Free vs. Paid

• Author: Dennis Kennedy - Tom Mighell
• Pages: 209-214

209

Free vs. Paid

People are often surprised when we tell them that many of

the collaboration tools we discuss in this book are free. And

by free, we mean free, as in no cost, nada, zip, bupkis—really!

However, it’s good to remember the adage that if the product is

free, you (or your data) might actually be the product. This is

often specifically directed at companies like Google, which pro-

vides many of the best collaboration tools for free. Like Gmail,

your use of the tool might help the provider with advertising

or other business models.

Most of the collaboration we undertook while writing this

book was accomplished with Google Docs, a free tool. We dis-

cussed our plans for the book and instant messaged each other

about it using the free version of Slack. We also shared useful

web pages with Slack. We experimented with a few other tools.

We record and edit our podcasts with Audacity and use Skype

to call each other when we do the recordings. Both are free

tools. Do you see a pattern?

It is amazing how much collaboration can be done for

free. This is primarily due to the explosion of cloud tools and

services. But if you include in this “free” mix the collaboration

features existing in tools that you already own, then you have

another large set of tools that can be used at no additional

cost. Software programs under an Open Source license are also

available for free. And there are many useful free mobile apps

for the iOS and Android platforms.

In this chapter we consider whether free tools are really

an option for lawyers. If they are, under what circumstances

will you choose a free tool over a fee-based alternative? Is there

an approach to free and pay that will work for you? What rights

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