Web 2.0 is Sometimes Open Source Collaboration

Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips blog had an interesting post called "Top 10 Hacks on Flicker" recently. The interesting part of the post to me wasn’t the concept of flicker, but Jim’s take on Web 2.0. We have heard Web 2.0 described as collaborative internet and community building. Jim notes that "one of the most interesting aspects of web 2.0 is how many creative people and organizations build on the work of others. One creates an interesting web application and then another builds something even more interesting related to that."

His quote reminded me of the concept of open source software code. Wikipedia defines open source as "the principles and methodologies to promote open access to the production and design process for various goods, products, resources and technical conclusions or advice…made available to the general public with either relaxed or non-existent intellectual property restriction…allows users to create user-generated software content through either incremental individual effort, or collaboration."

The concept of incremental individual effort has tremendous applications in the field of law. After all, what do lawyers really do? Here are some examples:

• We draft contracts;
• We draft pleadings;
• We do research;

While firms sometimes do a decent job at leveraging each other’s work product, Web 2.0 offers even greater possibilities. While going to a firm’s form bank to grab the latest and greatest LLC Operating Agreement certainly saves the client time and money, the whole point of Web 2.0 is that it extends beyond the corporate walls.

What if lawyers were able to move towards a consensus as to what an LLC base form needed to look like? In the spirit of Wikipedia, lawyers could draft a base LLC Operating Agreement. Then all lawyers could use that base document to draft the intricacies required by any given client. This would achieve standardization and drastically reduce the cost of legal services.

Web 2.0 offers the possibility of consensus and standardization, sometimes referred to as the movement towards commoditization of legal services. Of course, this would require lawyers, even outside the firm’s walls, to work together and develop base work product moving incrementally towards a smaller number of standards than exist today. Perhaps someday we can even make ourselves obsolete!