Legal Research: Send in the Crowds?

Crowdsourcing is a powerful way of engaging legal research, but some lawyers feel it's useless, perhaps even harmful.

John Edwards, Law Technology News

April 16, 2014    |0 Comments

What's crowdsourcing? According to a growing number of lawyers, it's a powerful way of obtaining legal research, insights and suggestions by soliciting feedback from a large group of people, typically an online community rather than associates, staff members or traditional consultants. Other lawyers, however, feel crowdsourcing is little more than a social media fad that is useless at best and, perhaps, even potentially harmful.

At its heart, crowdsourcing is a new way of achieving an old goal: collaboration. The idea behind the concept is that two, 20, or even 200 minds are better than one. Crowdsourcing can be conducted informally by turning to colleagues on social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, or via one of the growing number of crowdsourcing services.

Read more: http://www.lawtechnologynews.com/id=1397653872057/Legal-Research%3A-Send-in-the-Crowds%3F#ixzz2z9lmt1Pk

How to Help File Covers Video Sharing, Videoconferencing, Research

Introduce technology into your law practice one habit at a time.

Patricia Kutza, Law Technology News

New technology continues to transform the legal industry. Many signs indicate that legal professionals are adopting new technology when it makes sense—when it makes them more efficient and productive.

Let’s look at three areas where lawyers are already finding good synergies: file sharing, videoconferencing, and case law research. Once again we rely on YouTube videos to illustrate our argument.

FILE SHARING

If you are still carrying your files on a flash drive when you are out of the office, consider yourself a bit behind the curve. No shame since this isn’t a competition. But being able to store and share files with peers and clients offers very measurable benefits. There are a ton of cloud-based file-sharing options to choose from. We focus on a growing niche of file-sharing sites, such as Syncplicity, that are customized for enterprise sectors, like law, where the ability to rely on airtight-secure spaces for collaboration is paramount.

Read more: http://www.lawtechnologynews.com/id=1395089219770/Video-Help-With-File-Sharing%2C-Videoconferencing%2C-Research#ixzz2wQWorwPy