"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge."

While this concept may sound like a worthy goal, it may also seem slightly ridiculous on an average Tuesday when most people's primary objective is to acquire the sum of knowledge required to get to the weekend. But such is the tagline of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that, according to its Web site, manages the "largest collectively edited reference projects in the world," using a simple technology known as "wikis."

To many, wikis are considered the next great tool in information management, a form of communication that could alter the corporate landscape, including the legal world. Wikis show signs of developing as an effective method to gather and present the sum of an entire law firm's collected knowledge in a single, easily accessible place.

What's a wiki?

It may sound like an exotic fruit, but a wiki is actually an online database that allows for open collaboration about large amounts of information. First developed in 1994 by computer programmer Ward Cunningham, the technology was named for the Hawaiian phrase "wikiwiki," meaning "quickly." Earlier this year, the modern definition of wiki was accepted into the Oxford English Dictionary, evidence of its infiltration into popular culture.

Many users of the Internet benefit daily from wiki technology in the form of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that as of September 2007 had collected more than 2 million unique informational entries.

A wiki application is surprisingly basic considering the global impact it can have through means such as Wikipedia. Someone creates a "wiki page" that usually offers information on a single subject. Hyperlinks to related subjects within that page, denoted by colored text, allow readers to click on a word or phrase and instantly move to a new but associated topic area. The network of hyperlinks make up the wiki.

The most unique aspect of a wiki is that it encourages readers to add new or corrected information. Hence, if a person is viewing a subject and aware of more facts or details on the matter, he or she is welcome to add them. By the same token, if a reader feels the information provided is incorrect, he or she may delete or change it. Wikis maintain the right and ability to return the page to a previous version, so no compilation of information is ever set in stone.

In an ideal world, wikis are meant to be the ultimate collaborative tool, with each new reader contributing more detail and theoretically moving a wiki toward an all-inclusive description of any subject.

Legal applications

While Wikipedia is globally known, much of its stature is derived from its public-domain status. Anyone with Internet access can edit a Wikipedia entry, which can lead to controversies over the accuracy of the information it contains. Because of the negative press these debates create, the more intimate, and perhaps more practical, uses of wikis are sometimes overlooked.

Office communication no longer means to simply make sure that people on multiple floors of the same building receive a message. Now, as law offices expand throughout the world, colleagues strive to connect across cities, states and continents.

For some time now, e-mail has been the preferred mode of group conversation among physically separated co-workers. But almost everyone has experienced the frustration of posing a general question via e-mail and having to sort through dozens of responses that clog inboxes. The process can create more questions than answers, and is a situation a wiki could ameliorate.

The Internet has already revolutionized the work done at law firms, but intranets have yet to reach their full potential and may be the ideal place for wikis. On pages available only to members of a firm, for example, lawyers could create and constantly update wikis related to common subjects, streamlining information and making it available to all who might need it.

Use of a wiki may prove especially helpful in niche fields. For example, if a practice area commonly handles cases pertaining to a particular statute, the firm might create a wiki containing all general information about that area, with all relevant clients, documents, articles, etc. available with the click of a hyperlink.

The distinctively malleable and personal nature of wikis may be beneficial in a law-firm setting because it allows an opportunity to dispense the minute and arcane knowledge lawyers develop on particular subjects over years of practice and experience - for example, how one argument may work but not another, little-known relevant facts, pitfalls to avoid, etc. Sharing important information with other attorneys via a wiki grants easy access and could potentially lead to fewer meetings, less data mining, and a more efficient work product.

Wiki weaknesses

Lawyerly minds constantly swim with security fears. How does information stay within the firm? What about client confidentiality issues?

Wikis are easily passworded so that only those people with access to a particular system may gain entry and make changes. One must keep in mind that intranet pages are not accessible by the public and, in a sense, are no different than stored documents in a shared file on a server. Moreover, sharing information via a wiki might be far more secure than doing so through e-mail, which may be inadvertently forwarded outside the firm with the touch of a button.

What if someone posts something that is wrong and another attorney relies on it? That is not an issue specific to wikis, but one indicative of the very nature of lawyering and ethics. Practicing law is an interdependent process, with attorneys consistently relying on the advice of their peers, memoranda produced by associates, and templates of common documents. As with all such things, it is each attorney's responsibility to verify the correctness of information to the best of his or her ability.

Last summer, an unanticipated danger associated with changing public wikis emerged with the creation of Wikiscanner, a program that allows users to trace the source of anonymous Wikipedia alterations via IP addresses. Wikiscanner revealed that a number of changes in Wikipedia entries about the prestigious firm of Covington & Burling could be traced back to the firm's own servers. It was discovered that someone within Covington & Burling had deleted material listing firm clients such as Halliburton and tobacco giant Phillip Morris. This suggested that the firm was trying to cover up controversial facts about itself, and resulted in a great deal of bad press for the firm, not to mention increased publicity about its representation of those unpopular clients.

Wikis to watch

While the perks of intraoffice wikis may assist firms in everyday practice, this does not mean that wikis within the public domain cannot help lawyers as well. Although most law-oriented public wikis are still in nascent stages, several are emerging with the potential to change the way lawyers follow developing cases and legal news.

Sponsored by the international law firm of Akin Gump and attached to a popular blog that chronicles the Supreme Court of the United States, ScotusWiki, available at scotuswiki.com, was launched earlier this year and aims to provide evolving information about cases currently pending before the court. At the moment, it only has content related to cases argued in this past October's calendar, but those pages provide detailed previews, recaps and analyses, as well as links to briefs and other articles of interest relating to each case.

Looking to serve much the same function as Scotuswiki, except focusing on cases beyond those of the Supreme Court, is Wikibrief, available at wikibrief.com, which went online in early November 2007. Thus far it contains detailed information about ongoing patent cases.

Recently the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals became the first major appellate court to develop its own wiki, available at www.ca7.uscourts.gov/wiki. It asks contributors to add information specifically about procedural issues within its courts in an effort to reduce questions and increase compliance and knowledge of court rules.

Wex, run by Cornell Law School, aims to create a legal dictionary online and only allows those with a "demonstrated legal expertise" to contribute information. It is available at www.law.cornell.edu/wex.

Research librarians were among the earliest members of the legal community to take an interest in wikis. Law Lib Wik, available at www.editthis.info/lawlibrary, is designed for law librarians who want to use wikis for research. It is also an excellent source of information about new wikis related to the law.

Freelance writer Caroline Bala Brancatella is an associate at Jaeckle Fleischmann & Mugel LLP. She can be reached at cbrancatella@jaeckle.com.