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TECH SUPPORT beginning to understand the value, in particular, of wi- kis. Toronto-based Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie LLP, a 100-lawyer employment and labour law fi rm, is one. A wiki — the name comes from the Hawaiian word for fast — is an easy-to-use set of brows- er-based software tools that allow a group to collaborate on creating, editing, annotating, and discussing a set of docu- ments accessible to all, over a network. A wiki tracks changes and notifi es partici- pants when they've been made. And it provides tools for hosting discussion groups in which collaborators can exchange infor- mation and comments. The most famous example, of course, is Wikipedia, the web encyclopedia with something like 85,000 contributors and over two million entries. Heather Colman, a law librarian who joined Hicks Morley's four-lawyer knowledge management team last year, helped spearhead the introduction of wikis into the fi rm, overseeing creation of several and laying the groundwork for more. "It just seemed a quick and easy way to set up an [internal] web site and publish information," Colman says. "There's no program- ming required; it's easy to structure. I think the biggest draw is the ease of creating and editing content." Connie Crosby, now principal in the Crosby Group consult- ing fi rm but until recently law library manager at WeirFoulds LLP, is also enthusiastic about the potential of wikis in law Wiki me this T BY GERRY BLACKWELL echnologies such as wikis, blogs, social and media networking — collectively known as Web 2.0 — have at least one thing going for them: buzz. Ev- eryone knows the words. But is there more to it? Absolutely. And a growing number of fi rms are fi rms. "They tend to be particularly useful for projects where people are trying to come to a consensus," says Crosby. "And wikis can also work as a lightweight intranet, especially in small fi rms where they don't have the money or time or technology background [to create a full- scale intranet]." Crosby herself has used wi- kis with other law librarians to plan and manage a pro- fessional conference. She has mainly seen fi rms using them to dissemi- nate administrative in- formation, with projects usually pushed forward by a librarian. That may be a good place to start, she suggests, but with the idea of eventually getting lawyers more involved. Hicks Morley is already doing that. Like many fi rms, it has an intranet — an internal internet. It was built using Adobe Dreamweaver, a sophisticated but expensive and relatively diffi cult-to-use software tool. Only a few people in the fi rm have the program on their systems and can update pages, the result being they were rarely updated. One of Colman's fi rst tasks at the fi rm was to do an audit of the intranet and fi gure out ways to ensure it was kept up-to- date in future. Her solution: wikis. The fi rst wiki she helped create was for the fi rm's litigation group. It was intended as a practice group intranet, a one-stop shop for access to information the lawyers need frequently and, usually, quickly — including internal and external contact in- formation, mediation procedures, motions, links to court feeds, rules of procedure, and judgments. www. C ANADIAN mag.com M AY 2008 25 Law firms are starting to embrace the use of this browser-based collaborative system for creating, editing, linking, and organizing information. ILLUSTRATION: WWW.JASONSCHNEIDER.COM