Regular

posted 2 Jul 2009 in Volume 3 Issue 5

Where are we going?

Penny Edwards and Lee Bryant look at existing practices in social networking within law firms and ask what developments the future may bring?

One of the most significant recent developments for knowledge-based organisations has been the rise of online networking – how legal professionals can use online social networks both within and beyond their firms to augment offline relationships, build reputation, learn from peers and improve communication, current awareness and work processes. The growth of online networks is set to be a significant evolution in the practice of law because, in many ways, the network-centric view reflects its traditional way of working. Before considering the future of social networking, it is instructive to reflect on some of the lessons to date.

People
Social computing is about people, not technology. To facilitate peer production, sharing and collaboration, social tools adapt around the very people who will use them. They augment, rather than replace, our social interaction and support our connections with others. Everyone knows something, but nobody knows everything, and through social-networking platforms, what any one person knows can be tapped into by the group as a whole and used to confront issues of greater scale and complexity than would be otherwise possible.1 People do not go out of their way to share, so sharing needs to become a by-product of action.

Participation
Social networking requires people to be actively engaged in the ‘conversation’ – both listening and contributing to it. It is not enough to create a profile and wait for something to happen, because the chances are it never will. Networking carries the expectation of mutual benefit, so it is important to listen to what people are saying and think about how you can respond to what they are saying in a way that helps you both.

That said, the vast majority of network members will not be highly or deeply engaged in their online groups. Nevertheless, Ross Mayfield describes the patterns where low- threshold participation amounts to collective intelligence, and high engagement creates an enhanced form of collaborative intelligence (see Figure 1).2

People’s participation ranges from low-threshold activities (reading, bookmarking, tagging and linking) to higher engagement involving writing, refactoring and leading networking or change efforts, which involves the smaller core of the community. From the former, we gain a form of collective intelligence, and from the latter, a range of opportunities and outputs that could not be created by any number of individuals working alone. Social software platforms must support the spectrum of participation from low threshold to high engagement to capitalise on both aggregated forms of intelligence.

Supplementing interactions

“To say that social software can be integrated into our everyday social lives is entirely different from saying that social software can recreate our everyday social lives or replace them.” William Davies 3

The premise of social networking is that online and offline interactions complement rather than replace each other. Social tools permit legal professionals to work and network in ways that are more cost-effective and enable them to reach more people, more often and in more locations than would otherwise be possible. It is not a substitute for face-to-face interaction but can be a highly effective adjunct to it. Likewise, it should not be seen as a replacement for other forms of online communication like e-mail. Although e-mail is often thought of as ‘broken’, it is nevertheless a popular, easy-to-use tool, which is usually the first and last application that people use at work each day. In short, e-mail will continue to have a place in online communications, but as we are seeing from the public domain, there should be a greater emphasis on, and availability of, other tools more suited to informal daily communications.

Simplicity
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: a complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.” John Gall4

Online social networks exhibit many of the traits of complex systems. They comprise simple online communication techniques, such as linking, blogging, bookmarking and recommending. Their use is emergent, self-organising and adaptive on the micro level, but they create complex network effects at the macro level. People flock to them because they are straightforward, flexible and enable them to engage directly around matters that interest them.

This holds important implications for law-firm communication and collaboration software. If we recognise that people behave like complex systems, then the applications they use to create or complete work should reflect this. We should start as simple as possible, within a framework designed for future development and growth.5 We should not try to predict all the features that may be useful in the future, which will from the outset introduce excessive complexity and the possibility of early obsolescence and failure.6 Neither should we box people into structured workspaces or predefined workflows that prevent systems from adapting to the user and the multitude of ways they wish to apply them.

Changing mindsets
Aside from the common misconceptions that social networking involves frivolous, non-work related activities, more fundamental considerations surround a rethink about the boundary between (i) control: dictating how things will be executed and by who, and (ii) autonomy: allowing people to organise themselves and seeing what emerges. If we start from the point of view that we are hiring the right people and they are broadly aligned towards shared goals, then we should trust those people to act professionally and support them in their efforts to work well.

We can use people power to find and organise information better through an emergent information architecture. We can also leverage people’s own social networks as more appropriate delivery mechanisms for useful information and to add value and relevance to information search and retrieval. Business social networks based on weak ties are arguably a vital element of an organisational immune system, which can avoid catastrophic mistakes and maintain a healthy level of discussion and debate about the mission of the company. Of course, this requires a new style of leadership and approaches to the measurement of value and performance.

Productivity and efficiency
There is now a significant body of research illustrating that access to social networks enhances motivation, opportunity and creativity in the workplace.7 Far from being time-wasting, many of the features of online platforms, such as searchable information, presence detection, ‘status’ or profiles, enable legal professionals to be more visible and connected with clients.8 Furthermore, the need for social-computing tools is a natural extension of digital collaboration and is increasingly becoming incorporated into business productivity solutions. A social platform can address clients’ demand for greater efficiency, enabling legal professionals to minimise time and expense spent ‘reinventing the wheel’, and instead focus their expertise on developing specific and creative solutions for clients.

Pace of adoption – will it go mainstream?
Lawyers now have a fundamentally new set of tools for communicating, collaborating, community building and conducting business at their disposal. The growth of social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is astounding and shows no signs of slowing. The entry of vertical social networks targeted towards the legal community looks set to offer multi-purpose platforms, where people are able to network and work with contacts in collaborative ways that accommodate the nuances of each situation.

Blogging has risen dramatically over the past few years, with blog search engine Technorati now tracking over 100 million blogs. Companies and professionals from all industry sectors have embraced blogging as another business tool, to more easily and efficiently interact with stakeholders. A recent article in The Economist reported the transition of blogging into mainstream media, underlining that “[there is now no] sense that blogging as a technology is revolutionary, subversive or otherwise exalted... Confirmed, however, is the idea that blogging is useful and versatile. In essence, it is a straightforward content-management system that posts updates in reverse-chronological order and allows comments and other social interactions.”9

Web 2.0 is being used in a range of professional and social contexts for staying up-to-date with industry, market or professional developments, managing information, and communicating and collaborating with clients and colleagues. The popularity of Wikipedia has propelled the concept of the wiki to the forefront of collaborative know-how development, reflecting a trend away from the knowledge of the elite few, to the wisdom of the crowds.10

Nevertheless, the pattern of adoption of Web 2.0 in the legal sector is conservative, as the statistics below illustrate. Whilst there are always exceptions, the earliest adopters have often been smaller firm lawyers. “Technology often acts to level the playing field for smaller firms,” observed Bob Ambrogi in our interview, “by enabling them to become more efficient in their practice and develop a wider reach in their market.” Inside the firm, there is continuing and increasing investment in social software tools like wikis, blogs and RSS, but attempts remain nascent to use these technologies for internal work purposes.

The communication and collaboration tools firms employ are still often stuck in the 1990s paradigm of basic desktop applications augmented by centralised web-based storage and collaboration systems, which do nothing to generate network effects from individual activity. These tools are a great source of frustration for users, who are increasingly asking why they cannot have tools that are as simple, useful and powerful as those they can access on the internet for free, rather than these expensive and inflexible internal systems.

In general, lawyers have been more inclined to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to technology adoption and networking initiatives. They will wait for peers to try something, smooth out the wrinkles and report on progress, benefits or drawbacks. Alternatively, they wait for clients to demand new working practices and efficiencies, which ultimately drives the adoption of new technologies and work processes. “A few innovative and entrepreneurial firms will lead the way with some emerging systems,” says Richard Susskind, “but most will wait to be nudged or dragged by their clients into twenty-first century legal practice.”11

Any decision to proceed is not based around their own action, but around making a rule that everyone must follow, observes Paul Lippe, CEO of Legal OnRamp. “Lawyers don’t think of change as happening through action, but by consensus-validated rule-making.” The best example of change in lawyers’ communication tools was the adoption of e-mail. “A few lawyers used it because it made sense, lots were sceptical, and then one day all used it,” said Lippe in our interview. “The gap from non-use to use wasn’t bridged by a consensus proving that it was acceptable, or through resolution of the issues around e-mail, it just got to the point that enough people were using it that everyone started to. The fact that others were using e-mail showed the advantage, ameliorated fear, and made it a de facto rule.”

Firms should use the lessons learnt from the rapid and systemic rollout of e-mail to drive good behaviour in the adoption of social tools. E-mail was dropped on people so quickly that it created a plethora of process, information and productivity issues. This time, there is an opportunity to learn how and why to use social tools, and to situate them appropriately in people’s work and networking processes. The challenge here is not to assess how IT might threaten the current work of lawyers, or departments, so that the traditional ways can be protected and change avoided, it is to find, understand and embrace better, quicker, less costly, more convenient and publicly-valued ways of working.12

Web 2.0 is more than a passing fad. It has become a focal point for conversation and a powerful medium for change. “The absolute proof that it will happen is the complete and utter silence and lack of passion of any defenders of the status quo,” observes Paul Lippe. “The status quo has inertia, which is a very powerful force, but inertia is just that, inertia, and not something that tells you where the future will be.” Whilst we have still to reach the ‘tipping point’ in this phenomenon, it is getting closer with ever greater speed.

Statistics
Global
Now visited by over two-thirds (67 per cent) of the global online population, ‘member communities’, which includes both social networks and blogs, has become the fourth most popular online category – ahead of personal e-mail. It is growing twice as fast as any of the other four largest sectors (search, portals, PC software and e-mail).13

A McKinsey survey indicates that an increasing percentage of companies are using or planning to use Web 2.0 technologies:14

US
More particularly, in terms of the legal profession, the 2008 Leader Networks survey15 commissioned by LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell in the US reveals that almost 50 per cent of attorneys are members of online social networks and over 40 per cent of attorneys believe professional networking has the potential to change the business and practice of law over the next five years. However, less than ten per cent say they can rely on their current network to help them work more efficiently and cost effectively. The survey of 650 attorneys also reveals a high degree of interest – more than 40 per cent – among lawyers in joining an online professional network designed specifically for their profession.

UK
A survey by the Professional Marketing Forum (PM Forum) of its members worldwide, carried out in November 2007, provides clear evidence that professional firms are still coming to terms with social networking. 191 members completed the survey on Web 2.0.16 Sixty-two per cent of respondents were marketing directors or managers. Law was the largest sector with 55 per cent of respondents. The UK was the most common primary market with 44 per cent of responses. Survey findings included the following:

20 per cent of firms were considering an official presence on Facebook;
Large firms were actively exploring the possibility of upgrading intranets for Web 2.0 techniques; and
Social networking sites, such as Facebook, were twice as likely to be banned as business networking sites such as LinkedIn.

Asia-Pacific
During August/September 2008, CCH surveyed 229 professionals from organisations in the professional services and legal sector to gauge the effects of Web 2.0 usage on the way professionals access, absorb and disseminate information.17 31.4 per cent of respondents used social network sites for frequent personal use and 13.1 per cent for frequent professional use. 42.4 per cent thought a social online community concept in a specific professional context would be of high value. Table 2 shows results specific to the legal sector.

Horizon scanning and future developments
The bubble firms have been operating in is about to burst.18 The economic downturn has caused radical downsizing and cost-cutting in many firms. However, these lay-offs and budget cuts do not address more fundamental issues regarding waste, process inefficiencies and commonplace service offerings that fail to distinguish one firm over its competitors. Legal professionals and firms are under increasing pressure to become more productive, cost-effective, innovative and versatile.

Changes to traditional business models based on the hourly billing rate and to the pyramid structure of the firm, as well as to the undertaking of routine legal work, are being brought about by new competitors in the legal market (such as outsourcers and new investors), cost-conscious clients sourcing more cost-effective and collaborative solutions, and disruptive technologies (including social software and online communities). Richard Susskind anticipates that the market will respond to these changes in two ways:19

Evolution of legal services – new methods, systems and processes will emerge to reduce the cost of undertaking routine legal work, extending well beyond the back-offices of legal business into the very heart of legal work. More specifically, Susskind envisages that legal services will evolve from bespoke services at one end of a spectrum along a path, passing through the following stages: standardisation, systematisation, packaging and commoditisation. Many new ways of sourcing will emerge and these will often be combined in the conduct of individual pieces of legal work.
Client initiatives – clients will share the cost of legal services in various ways, affecting the entire market. Susskind suggests that in-house counsel will frequently work together, often as part of online closed communities, and find ways of recycling legal work amongst themselves. We have already seen the beginnings of these new collaborations in law community sites like Legal OnRamp and in the blogosphere. At the other end of the spectrum, individual consumers will have ready access to online legal guidance and to growing bodies of legal materials that are available on an open source basis. Again, we have seen how many legal professionals and firms are already contributing to the pool of free legal resource, and how people are sharing amongst themselves in various social platforms their legal experiences and information.

These changes hold deep-seated ramifications for the nature and shape of firms, the types and methods of delivering client services, and the future role of legal professionals and their requisite skill set. Ideas and behaviours from across the consumer web will shape the culture and structure of the 21st century law firm and the roles of legal professionals.

Firms of the future
Much of this has explored the evolution of the way legal professionals work in the Web 2.0 environment, with examples illustrating point solutions and incremental changes to existing processes. These changes are not, however, ends in themselves. They are just the first steps towards the creation of networked organisations that will transform the way people connect with and create value for colleagues, clients, peers and other stakeholders.

There are, of course, barriers to any transformation in the form of existing mindsets and organisational structures, hierarchies and routines. These have always been significant challenges, which is why change is slow and dependent on demonstrable and valuable returns. But change is inevitable in today’s climate, as clients demand the delivery of more value for less money. It is becoming increasingly difficult for firms to maintain profitability through the use of pyramid structures (i.e. few equity partners and many junior lawyers) and to work through ‘black box’ service models that create outcomes with minimal interaction and knowledge sharing with their clients and work network.20 With the outsourcing of routine tasks to cheaper cost centres and the commoditisation and computerisation of other tasks, firms must develop new models through which they can offer valued services.

As firms work to strengthen existing client relationships and build new ones, social approaches to business design will become a top priority along with the intelligent integration of social computing into the workplace. To be in a position to truly exploit social capital within their networks, legal professionals and firms need to move beyond traditional organisational boundaries, to work with clients and peers to develop better and unique service offerings. Clients in these types of knowledge-based relationship will be less affected by price because they recognise that open communication, collaborative teams and complementary expertise create value.21 While social networks and technologies can play a key part in restructuring roles and interactions based on networked individualism, firms will need to establish the climate that encourages people to work together for their mutual self-interest across organisational boundaries. That requires a new approach to the building of relationships based on trust and willingness to participate in the exchange of ideas and information.

Trust and confidentiality issues remain very real even though firms are now far more porous at every level. Basically, everybody cannot have access to everything, nor should they. The rollout of Web 2.0 tools within firms and the use of public networking sites in general is all about the push and the pull between openness and trust. One of the concerns with social networks and tools is that they lay communications bare, making information and associations more visible and public. There are ample control mechanisms for securing privacy, access and permissions, making this less of a technology issue than a cultural one. Firms need to recognise that they leak knowledge whether they like it or not; social software at least makes this process more visible and manageable, and creates the conditions for a new ethic of accountability.22

Networks and social technologies enable firms to re-engineer their structures and design more modular or even virtual entities. While for some firms hierarchies will not disappear altogether, they will be complemented by informal, boundary-spanning social forums. Unlike traditional organisations, work relations in the networked firm will be dispersed with ties extending across geographical boundaries, to multiple units within the firm and often to organisations and communities elsewhere. Legal professionals will have greater discretion about whom they deal with and the manner in which they interact. Virtual firms will go further, cutting across the original organisational structure to link people from multiple organisations from various locations in temporary communities to deal with tasks as they arise. The networks through which these firms will operate can be used to source the expertise and resources as required, to feed them current awareness information and to provide them with referrals and new business opportunities.

Like complex systems, these firms will be able to more readily organise themselves according to their changing needs and target market. That may involve outsourcing work to cheaper centres, gathering experienced lawyers in a virtual firm or using subscription or other charging models and locating resources when needed. Legal professionals will work through different sized networks depending on the nature of the task and their objectives. This may include working through closed communities resembling consortia or vertical social networks where members wish to discuss common interests and issues, attract experts, secure participation and share the resulting intellectual capital. At other times, clients may wish to select firms or individuals lawyers from firms to work in elite circles on deals or initiatives. Firms may also want to leverage the ‘weak ties’ across their networks and bridge into other groups to gather ideas from many diverse or unexpected sources. Those who understand how to design and implement networks, and tap their potential, will have the advantage in this environment.23

Service innovation
There are tremendous gains to be made from the overhaul of inefficient processes, such as pitch preparation, new matter intake and conflicts checking, precedent and document review, and so on. Additionally, within large firms, but also in more specialised smaller firms looking for thought leadership in a particular market, there is considerable potential for exploiting the process of intelligence gathering, analysis, insight and social filtering of information that already takes place, albeit in a largely unconnected and intangible form. Think of the amount of research, reading and analysis that takes place within a firm each and every day. How are the fruits of this work surfaced for others to share? On the whole, they are not.

Arguably, the greatest transformational potential lies in the way these tools and the networks that support them can provide new ways of working with clients. In the short term, there is tremendous potential for these tools to reduce costs and improve the effectiveness of current awareness, business intelligence and information management in general. Over the longer term, this will be a major driver of differentiation in client service and help build more personalised, conversational relationships with key clients at the high end of service delivery.

Providing access to a selection of the data flowing across the firm will be a source of competitive advantage and client retention by enabling clients to tap into the collective intelligence of the firm about a particular topic or matter. It also allows people in the firm to benefit from regular interactions with clients, and to glean valuable know-how and ideas that can be used to improve what is delivered and how it is delivered. The technology already exists to offer tailored, personalised feeds of news and analysis from within the firm, and we will see more firms adopting this in the future. Sharing news, tips and market insight securely with clients in close to real time is a good example of the power of ‘weak ties’ in social networks, and is a great way to show the value of the firm.

The online interactions and conversations that will be used to support internal knowledge markets (such as via discussion groups, knowledge hubs and communities of practice) will eventually link across to external communities and markets, and share similar tools and venues. Closed social networks with diverse memberships for different networking sites will give way to universal identifiers and ubiquitous presence. People will maintain control of their online identities and make connections between different sites and services when required. Instead of having to create and maintain multiple profiles on different sites like LinkedIn, Delicious, Legal OnRamp and Twitter, a federated approach (like OpenID) will enable users to login once and gain access to many services and resources across the web with the same digital identity and profile information. The federated approach will also provide the flexibility of navigating seamlessly between internal and external networking sites and aggregating related content flows in a manner that suits their networking preferences.

By switching and manoeuvring among networks, people can use ties to one network to bring resources to another. Indeed, the very existence of their ties to other networks will be a resource, creating the possibility of linkage, trade and co-operation. Knowing how to network (on and offline) becomes a human capital resource, and having a supportive network becomes a critical social capital resource.24

New work processes
Technology is changing the way many legal professionals work, requiring them to adapt to networking tools and ‘always-on’ connectivity. Those who can use technology to enhance their practices will prosper, while others may struggle in future. For many, that requires a shift in behaviour and a deeper understanding of the way in which social capital is created and exploited through networks. Principally, this requires participation from people at all levels to take advantage of network effects derived from aggregating user behaviour and inputs at scale. In other words, the value networking tools offer depends on regular contributions, networked thinking and good levels of participation. Larger firms have the potential to recreate the dynamics of online public social networks and knowledge sharing inside the firm due to their scale. Smaller firms and sole consultants and practitioners can enjoy similar benefits by operating in a similar way within their market as a whole.

Increasing levels of self-service in firms means that legal professionals will be able to resolve many more issues simply by tapping the network. Not only will this enable firms to maintain favourable lawyer-to-staff ratios and take a large step toward higher productivity, it will also help to curb the levels of intellectual capital seeping out of the firm. When the recession ends, improved work processes and self-service capabilities will help people work optimally as workloads increase in advance of recruitment. Furthermore, legal professionals with technological proficiency are better placed to produce outside of the office setting, and do so in a more productive manner. This is evident from the use of BlackBerries, home-working and anything else that promotes working at off-site locations and at non-standard times.

In the future, networking activities that enhance people’s reputation and online presence will be a powerful new form of ‘advertising’ because the social influence of individuals is amplified through social connections. How valuable people are within the context of their social graph, will dictate level of other people’s interest in their views and the amount of authority they have.25

Summary
It is likely that the model of Web 2.0 adoption and change in legal practice will follow the same pattern as e-mail, going from the small minority to the large majority in less than a few years. Undoubtedly, take-up will be accelerated by the economic downturn, where companies and firms alike are cutting back on over-bureaucratic business processes and looking online for cost-effective alternatives. There will be increasing pressure to better serve the needs of clients and look seriously at methods that can save time and money or help win and retain new business. In the context of client-facing online services, legal professionals are only just beginning to realise the power of Web 2.0 in helping them to work in smarter, social and more efficient ways.

Of course, technology is not the only force influencing the future of legal professionals. An holistic approach to social computing will help drive innovation, growth and productivity. That requires lawyers to look through the lens of consumer networking trends and popular sites (both social and law community) as a source of new work and work models. It requires changing structures and routines within firms to get the best out of community relationships across different stakeholder networks. The strength of a firm’s network will in this context determine its range of opportunities and ability to turn around quality work. It also means understanding the importance of individual incentives and motivation to improve productivity. With Web 2.0, sharing is a by-product of doing, and people do it because they get immediate and tangible individual benefits. Collective benefits are then derived from aggregating these actions – the network effects.

Successful 21st century lawyers will need to be equipped with a new set of networking, technology, leadership and management skills. They will do business in a very different networked world – the framework of which is already in place. There are now two routes forward: either prepare for the change or pioneer it.

This article is adapted from an excerpt of Ark Group’s Social Networking for the Legal Profession report, written by Penny Edwards and Lee Bryant. For more information, or to obtain a copy, contact Robyn Macé at rmace@ark-group.com

References

1. Lytras, M.D., Tennyson, R. & Ordonex de Pablos, P., Knowledge Networks – The Social Software Perspective, Idea Group Inc, 2008.

2. Mayfield, R., ‘Power Law of Participation’, posted 27 April 2006 on http://ross.typepad.com/.

3. Davies, W., ‘You don’t know me but… Social Capital and Social Software’, The Work Foundation, 2003.

4. Cited by Gruber, J., in ‘Complex’, posted 1 April 2009 on http://daringfireball.net; Gould, M., ‘Don’t over do it’, posted 6 April 2009 on http://blog.tarn.org.

5. Gruber, ibid.

6. Gould, ibid.

7. ‘How Businesses are Using Web 2.0: A McKinsey Global Survey’, The McKinsey Quarterly, March 2007; Pentland, A., ‘How Social Networks Network Best’, Harvard Business Review, February 2009, p37; University of Melbourne, ‘Freedom to surf: workers are more productive if allowed to use the internet for leisure’, posted 2 April 2009 on http://uninews.unimelb.edu.au/news/5750/.

8. Lippe P “An Opportunity Waiting to Happen” 26 June 2008 http://www.legalweek.com/

9. Economist.com “Oh, grow up” 6 November 2008.

10. CCH, ‘Professionals and Web 2.0’, 2008.

11. Susskind, R., The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008, p23.

12. Susskind, ibid.

13. The Nielson Company, Global Faces and Networked Places, Online Global Index December 2007-2008. Global refers to Australia, Brazil, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and USA only.

14. How businesses are using Web 2.0: A McKinsey Global Survey’, The McKinsey Quarterly, 2007.

15. Survey results can be downloaded from the Leader Networks site www.leadernetworks.com.

16. Survey results are available at http://www.pmforum.co.uk/magazine/view_article.aspx?id=3121.

17. CCH, ‘Professionals and Web 2.0’, 2008, see http://www.cch.com.au/DocLibrary/cch_professionals_web20_whitepaper_final.pdf.

18. Press, A. & O’Connor, J., ‘Lessons of the AM Law 100: Nothing Grows Forever’, 29 April 2009 http://law.com; Lamb, P., ‘The Future of Law?’, posted 20 April 2009 on http://www.patrickjlamb.com; Lippe, P., ‘Welcome to the Future: Law After the Boom’, posted 29 September 2008 on http://amlawdaily.typepad.com; and Susskind, ibid, p270.

19. Susskind, ibid, p270.

20. Susskind, ibid, p278.

21. Dawson, R. & Horenkamp, M., ‘Service Delivery Innovation – Creating Client Value and Enhancing Profitability’, SAP AG, 2007.

22. Davies, ibid.

23. Pisano, G.P. & Verganti, R., ‘Which Kind of Collaboration is Right for You?’, Harvard Business Review, December 2008, p78.

24. Wellman, B., ‘Little Boxes, Glocalization, and Networked Individualism’, Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto, 2002.

25. Li, C., ‘The future of social networks: Social networks will be like air’, posted 6 March 2008 on http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/.

‘21st Century Lawyer’

In January 2008, BT embarked upon a thought-leadership initiative to engage the legal community in a conversation about diversity. David Byrne, head of knowledge management at BT Legal, explained that the 21st Century Lawyer (21CL) initiative began internally as a way of considering how the legal profession is changing, due to technological, social and economic pressures. The key questions discussed in a series of online debates included: what is diversity; why is it so important to legal people; and how do we equip ourselves to meet the needs of our customers in the 21st century? The programme was opened up to all members of the legal sector in the UK with an event in January 2008, which provided an opportunity for people in a range of legal sector organisations to participate in discussions about diversity issues, network with peers and share knowledge and ideas. 21CL groups have been set up on LinkedIn, Facebook and Legal OnRamp to supplement web conferences and other events. Byrne indicated that “each of the different online groups has between 50-100 members. We have a good nucleus of people who have come together to discuss issues like flexible and agile working, supplier alignment, employee network groups, disabled at work and race.”

Topics covered so far include: flexible working; personal development programmes; supplier diversity; equality; employee networks at work; women and the legal profession; disability and disabled people in the legal profession; and sustainability. The 21CL programme has grown steadily from launch and generated support from every part of the legal sector. The programme for the coming year is under development.