After thinking about why Google Docs may matter for the law, a few thoughts.
One key is to foster working together with a simple interface (compatible with Word, Excel and PowerPoint) at a near-zero price point. That doesn’t mean other application providers are SOL, it just means that the expectations of users have gone up. Many people have Gmail as their personal webmail app, and may start to wonder why this makes it easier to move things forward than some high-priced custom software that requires extensive training and expensive support.
It also makes more people comfortable with software-as-service, which is popularized by salesforce.com.
Getting back to the law, note what is happening here. When you make working together easier, you don’t just do things better. You also do fewer things faster and therefore much cheaper. Much of the business model of the legal industry is based upon doing too many things slower.
This is really all about collaboration, and I’ll give mention to a prime mover (along with a legal example) to subscribers of the monthly newsletter, Wired GC -Select next week.
But in the meantime, the regal legal ship of state sails on with confidence…
