ILTA – August 26, 2008 9:00 am

These are my notes from the program.  [Since I am taking paper-free notes and because there is free Wi-Fi here, I thought that I’d add the notes to the blog.  Disclaimer: my notes are rough, so forgive the typos.]

From ILTA:

Title: Recap of G100 CIO Event – Web 2.0 Focus

Description: Join the G100 CIO Advisory Board as they provide a recap of the G100 CIO event held on Monday, August 25 in conjunction with ILTA ’08.  The focus is “Web 2.0 – What It Means to Law Firms,” including a summary of what Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager for Google Apps shared with the group around the phenomenon of Web 2.0 in general.
Date/Time: 8/26/2008 9:00 a.m.
Location: Fort Worth 5,6,7
Speaker(s): Peter Lesser – Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP
David Rigali – Husch Blackwell Sanders LLP
Karen Levy – Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
Peter Attwood – Simmons & Simmons

LawyerKM’s notes:

• The panel recapped the G100 CIO Advisory Board meeting from 8/25/08
• What is Web 2.0?
• an aspect of collaboration rather than just web consuption.
• structured vs. unstructured data – it may be ok to have multiple collaborators.
• Is it different the Enterprise 2.0? – trying to take the concepts of web 2.0 and incorporate them in organizations.
• At Mallesons wikis started with IT staff and now it is among the practice groups – someof the most prolific users are the more senior attorneys.  average age of partner there is 39 (is this a factor?)
  • Firm culture is important – some use DMS as a confidential repository, some have them open.  The latter may find wikis more acceptable. 
  • They has a client facing wiki.
  • They allow people to even restructure the wiki page.
  • Firms are not looking to IT to set it up.  It is very low cost. 
  • Use: from a practice group perspective, the wiki content was not a part of the record (i.e., the matter records) – the content is more practice-group related rather than matter related. 
  • Some fear contributions to wikis becuase they don’t want to be seen as having written something stupid.
  • The wikis are getting 1000 hits per day. 
  • Best adoption was in IP practice group.
  • In technology department they have a wiki page for their meeting agendas.
• The panel was asked if they will use wikis.
  • Lesser said not now, but didn’t rule it out for the future.  It is a cultural thing.
  • Levy – there are ways to introduce it (admin first, perhaps) – find out where it fits.  It’s a tool and it may fit some problems, not others.
  • Attwood – has tried it in IT, some have worked, others not, agrees with Levy
  • Brandt – thought was – if it is “cheap to fail” why not try it. 
• Question: what about blogging?
  • Lesser’s firm has a policy against it – presumably refering to external blogs (but there is one internal blog).
• What about the fear of discovery (from a litigation perspective)?
  • Brandt – the stuff is still there (now it’s just in email and other electronic places) [great point - people need to understnad this!!].  Levy agreed. 
• Google Apps (some of the notes below are beyond Google specifically)
  • idea is cloud computing and using Offie-style apps (like Word, email, spreadsheets, presentations) on Google’s servers. 
  • the price is fixed, the upgrades in functionality are frequent. 
  • Docs has full doc version control.
  • there is real time collaboration on documents.
  • Attwood was surprised how far forward Google is.
  • Lesser thought this was the most interesting topic.  Many in the room thought they might see this in the next 1-1.5 years.  It may be client driven (if a client adopts it, law firms may have to adopt it as well). 
  • The thought was to sit with Google to adjust it to make it legal specific.
  • The functionality is very far from the feature set that we are used to from Microsoft. 
  • Security seems to be there.  It is encrypted. 
  • Google allows you to tie in your own authentication methods
  • There was debate about whether firms are ready to give up all they have done in the last 10-15 years. 
  • Many firms are looking at getting away from a specialiszed approach and going for a more corporate approach.  Stop making and using customized applications and use more standardized applications.
  • The cost issue (often 1/10 of what the existing systems might cost) may be the thing that convinces partners to move away from the customized apps and go for more standardized apps.
  • The panel agreed that communicating with Google early on may convince them to focus on what they might be able to do to make it work for law firms.
  • A benefit to focusing on more out-of-the-box approach is that you can upgrade quickly. 
  • The panel plans to reach out to Google and others, like Microsoft, etc. to see how firms can move in this direction.
• One take away
• Levy – the dramatic gap in cost between the traditional approach and the new Google approach.
• Attwood – this is moving much faster than he thought. 
• Lesser – thinks that the whole cloud computing could work.
• Brandt – There seems to be no real road map to the development of the products – it is based on user feedback, which is good.

It was refreshing to hear such forward-looking ideas on the panel. 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms