Mediawiki as a Patent Law Firm’s Knowledge Management System
May 29, 2008 on 8:18 am | In The-Practice-of-Law, Web/Tech |The Law has a number of maxims. For instance, “in court, never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.” One of my favorites is “never do work someone else has already done for you.”
I’ve followed that (later) one to the letter…compiling hundreds of “nutshells,” “summaries,” and “cheat-sheets” stored in a folder on my file server; dozens of draft e-mails for easy “cut-and-paste” usage; MindManager mind maps; a three-ring binder on my desk called “The Deskbook”; and countless other knowledge collecting “buckets.” My own personal knowledge management system (hopefully Jack Vinson would approve).
The problem with such a hodge-podge knowledge collection system is that it isn’t easy to share. Sure, if someone in my office were to ask me a question, I could likely point them directly to where I previously summarized the answer (or forward it to them by email)…but I had a hard time (1) getting others in my Firm to ask for help and (2) training them where to look for the information I had previously compiled.
In reworking our network at our office, I came upon a solution….
Due to a hardware failure, we recently added a new server. Having a friend that was a huge fan of “ClarkConnect,” I decided to give it a try. I had my IT guy (independent contractor) take an old, out of service computer the Firm had lying around (along with an extra network card pirated from another computer) and install ClarkConnect on it.
ClarkConnect is a Linux based server/gateway. Traffic from our Internet connection goes through the ClarkConnect box before going out to our network (switch/hub). The ClarkConnect box (for $85/year):
Provides core server applications
- mail, web, VPN, backup, file and print services…
Protects network and data
- antivirus, antispam, firewall, intrusion prevention…
Enforces Internet usage policies
- content filter, peer-to-peer filter, bandwidth manager…
Simplifies management and monitoring
- system monitoring, software updates, mail backup…
One of the most important of those features is the VPN ability which allows anyone in the office to securely access files on the server from home via the Internet. No more emailing files to yourself. No more thumb drives.
One of the other benefits to running our ClarkConnect box is that, being built on Linux, it is really easy to install other “modules” and programs. That gave me an idea…why couldn’t I install Mediawiki (the software program that Wikipedia uses) on the box? After a little bit of checking, I found that it was not only possible, but they had even created step-by-step instructions regarding how to do it. After a few minutes…I had the wiki running.
One note, while it is “step-by-step,” it is pretty geeky. For a second “module” that I wanted installed on our box (ProjectPier project collaboration software (an open source clone of BaseCamp, based upon ActiveCollab)), I merely paid the ClarkConnect guys hourly to install it on my box remotely. This (paying them to install) is highly recommended if you don’t want to spend the time figuring it all out. I’ll save my review of ProjectPier for another day.
Back to the wiki… We intentionally decided to shut off the web server on our ClarkConnect box, meaning that the wiki is not publicly available (you can’t access it from the Internet, but could access it if you connect via the VPN).
Now that the wiki is up and running, every time I pull out an old nutshell (etc.), I spend an extra 2 minutes copying the information over to a wiki page. I even found a Microsoft Word script that converts .doc files into the appropriate formatting. Over the last few months I have added, literally, hundreds of pages. For instance, our Trademarks sub-page looks like this:
The wiki experiment is going pretty well so far. While about 95% of the content has been uploaded by me, the others in my Firm (after coming to learn that it is a great resource) are starting to add/edit it too. Every time someone asks me a question and I answer it…the answer gets dumped onto the wiki (if it wasn’t already there). Those questions can be legal based, procedure based, office policy based, etc. All knowledge gets archived to the wiki. The wiki will be invaluable for helping new staff get up to speed (I’ve been having my staff create wiki summaries of “how to do X” and “how to do Y”).
Every person in your law office has valuable knowledge, knowledge that if you don’t capture it…when they leave, the knowledge leaves with them. Collect it! Share it!
Your clients aren’t paying you to reinvent the wheel….
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I am using Joomla for my site, and am finding that being able to think of information in terms of categories and documents rather than loosely associated web pages is very useful just for staying organized. I imagine MediaWiki provides a similar benefit.
Comment by Mason Boswell — May 29, 2008 #
Joomla or any other CRM would be great too.
The reason I went with MediaWiki was to keep it as simple as possible…figuring that clicking “edit” (and learning a few rules (e.g., how to create a bulleted list, how to link to a web page, etc)) was probably easier for my crew than learning a CRM.
If Wikipedia had more of a WYSIWYG editor built into it…then it would be even easier for non-geeks to adopt. That’s always the trick…trying to find something no more complex than email (to maximize the chances that people will learn to use it).
Thanks for the comment.
Steve
Comment by Steve Nipper — May 29, 2008 #
I am one of the founders of PP and really interested in your opinion of our tool
@Steve - having no WYSIWYG editor can really be an obstacle in getting acceptance for a Wiki. We implemented the FCK Editor in our MediaWiki installation at work and it really helped. Just look at mediawiki.org for the extension - the installation is simple and you will need a realtively new mediawiki version.
Comment by Roland — May 29, 2008 #
Steve -
Great post.
I thought about MediaWiki for the internal wikis I’m setting up in the new firm, but elected to go instead with the Wiki Server built into Mac OS X Leopard Server. I’ve got an all Mac network, powered by an XServe file server. It is currently serving up 7 different wikis (law practice, tech, firm admin, etc.). For each wiki, you can set up access privileges by group, user, etc.
So far, the speed and stability of the wiki server are wonderful. No issues at all. The biggest advantage of the Apple product - a true WYSIWYG interface for wiki authoring and editing - is also it’s biggest downfall. While it does give you what-you-see functionality, it is not as clean and crisp as we’ve become accustomed (it feels a bit chunky, for lack of a better term, and the ’see’ part is a little squirrelly sometimes).
So far, I’d characterize it as an extremely powerful 1.0…and I’m looking forward to growing with the product. WYSIWYG, imho, is the key to getting better wiki adoption throughout the firm.
And, of course, it requires that you run a mac server. Not something many firms are willing to do.
Give me some time and I’ll do a write-up on the Podcast Capture/Producer apps in Leopard Server. These, imho, are game-changing apps in the wiki/blog/km world.
Here’s Apple’s brief write up of the wiki server app:
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/wikis.html
Comment by Matt Buchanan — May 30, 2008 #
I did a similar thing at my old law firm. I ended up exporting much of what I created as a public site called “patentblurb.com”. I also had a separate internal wiki site.
Instead of MediaWiki, I went with DokuWiki, which I found to be much simpler to manage (DokuWiki, e.g., does not require an SQL database back end).
Unfortunately,my experience was not as positive as yours as I am pretty much the only one that ever contributed to the site. Other lawyers in my firm by in large could not be bothered. Now that I am in-house, I still use a personal wiki that runs on my own office computer system to manage my information. I love knowing that I can go to one place to find all the information I need. I even have i-frames pointing to network share drives where the admins keep important stuff so I don’t have to navigate through Windows Explorer.
Comment by Len — June 1, 2008 #