A wiki can seriously improve the quality of the product you provide to your clients and can improve your quality of life whether your firm is a one man show or a twenty person outfit. But what is a wiki, why do you need one and what can it really do for you?
What is a wiki?
Simply put, a wiki is a piece of web software that allows you to create interlinked web pages. Anyone can add to the wiki and thus it becomes an extremely powerful tool for collaboration. There is both paid and free wiki software out there that will enable the creation of such a website (the software upon which Wikipedia is build is available as freeware), but I am not necessarily arguing that wiki software is really what you need. You need a place to store knowledge and information vital to your business.
Why do you need a wiki?
Per Lifehacker, a wiki will enable you to stop repeating yourself. Even if you are a one man show, you can begin your wiki now. Odds are you will have some sort of assistant in the future even if you never hire another lawyer, and building your wiki now will begin creating a database of reference material that your future self and future assistant will greatly appreciate. One of the most difficult problems that faces a small firm lawyer is losing a legal assistant that he relies upon heavily and needing to train a new one. Having a wiki that the new employee can reference will not alleviate all the pain that goes along with employee transitions, but it can definitely help.
What do you put in a wiki?
“Think of a workplace wiki like this: Any time you’re writing a piece of communication that’s not just applicable to the person you’re emailing, but to everyone on your email list—hell, even everyone who may end up working with you in the future—it belongs in your workplace wiki.” — Lifehacker
For starters, you can post your firm’s policies and procedure manual on your wiki. You do have one, right? Put your Style Manual there as well. Put checklists for doing all those little import things that must be done ever week, every month, every year. Put your statute of limitations index in there. Put your leave requests online. Put contact information everyone needs access to in your wiki. Put it in the cloud and lock it down for security purposes.
