Social networking is more than just another communications medium. It has become the primary means of sharing knowledge and information for increasing numbers of individuals and organizations. Traditionally, businesses and law firms, especially, have been more concerned with the potential risks of adopting social network models into their workflows than with the profit-impacting benefits of social networking tools on their organizations. Deploying and adopting a social network based work flow system would enable a law firm to increase productivity and enhance the quality of the work product of its attorneys, and at the same time, increase client satisfaction. It is a system that complements or otherwise extends the social dynamics of a law firm, encouraging constructive competition among its service professionals and increasing transparency of its workflow to the clients. In the long run, greater client satisfaction will increase law firm revenues, and in our new legal era, that is everything.
How, then, can these powerful networking tools be leveraged in a large organization such as a law firm with thousands of professionals and clients—securely? A large law firm, for instance, has all the concomitant characteristics of a social network structure: groups of social influencers and followers, web of different professional and social associations, and project teams formed for specific client projects. The sum total of their interactions, i.e., communications and work product, constitute proprietary Big Data of the organization, from which the law firm can leverage and monetize.
There is an answer: Closed circuit social networks in which the law firm’s staff and clients are invited to and participate in a social network managed and controlled by the law firm.
Best of breed social network tools should allow the users to organize themselves in public or private groups. Each group will have an area for discussion and a virtual library for storing documents. Public groups would permit anyone in the closed community to join while private groups can only be joined with the group owner’s permission. Private groups are tantamount to closed-door meetings. On the other hand, public groups are more free-wheeling, to the extent allowed by the group moderator, and may be used for bond-building purposes or for general interest discussions around topics such as intellectual property law development, cross-border litigation, and securities law.
These groups will increase the quality of the work product of the lawyers as they will be pressured to demonstrate to their colleagues their breadth and depth of knowledge and expertise of their chosen fields of law. Healthy competition among the lawyers will benefit the law firm as a whole. The closed private groups can be used for confidential discussions, information gathering and document collection by client and professional teams for purposes such as possible M&A transactions or litigation materials protected by a court protective order. Once inside these closed private groups, the invited clients and professionals can freely and confidentially discuss and share documents. All comments are recorded and ownership of documents is indicated so that everyone is on the same page.
By Guest Blogger: NeuLexa Corp
