Collaboration Inside the Office

• Author: Dennis Kennedy - Tom Mighell
• Pages: 19-24

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Collaboration Inside

the Office

One of the simplest and yet most effective ways to begin our

discussion on collaboration and collaboration tools is to visu-

alize two different types of collaboration—inside and outside

the office. Technologists often call these two “zones” of collab-

oration “inside the firewall” and “outside the firewall” in ref-

erence to the layer of protection around a company’s private

network. Lawyers who can imagine collaboration tools existing

both inside and outside the office will find it much easier to

understand and address key issues like security, confidential-

ity, ethics, and even feature choices.

In this chapter, we look at collaboration inside the office—

how people work together inside your firm, law department,

government agency, or other organization. In the next chapter,

we turn to external collaboration.

To get an idea of how collaboration works inside the fire-

wall, let’s take a closer look at an average day of an average

lawyer—perhaps someone like you—with an eye toward the

processes that lead you to work with others. Once we illustrate

these processes, we will discuss the best way to determine

the types of tools you will use to collaborate. We then will

suggest that you begin looking at your own work processes to

understand how you can put these tools to work for you as you

collaborate with others in your practice.

Let’s consider a partner in a medium-sized law firm as an

example. This law firm partner will work with other partners,

associates, paralegals, and an assistant on a daily basis. Often

the partner will share these resources with other lawyers. To

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