Can law firms manage large projects effectively in the cloud? Or will physically disconnected teams lack the cohesiveness needed to maintain the esprit de corps required to push the project to success? Brian Sommer, author of the Services & Software Safari blog on ZDNET is skeptical. In a post titled "Teams in the (Troubled) Cloud" he writes: "Small projects might be more manageable in the cloud but more study is needed on the ability of really large projects to work well in the cloud."
To grossly over-summarize his post, the issue with cloud-based projects is that having all the collaborative technology in the world can not make people play nice together. The anti-social tendencies of lone wolves and others who are not natural team players are exacerbated in the cloud:
Hoarders and those who use knowledge for power can really screw up a project team. Technology cannot change the personality makeup of a lone-wolf worker. If they don't want to play with the team, they won't. At least when a person is in the next cube, you can check up on them or ask them a question. That gets really difficult when they're 1000 miles away.Therefore, Sommer advises, when setting up a cloud-based team the first issue you should address is whether the personalities of the team members are appropriate for this environment. He suggests that while lone wolves excel in many environments, such as some law firms, they many not be appropriate team members for cloud-based work.
The interesting question for those interested in legal project management then, is whether cloud-based teams are appropriate for legal work. First, it is important to note that not all law firms are eat-what-you-kill dens of lone wolves (or solitary sharks...pick your nasty carnivore cliché). Lawyers are, however, known to be information hoarders. Even where all the lawyers work in the same building, it can be hard to achieve optimal use of document and knowledge management systems. Even where firms have the technology implemented, many lawyers maintain their own stashes of research, client information, memo banks, and other information they see as a competitive advantage. With massive lay offs occurring in even the most elite law firms, I would not be at all surprised if such hoarding has increased as lawyers try to hold on to their jobs by keeping to themselves whatever information they feel gives them a completive advantage.
One area where I see cloud-based legal teams work well is in large document reviews, where you many have multiple teams of reviewers working in different cities, time zones, and countries. Perhaps this is because they are what Sommers refers to as "many-to-many" or "many-to-few" connections. One reason for this is that the distribution of decisions are easier in this environment than in environments with many person-to-person connections. Another reason is that in large document reviews, the power hierarchy is usually quite clear. A third reason is that in a document review there is little information to hoard that would give you any competitive advantage.
I do feel that sharing in an environment with many person-to-person connections is even more difficult in a law firm environment. Research that doesn't make it into final drafts of case documents, information about clients beyond what is necessary for the contact management system, personal experience dealing with certain judges or opposing counsel...this is all valuable to have available in a knowledge management system for all attorneys in a firm to have access to. I would think, however, that it is very difficult to convince attorneys billing by the hour to spend non-billable time populating such systems with their competitive advantage: their personal experience, connections, and knowledge.
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