2.0. Law. Firm? Not.

I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I joined Livio Hughes and Linda Orton at a workshop we gave to a number of New York based organizations. Most of the participants represented large law firms, so the conversation focused on topics related to the legal industry.

My presentation addressed some basic issues to  helpe frame the conversation — like what do these words mean? Words like “Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, Web 2.0? etc.” Are these technologies? products? ideas? eras? philosophical values? Who within a company cares about this and why?  The audience members were very sophisticated, but many were simply not familiar with the terms and trends. Though some of the audience members were very familiar with the topic, so this made it all the more fun.

I went into some detail about the terminology since I have seen many good sessions go to waste because people get confused between the consumer-space and the workplace use of Internet technology. To keep things simple, I suggested that we use the term social as the generic handle for the many topics we were talking about. And that we’d be more specific when needed. Although I note that depending on the audience – this term conjures images of socializing, or socialism(!), but not workplace productivity.  A big part of the challenge we face is using the right words. Social is not the best word here, but it works.

I’d like to share three thoughts I took away from the workshop that you might find interesting — especially if you are in the business of helping law firms understand and adopt social.

Reputation is a big deal. A common theme that came up in our breakout session was the challenge that many organizations face with managing their image — or more precisely, ensuring that their image is not compromised via some mistake they make by experimenting with these new ideas. It’s quite understandable that a high-value brand has these concerns. But I was reminded of this TED-Talk video that I saw the other day. That we instill the fear of mistakes in people and thus drive out the opportunity for creativity. This does not mean that mistakes are good. But it did make we wonder what any of the participants would think if they saw this video. Would it sway them? There are ways to manage one’s brand and still be creative. But my take-away was that the fear of mistakes is a big deal and one needs to acknowledge this reality.

Technology is not the differentiator. One of the participants who truly understands the world of the law firm and the emerging “2.0″ world is Mary Abraham. She asked me if I had data about the adoption of either internal or external social media projects in Law Firms. I shared that depending on the survey instrument you read (e.g. Forrester, McKinsey, IDC, Gartner, Delloite, etc.), you will find that anywhere between 25-40% of companies in general report that they have, are, or plan to implement social computing (in some form). The wide range is a reflection of how the question is asked and who in the company is asked – since the terminology is still quite slippery. But the general sense is that adoption of social is growing beyond early experimentation. Yet the majority of organizations are not there. I did not have a quantitative data cut on the adoption rates at law firms. But I did have anecdotal information to share based on my conversations with a number of firms in the US and Europe. Law firms do not see technology as a competitive advantage. So their adoption is relatively lower and slower than in other industries.  But there is evidence of this picking up in some types of law firms — especially those of medium size, and who work in the more creative and expressive areas of the legal field.  In general, though, if a firm sees Enterprise 2.0 as a technology, they don’t get very excited about it. It has to tie into a competitive goal.  Mary shares a bit more on her blog, I recommend you take a look at her excellent questions.

Regulatory compliance was hardly mentioned. The big surprise for me was that the lawyers did not mention anything about eDiscovery or the recent (2006) chances to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures (FRCP) that could significantly impact Enterprise 2.0. The topic did not come up. In irony, that was the topic I was expecting we’d discuss. I’ve been scratching my head about this topic for a while — ever since I got “sent to the principle’s office” (a.k.a. the Risk Oversight Director at Fidelity Investments, a non-evil person who lived in fear of innovation) a few years ago. I’m not the only one scratching my head about this. Just this evening I read this blog post from Poul Hebsgaard of cBrain — who says:

Enterprise 2.0 tools emerging as “social media tools for the enterprise” are as far as I can see not addressing these issues.
For the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston this coming week – June 22-25, 2009 – I see very few, if any reference to the issue of regulatory compliance! I see no mentioning of FRCP, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, eDiscovery, etc. or discussion of audit trails and archiving of information exchanges or “record management” in the context of a business process.
These are issues we deal with when implementing process applications like our Knowledge Worker Desktop for government or private enterprises.

Poul is right.  Even those E2.0 technologies that could have a decent compliance story to tell seem to bury their story.  eDiscovery people I speak to tell me that their business is all about email.  Other channels, such as blogs, wikis, or forums – internal or external – are just not on their radar yet.  And this was a surprise to me.

We may have to wait for a few mistakes to happen before some of these issues come up on the radar.  And maybe this is why law firms are so risk averse. They don’t want us to learn at their expense.

Tagged as: adoption, barriers, confusion, Enterprise 2.0, knowledge management, social media, workplace