No More Lawyer Jokes
Tuesday, June 1st, 2004 by MR
Scenario: Your paralegal team has been working feverishly for a month on the big case, and when it finally goes to trial, where did that one regulatory statute go? You remember it was from a County Court in Alabama, but that won’t help you at all when you can’t produce its relevant facts while crossing your witness.
Our Solution
The legal environment is the perfect example of where collaboration and organization can really pay off. You have access to thousands of PDFs, millions of websites, but what do you do once you find the information you need?
We can implement a weblog for your legal office (or just your team) so when you find research on the internet, you can save it to your blog and find it later on when you really need it.
Find it, save it, search for it later on. It’s as simple as that.
Reader Comments
3 Responses to “No More Lawyer Jokes”
Have you actually implemented such a thing? One of the problems I see with blogging is that too often blog advocates are too quick to offer blogging as a solution to just about any business problem. It’s like the old saying, “if your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail”.
It seems like this particular scenario would be better served by a full featured document management system — which I would imagine many large law firms already have in place.
I can easily see the use of blogging in a legal environment, I’m just not convinced it would be the most efficient way to manage a large collection of documents.
June 15th, 2004 at 12:30 pm
Hey Moose,
If you look at the scenario and how we implement weblogs in it you will see that we are not trying to mold them into file management systems. Instead, they become knowledge management systems.
Law firms do a lot of research and keeping track of the research becomes the problem. A weblog would allow them to include links to documents along with excerpts and search capabilites. The weblog becomes a repository for knowledge on the research.
We are the first to admit that blogs should not be seen as the end-all-be-all cure for everything as is written in Technology Isn’t the Solution.
In fact the weblog would best be served working in conjunction with the document management system as then you would be able to keep track of documents both internally and externally (on the web).
Appreciate the feedback.
June 15th, 2004 at 12:46 pm
Funny you should mention that analogy :) We pride ourselves on not simply throwing a weblog at every problem, but to try and improve the communication and collaboration process wherever needed.
Document management systems are a fantastic way for law offices to keep track of legal data, briefs, etc., however the process of “working with your colleagues” could always use some help. And that’s where we can step in.
We wouldn’t dare pull a law office away from a software solution that is already working well for them; “don’t fix what ain’t broken”. What we do is implement collaborative software in the places where it can be most beneficial.
Communication software (like weblogs and wikis) are a great way for teams to pull together and keep all their knowledge and conversations in one place. We see our software as a way to supplement full-on DM solutions, not always as a replacement.
June 15th, 2004 at 1:03 pm
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