Death of Google Wave

After all my gushing in the previous week, Google Wave crashed on shore.  Right now it looks like I've got a couple of options to maintain my real time, small group collaboration:

1. wavelook.com has a prototype that works with Outlook Express, although I'm loathe to go the Microsoft route.  The site also promises a web based beta out soon.
2. Novel is working on Pulse, but it isn't even out in Beta
3. Hiring a software developer and doing my own.

I'll keep you posted.

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.

Google Wave As A Spy Tool

I'm celebrating my anniversary to my lovely wife today -- and I'm not in the office.

Yet, I printed off a trial brief for the other attorney to file.  I brought everybody up to speed on what needed to be done.  And saw that no one logged into their account until 10:15 or so -- Google Wave's little green dot told me so.  The "on-line" notification for Google Wave is a little green dot.  A grey dot with a white 'x' means not logged in.  A yellow dot means inactive.

Now, on-line notification isn't anything new, but when you update a wave it moves to the top of the in-box.  Think of it as moving the file to the top of the stack by adding something new.  I'd added some new things and people weren't even able to see it.  I saw when they logged on -- exactly.  I immediately started conversing with them.  And I'm in a cushy robe with my feet propped up, letting my lovely wife take a nap.

I'm not quite sure how my employees feel about this, but I absolutely love to know what is going on in my office in real time -- even when I'm not there.

How to Explain Google Wave

I've read a bunch of different ways in which Google Wave has been explained, but I have had the opportunity to actually demo and use Wave in the real world.  I've introduced personally face to face at least a dozen new users to Wave in the last two weeks -- here is what I've learned.

People love Facebook.  People hate that everyone can see everything on Facebook.  People want their legal information as available as Facebook and as private as email.  Explain Wave as Facebook for only those people you want involved -- that simple -- and almost everyone gets it.  (Oh and throw in that it has the benefit of being real time).

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. 

Embedding a Wave

I'm trying to embed the Wave on the Blog and it isn't working.  The crazy thing is that in about ten minutes I had my own Automate Law web page and embedded wave on Google Sites (which I didn't even know existed until about ten minutes ago, so here is the link to the Wave. Works on Google Sites like a charm -- not sure why I can't get it to work on Blogger yet.

Thoughts anyone?

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. 

Google Wave -- A New Wave of Communicating

Communicating with clients is the bane of most attorney's existence, especially when you couple the need to communicate with the client, while maintaining the need to keep the case file up to date and accessible to all the staff and know what everyone is doing or has done on a case and to make sure it all gets done when the deadlines arise and then finding all of that information when you need it and it is really long and hard (like trying to comprehend this sentence).

Enter the newest technological wonder:

I've been reading up on Google Wave and using it for real time office collaboration now for about a month. It has been described in a lot of different ways -- email on crack being one of my favorite. Yet that description is woefully inadequate.

Here is my best shot at describing how it works:

Imagine a personalized web site that allows you to select who can see the website and who can add to the web site with the ease associated with normal computer tasks like double clicking, answering email or 'drag and drop'. The activities on this personalized web page can include links to documents, videos and images. Any changes on the web page can be seen by anyone looking at it as they happen or in a web version of instant replay.

Douglas Merrill in his book Getting Organized in the Google Era: How to Get Stuff out of Your Head, Find It When You Need It, and Get It Done Right writes "when we don’t adapt our old ways of communicating to better suit a new medium, we fail to exploit all the possibilities and benefits inherent to that medium."

The puns are inevitable, but Waves are the wave of the future. In the tumultuous ocean of communications, a Wave is more like the boat that keeps a group from getting lost amongst all the other waves.

I had my first experiment in implementing two Waves for two new clients on Saturday. I gave each client their own Wave where all of their case information was contained and where they can immediately leave a message for everyone in the office any time and any where they have an Internet connection. Already, one client has contacted me with new phone numbers they got on Saturday.

Here is beginning a list of Wave benefits:

1. Real time collaboration with the client and the entire office.
2. Documentation of everything that takes place in a case in one location.
3. Word searchable case files.
4. Employees are not tethered to the office or even a VPN connection to do work within the office.
5. Potential for easing communication with opposing counsel and other parties.

This is a new means of communication and integration with existing modes of communication are a little muddled at this point. More on those struggles later, but I'm enjoying my new experience of surfing on the Wave.