Saturday, December 29, 2007
Where There's a Wiki, There's a Way

[The following column originally appeared in print in April 2007. I am republishing it as part of my continuing effort to maintain an archive of my published columns. Important note: I have not updated this since its original publication. While most of the sites remain as described, some may have changed. All information was current as of the date of original publication.]

When published in 1999, Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig's book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, earned praise from one reviewer as "paradigm-shifting." Later, when Lessig set out to update the book, he shifted the paradigm once again.

Lessig posted the entire manuscript to a Web site where anyone could contribute edits of their own. Eventually, he took that publicly edited text, added his own edits, and, in December 2006, published the resulting work as Code v2. Soon, he will post the finished book online for readers to continue to revise. U.K. solicitor Justin Patten is taking the same approach to a book he is writing about blogging and social media, http://humanlaw.pbwiki.com.

The key word in these experiments is collaboration and the engine driving them is a type of Web site known as a wiki, a name taken from the Hawaiian word for fast. A wiki allows any Web page visitor to easily add, remove or edit content. Editing can be done quickly from within a browser and without any special knowledge of authoring formats. A wiki's simplicity and ease of use make it an ideal tool for group projects.

The first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, was written in 1994. But it was not until more recently that wikis saw broader use. No doubt, a driving force in their greater popularity has been the best-known wiki – the collaboratively written encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Neither are wikis new to the legal profession. Denver, Colo., lawyer John DeBruyn, for one, has been experimenting with wikis as a tool for lawyer-to-lawyer collaboration since at least 1997. But in the legal world, as elsewhere, wikis have become more widely used in the last year or two.
This month, we look at some of the innovative and intriguing ways legal professionals are using wikis.
Of course, there are any number of innovative wikis outside the legal sphere, as well. For example, the parent company of Wikipedia, Wikimedia, hosts Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikiversity and Wikispecies, to name just some. So go forth and explore, but be wiki about it.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 4:15 PM, , links to this post

Thursday, May 10, 2007
7th Circuit Launches Judiciary's First Wiki

The National Law Journal today reports that the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has launched its own wiki, a first for the federal judiciary. The wiki will allow lawyers and judges to post and change notes on procedure and practice. It launches with the complete contents of the Seventh Circuit Practitioner's Handbook. Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, who spearheaded the project, told the NLJ:
"The goal is to concentrate on procedure (in both the court of appeals and the district courts) but not to cover substance. We aren't interested in comments about the meaning of ERISA or the Internal Revenue Code and will take down any pages that go beyond the scope of practice and procedure (including jurisdiction)."
As I noted here earlier this week, my Law Technology News article surveying legal wikis is currently available on Law.com Legal Technology.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 10:37 AM, , links to this post