What Is a Wiki, and Why Should You Care?
By Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell
Wikis may be the best-known, yet least-understood, example of Web 2.0 technologies. Many lawyers have heard of wikis, but don't know what they are, much less how to use them in their practice. The term "wiki" comes from the Hawaiian wiki-wiki, meaning "fast." That's an appropriate term to describe the way this web-based tool can be used. In its simplest terms, a wiki is a web- or intranet-based tool that can be edited by anyone and can be used to link from one page to another. Its inventor conceived of a wiki as the simplest form of usable database. It also illustrates the read/write aspect of Web 2.0. You can read the entries and you can edit them. Perhaps the best-known wiki is Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org), the encyclopedia that anyone can edit and a cultural phenomenon as well. Wikipedia contains well over 2 million articles, each of which is accessible and editable by anyone with information to contribute. Some of the founders of Wikipedia started their own competitor, Citizendium (http://en.citizendium.org), which aims to become "the world's most trusted knowledge base."
Some consider the wiki to be among the most powerful collaborative tools currently available. Wikis have been rapidly adopted by major corporations, nonprofits, and informal groups. Companies like Microsoft, Disney, Nokia, Xerox, eBay, Sony, and others are deploying wikis for their employees. In these companies, wikis are not just for working on projects or communicating with other employees. They are also being used to track news, post corporate policies, and create strategy documents. Microsoft has also incorporated wiki tools into SharePoint.
The defining characteristic of a wiki is how easy it makes the tasks of creating and updating pages. With Wikipedia, for example, anyone can access a page and edit it without any initial review or assurance that what's being posted is accurate or trustworthy. This has led many critics of the wiki format to complain that because the system can be tampered with so easily, it cannot be considered a reliable source of information. Supporters of wiki technology respond by saying that the collaborative nature of the wiki makes it difficult for inaccurate information to remain live for very long.Wiki authors and editors tend to be a devoted following, and errors and false statements are quickly corrected most of the time. There is no question that many people find Wikipedia a useful reference resource.
How can lawyers produce wikis in their practices? A number of possibilities exist. Lawyers can set up wikis to provide their clients with an online "idea space" to place their thoughts, ideas, and other information relating to a particular matter. Lawyers working in different cities on a matter can use a wiki as an extranet to share ideas on transactions or pending litigation. Some lawyers have used the wiki format to prepare a course syllabus for law school classes, or to write a book with multiple authors. If the authors place the individual chapters into a wiki, everyone can access and edit or add to the book at their own speed and convenience. We considered that approach, but rejected it and chose the simpler Google Docs method, largely because there are only two of us. We also knew we would have to submit our drafts in Word format and did not want to experiment with pulling chapters out of a wiki into a Word document. From the standpoint of administration, many firms and companies are using wikis to post human resources or office policies, or other internal documents that are periodically revised by firm management.
A good example of a firm currently producing a wiki is the U.K. firm of Allen & Overy. Their Group Space wiki area provides attorneys and knowledge management staff with regularly updated information about training programs and recommended reading. It's also a place for users to share their business plans, carry out consultations, and compile reports from all of their offices. These are all great ways for offices in many disparate places to communicate. Workers in other companies are finding their email use greatly reduced after the introduction of a wiki. Rather than wade through a flood of email, some with documents, spreadsheets, or presentations attached, users simply visit the wiki for that particular case or project and see at a glance everything that's going on.
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