More on social networking in law firms.
Following up on Friday's post, today's review of my aggregator delivered Social-Networking Vendors Set Their Sights on the Enterprise (March 19, 2004, eWeek).
"Relationships are undoubtedly one of the most valuable and least-visible parts of a business," said panelist Antony Bryden, president of startup Visible Path Corp. "The goal is figuring out how and where these relationships can be applied to business problems."
Visible Path's goal is "to help enterprise salespeople tap into their colleagues' connections," and the software apparently weights those connections as well. User privacy is maintained through a variety of "opt out" options.
This is similar to features in InterAction, often used by law firms for client relationship management. Attorneys can anonymously advertise their connections, if needed, and pick-and-choose the circumstances under which to reveal the relationships. It's a key feature, illustrated by a quote later in the article...
"Relationships belong to individuals," [Vice President of ZeroDegrees Inc. Mark] Jeffrey said. "If a company dictates to me that I have to hand over my contacts, that doesn't make me comfortable."
Older law firms attempting CRM implementations are running into this issue as well. Contacts are seen as personal, to be used exclusively to the advantage of the individual attorney, and are hoarded and protected. The obstacles to effective implementation of CRM are less technical and more ownership-of-the-relationship-driven; attorneys are instinctively driven to maintain exclusive access to a client or prospect contact instead of sharing that information through technology. While it is often acceptable for others to know of the relationship, the fear of a partner or associate taking advantage of the connection is paralyzing.
The thing is, attorneys have always shared this information--just not in a technical forum. Traditionally, attorneys learn of these relationships and business development opportunities through casual conversations with their peers. The introduction of technology into the mix, then, needs to be presented by the firm as a way of enhancing those casual conversations and driving them, rather than replacing them. The technology needs to be flexible--attorneys need to maintain detail-specific anonymity to make unauthorized use of the contact data less rewarding ("I'm calling because I know you know someone from my firm, but I don't know who it is" is never a great opening line)--and be powerful enough to proactively mine the known data to discover existing connections that have not been revealed through traditional means. That technology exists, of course; the battle is and will continue to be fostering trust in the technology.