What Do You Mean By "Collaboration"?

Collaboration is one of the buzzwords of the day. Everybody claims to be big on collaboration. Microsoft claims features in Word (track changes) and in Sharepoint that will facilitate “collaboration.”  But let’s look at this a bit more closely.

Many years ago I collaborated with someone else in translating a major book on the German philosopher Hegel. We would each draft a translation of a chapter, then the other person marked it up, they we discussed the proposed changes. Since this was before computers, we did it manually. But this would be an example of one-to-one collaboration.

However, when law firms talk about “collaboration” (at least where it concerns documents) what they generally mean is that somebody (say, an associate) drafts a document and then circulates it (probably via email) to the partner in charge, who comments/approves, and then circulates it to other people for comments. Changes are indicated either through the use of tracked changes or with a document comparison product such as Workshare (formerly DeltaView). If the document is to be circulated to co-counsel, it is probably drafted by the lead counsel firm.  In larger firms, a “team” designates attorneys to be in charge of one area of a case (discovery for example).

This indicates the major difference from the normal meaning of “collaboration” as it applies to law firms.

Somebody is in charge of the “collaboration.” It has directionality - that is, it flows in a given direction. Not everybody has an equal role in the content of the document. It is NOT the case that a document is available on, say, Google, and everybody involved gives it their best shot. Collaboration in this sense is inseparable from a workflow pattern.

Other functions of “collaboration” really just amount to sharing - making calendars available to a number of people so that scheduling can be made properly.

So in terms of documents, what you really want is to be able to have a sequential number of versions of a document, and then be able to compare them, finalize them, etc. That is the reality of much collaboration. This is the sort of thing that a document management program such as Worldox is set up to do. Web-based “collaboration” tools such as Sharepoint or Google docs, are frequently not.

Comments

[Daniel J. Pritchett]

I am certainly guilty of leaning too hard on "collaboration", but it really sounds like your lawyers could simplify their workflow with a wiki.

Check out author Anthony D. Williams's latest post at the Wikinomics blog for a nice visualization of how the email-based workflow can be a headache.