beyond wikipedia: Wikis offer options for lawyers to share information

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• Are you team-oriented or a rugged individualist?
• Are you an early adopter of technology, or someone who incorporates mainstream computer applications well after their ability to enhance your practice has been established?

These questions aren’t part of a personality quiz or a job interview. But, if you fell into the categories of “team-oriented” and “early adopter,” you’re probably using wikis in your law-related work, or you should at least consider them.

“Wiki” is a Hawaiian word meaning “fast.” In the computer context, they are Web sites that can be written and edited by anyone who has permission to enter information. Some wikis are private; some are public. The most famous public wiki is Wikipedia, a free, online encyclopedia.

“The average lawyer has probably heard of, and probably even visited Wikipedia at one time or another. But they may not have known what it was, or what a wiki is, and how it can be used in the legal world,” says Bonnie Shucha, the head of reference at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison.

Wikis in the Legal World

Among the most practical uses of wikis for lawyers, judges and staff is a visit to Wex at http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/wex/ index.php/Category:Overview. Wex is a wiki published by the Legal Information Institute of Cornell University Law School. Wex has articles on more than 130 law-related topics, written only by individuals who have expertise in their respective areas, so that readers can have a fairly high degree of confidence in the accuracy of information – as opposed to Wikipedia. While Wikipedia can be a useful starting point for information-gathering, many people first heard of Wikipedia not through visiting it, but by media reports questioning its reliability, she notes.

Debbie Ginsburg, Electronic Resources Lib-rarian at the Chicago-Kent College of Law Library, recently co-presented with Shucha at a conference for law librarians about wikis. She created “Law Lib Wik” at www.editthis.info/lawlibrary/Talk:Main_Page, which is a wiki about wikis for law librarians. (Unfor-tunately, Ginsburg says that her wiki is sometimes “spammed,” so that the edits have nothing to do with the law, which is a nuisance and one of the downsides of public wikis. She’s not inclined to “lock it down” just yet, however, hoping for greater input from serious editors and that the “spammers” will find something better to do with their time.)

Ginsburg says that legal professionals might find some valuable information at the TaxAlmanac wiki, which is sponsored by the tax software company Intuit, known best for TurboTax. Go to www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/Main_Page. Another wiki of interest is Wikocracy, at http://wikocracy.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page, which posts articles about more than a dozen laws or proposals.

Other potential uses for wikis, according to Shucha, are for lawyers within practice groups or associations to build a repository of shared knowledge. Or, lawyers collaborating on complex litigation could easily benefit from using wikis — with the latter group paying special attention to client confidentiality by using a wiki platform that is password-protected.

Wikis also have great potential with regard to education, Shucha says. Some law professors use them as a tool to stimulate discussion. Or, in the continuing legal education arena, she and Ginsburg used a wiki before and after their conference to summarize the material presented and invited attendees to make updates. It wasn’t the first time for either of them; it won’t be the last.

Expanding on that concept is Prof. Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School. Lessig wrote a book about the laws of cyberspace in 1999, which he and others updated. The later version is entitled, “Code v.2,” and it was written via a Wiki. It is available at http://codebook.jot.com /WikiHome.

The Future of Wikis

Just a few years ago, Web logs, blogs or law-related “blawgs” were a relative unknown. These days, everyone knows what they are.

That type of renown and popularity isn’t likely to come to wikis, Shucha hypothesizes. “Wikis are not new technology, and they haven’t gotten the press that blogs have.

“It depends upon your comfort level with technology. While some lawyers are early adopters, most aren’t apt to embrace a new technology until its usefulness is proven. They don’t give new applications a try until they can say to themselves, ‘Hey this is useful for me because of x’,” she states, “And for most people, x is still an unknown when it comes to wikis.”

For her part, Ginsburg predicts, “I think people will become more familiar with wikis in the coming years. I don’t think there will be a lot of lawyers creating them, but there will be greater incentives to participate in them.

“The central difference between a wiki and a blog is — a blog is a great forum to present yourself, while a wiki is all about you presenting your community. Also, a blog is all about being up-to-date, whereas with a wiki, if it has the information it needs, it has the information it needs. There’s less pressure to update it. So I think wikis hold a certain appeal, which will grow with time, but in a different way.”

For those wishing to start a wiki, who have limited time and technical expertise, Ginsburg says that “wiki farms” are the best bet. They let users download the wiki software, set up the wiki instantly, and are easy to use. Among some of the best known are: — Editthis.info, at www.editthis. info/wiki/Main_Page, which Ginsburg used for Law Lib Wik; — Jotspot, the oldest application wiki company that was recently bought by Google. (However, it wasn’t in business yet as of press time.) Go to www.jot.com/about-jotspot.php; and, — SocialText, at www.socialtext.com/. Gins-burg says this is typically used by larger businesses, but the company offers a number of different versions for smaller businesses.