Google Wave After 3 Months

I use Wave everyday.  I now have over 200 active waves and I just started in May, 2010.

I used it to replace my case management software in my law office.  Wave had numerous advantages: word searchable, tags, easy to make and quickly customizable templates, and playback.

The biggest thing, however, is that everyone in the office (five of us) all know what the other person is doing -- immediately.  We don't duplicate work.  We know what needs to be done and we get it done.   There is a training aspect as well.  I can teach and train, while I work. This doesn't involve difference in time zones, but twenty feet apart.  Yes, it is great when I'm not in the office or in court, but it works equally well when we are all in relatively close proximity.

Yes, Google Wave seems to be this wide open platform, but the failure to tame it is because of a failure of imagination.

13 Reasons to Use Wave for Case Management

1. It keeps all the correspondences and important documents in one word searchable location for each case available for everyone involved in the case to see simultaneously (if they have an internet connection.) 2. Easy to make templates. 3. Correspondence can be limited to the desired participants -- and no one else. 4. Playback feature for monitoring, fixing errors, security and being a snoopy boss. (I've even thought of circumstances where it could be compelling evidence in a courtroom, i.e. Here is what happened, step by step Your Honor . . .) 5. Tags can serve as flags for items that need to be done. 6. Search probably needs a benefit line of its own, since you can search in numerous ways:
a. Traditional Word Search
b. By Tag
c. Within a group
d. By participant
e. By Colored Folder
f. The above allows for searching for different waves, but you can also do a word search inside of the wave you are working in.
7. Can't be deleted -- work really can't be lost. 8. The format is completely open. It can be adapted to fit whatever any particular office needs to aid in their workflow. You can participate in a wave with another attorney or office and structure the wave to fit whatever your particular needs are. Organization and structure is left to the participants to create. 9. Gadgets that can be added to help structure things the way you want. (e.g. a countdown clock). More can be added or created depending on need and ingenuity. 10. It eliminates long email strings, since the correspondence is all contained in one location. For this reason, we've adopted a policy in my office that we set up a different wave for each case. Search makes it easy to find and access quickly. 11. Everyone that has access to the wave can see exactly what progress has been made on the case and what still needs to be done. 12. You can create private communications inside the wave itself, limiting who can view a particular discussion. 13. Adding participants and documents to a wave is as simple as a drag and drop or for the email inclined, using the paperclip attachment above. 

Google Wave Uses for Case Management

I was reading The Complete Guide to Google Wave and was still in the first chapter when I was struck by the fact that Google Wave is suffering from a complete lack of understanding of what Google Wave does. The email and document collaboration analogies are inaccurate. This is information management and in a very important aspect for attorneys -- information control.

The book bemoans the fact that Wave is hard to explain, in part because attempts compare the Wave to email and document collaboration are short sighted and ignore the power of the technology.

Let me address the common complaints about Wave cited by Trapani and Pash and explain why these complaints don't (or shouldn't) apply to non-Luddite lawyers.

1. Conversation-as-document is a whole new paradigm with no existing precedent. Anyone who has spent time with Law Practice Management software (TimeMatters, Abacus, Clio, Rocketmatter, etc.) knows that the entire point of these programs is to turn your conversations into documents (data) that are easily searchable and easily referenced.

2. Conversation trees, or non-linear message threads are chaotic. Almost all legal work and litigation, while having its linear qualities, breaks off into separate issues requiring non-linear actions, all of which must be resolved. For example, in my practice, I can have an objection from a mortgage company, an objection from the IRS, documents I need from my client and an objection from the Chapter 13 Trustee. Each objection or document request requires a non-linear message thread. Yes, it is chaotic and as a lawyer I'm constantly attempting to corral all those threads into some coherency.

3. Document versioning is foreign (to non-programmers). Lawyers are constantly concerned about documenting how things take place. A lot of time is spent so that the information is available to reconstruct the past. Having something like the Wave that does it automatically -- lawyer science fiction.

4. Wave isn't done yet, so it has gaping holes of missing functionality. Anyone who thinks Wave is a "Segway for email" is stuck in technological la-la land and doesn't even understand the real world implications of Wave technology. Wave has nothing to do with email. Don't think of Wave as email or document collaboration --that is like looking closely at the front tires of a dragster and deciding that it looks like a Segway. Properly utilized, a single Wave for an attorney can easily become something every lawyer is familiar with -- a case file, but it is a case file that can contain every document, every conversation, every message, every correspondence -- all in one place.

Sure, Wave has some missing functionality, the biggest one right now is the ability to document without cutting and pasting conversations or phone calls to individuals outside the Wave, but compared to a paper file or the work intensive data entry efforts in legal case management software, using the Wave for case management is lightning quick (and when you charge by the hour and you only have so many hours, faster is better). And what case management software do you have that is Google-word searchable?

This post originated in a public Wave that I intend to use (and hopefully incorporate into this blog) for public comment and input on developing Google Wave for -- to use a lawyer word -- 'utilization' in a legal practice. I look forward to your comments and thoughts.