that never
sleeps. I wanted to develop a system
that was user-friendly and would
encourage involvement. After some
consultations and discussions, I settled
on developing an information source
through a wiki. For those who are only
partly familiar with the term, a wiki is
software that allows you to make a site
of internally linked webpages that can
be easily edited. The best example is
Wikipedia.
A wiki is not as wide open as some
would think. The administrator can set
the rules and be informed of changes.
For example, access can be limited to
certain groups such as senior manage-
ment. A wiki is also relatively easy to
use. The tutorial we developed is only
one page. A primary reason I selected
the wiki was because it allows contri-
butions to be made directly by users
without involvement of IT. Not that
I have anything against IT (in case
someone from our IT department ever
reads this), but the more steps you add
to a process, the more complicated it
becomes, and the less likely the process
will be successful.
As for what to post on a wiki, the
sky is the limit. Our legal group is a
particularly good looking group (just
in case someone from the legal group
reads this), so we started out with
photos of ourselves and then listed
our areas of responsibility — a list
of who to approach
when you need legal
support. Each section
is assigned to a dif-
ferent person within
the legal group, and
where appropriate,
a business partner is listed. The wiki
covers basics such as template agree-
ments and attendant rules of use,
directions on how to work effectively
with legal, and when it is necessary to
get finance or the technical approvals
beforehand.
The wiki is a good place to post in-
formation on the company’s intellectu-
al properties and what needs to occur
to protect the company’s rights. We
listed our company trademarks and
instructions on how to use the marks,
training materials and procedures for
how to involve legal in the trademark
selection process. The same works in
the patent area as you can post issued
patents and patent applications in
process, training materials and blank
invention disclosures. Another good
topic for a wiki is your company’s
export compliance rules and prod-
uct classifications. If you have open
source and/or new product release ap-
proval processes, this is a great place
to post these materials.
Such processes can be complex and
it can be difficult to get internal buy
in. A set of clear procedures helps to
simplify the processes. You know you
have done this job right when people
start quoting your own procedures
back to you. One area I found particu-
larly useful is posting our copyright
registration procedures. The overall
policy is posted along with the reason-
ing behind the policy. Having the
policy and procedures posted makes
it all the more efficient to collect the
necessary pages of source code from
extremely busy engineers.
Another benefit of a well-planned
wiki is that you have a ready-made
presentation for new employee orien-
tation. All you have to do is boot up
your laptop, go to the wiki and walk
through the sections of interest. If a
situation arises such that you need to
create a new internal presentation or
training module, you can post it on
the wiki. This also applies to an email
that summarizes policy. After you draft
the email, you can cut and paste into a
memo template, and then post on the
wiki. No reason to reinvent the wheel,
or in this situation invent the wheel and
then lose the wheel. Individuals who
want to grow have a resource they can
access. As long as the rules of use are
followed, the employees can go forward
and in such a way that they are empow-
ered. Or at least they have someone to
blame if they follow the rules and get in
trouble.
A wiki isn’t the solution for every
company but it makes for a user-
friendly, collaborative, cost effective
solution for some companies. With
a bit of daring, it is a process that a
legal group can set up and own.∑
Have a comment on this article? Visit
ACC’s blog at www.inhouseaccess.com/
articles/acc-docket.
A Worldwide WikiBY FRANK FLETCHER
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