Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Why Web 2.0 Matters to Lawyers

Web 2.0 technologies are beginning to take over the Internet! You might not be familiar with the term “Web 2.0”, but you’ve certainly heard of many of the 2.0 web sites: places like YouTube, MySpace and Wikipedia. Taken together, these sites are built on technology that allows for user collaboration. Larger corporations are starting to use this type of technology because it’s an effective marketing tool—allowing them to stay in contact and receive feedback from customers and prospects. It also allows them to more effectively run their back-end operations, like dealing with employees and suppliers.

Solo practitioners don’t have the same needs as large corporations and may not benefit the same way from Web 2.0 technologies, but that doesn’t mean they don’t make sense for lawyers. Any platform that allows a lawyer to easily interact with his or her clients and prospective clients is a good marketing device.

Our web sites use the same type of Web 2.0 technologies, including wikis, blogs and mailing lists. Unlike a static brochure web site—which is sooo 2001—our sites act as an interactive office on the web, something that wasn’t really possible (or at least affordable) 18 months ago. It would be nice to see lawyers, particularly solos, take the lead in this area.