Thursday, June 26, 2008

Legal OnRamp - An Opportunity Waiting to Happen

I spent a big chunk of the last two days at a conference in Cambridge on Enterprise 2.0. One of the other attendees was Paul Lippe of Legal OnRamp. Paul just had an article published on Legal Week.com about legal online communities: An Opportunity Waiting to Happen.

Paul puts forth ten reasons why an online community is suited for the law:
  1. Law is a social profession
  2. Legal content and expertise are developed and shared socially.
  3. A social platform is the easiest way to go global.
  4. A social platform can address clients’ demand for greater efficiency
  5. A social platform can be used to manage privileged work.
  6. A social platform gets lawyers closer to clients.
  7. Social platforms will change the competitive dynamics of law.
  8. Participating in the broader community is the best way to energize your own community.
  9. An online community could prevent future shock.
  10. Social platforms are not about technology, they are about people.
Paul and I were able to spend lots of time chatting about Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 affecting law firms and the practice of law.

My attendance at the conference was subject to a non-disclosure agreement so I have no posts to share my notes with you yet. (I have submitted them for approval from the conference host.)

2 comments:

  1. Doug, I wonder what your thoughts are on this article, do you think the legal sector is ready for "online social communities" when tradtionally lawyers aren't encourage to collaborate?

    ReplyDelete
  2. James -

    I am an active participant on Legal OnRamp and see lots of opportunities. Legal OnRamp is taking a few different approaches.

    One is to just gather information in one spot. So they are pulling in a dozen or so blogs (including this one). They are aggregating client alerts form law firms. This makes it a great knowledge repository, collecting the thoughts from many different law firms.

    These do not require true collaboration, the are just gathering relevant information in one spot.

    Legal OnRamp has some wikis and other collaborative tools as well.

    This is a different way of thinking.

    ReplyDelete

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