Social media at Allen & Overy

1. Social media in a Law Firm: Allen & Overy’s journey
Mart van de Kerkhof, Allen & Overy LLP Amsterdam

2. About us? www.allenovery.com

3. hard to miss in 2006
 weblog - tags - social bookmarking - wiki - - social
software - the writing web - web 2.0 - collaboration
tools - sharing and collaboration - podcast - web
services
 Wikipedia - YouTube - Basecamp -Flicker - Linked
In - Social Text - Confluence - Facebook - MySpace
- BitTorrent - Lime - slideshare
 blogsphere - the end of email- wikinomics -
disruptive technology - new business models - the
end of billing by the hour - revolution

5. 48 months ago
 A&O's web 2.0 project began, as a 3-month pilot for
three groups
1. weblog & wiki for global Know-How staff to support
communication and collaboration
2. weblog & wiki for environmental lawyers to support
creation and sharing of knowledge (EU directives)
3. weblogs (ezines) for internal news provision of
Amsterdam office
 blended solution: Confluence wikis, Movable type
webblogs, CMS style sheets in pilot environments
 expert support from Headshift (UK) and iLLumion (NL)

6. Allen & Overy's social stack
E-mail alerts
RSS
newsfeeds
social bookmarking & tags
wiki (group space)
weblog
social network

7. and many flowers blossomed
 capturing and sharing of know-how
 special interest group communication
 staff communication
 project group communication
 internal news provision
 client communication
 blogs on A&O's recruitment site
 deliberately not (yet):
 personal blogs
 matter-related blogs and wikis

17. the secret of its success
 tools instantaneously available
 ease of use
 power to publish
 personalization and precision
 the end of email?
 because it's all about communication!

18. How we made sense of social software – our 10 steps to
success
1. Sought expert advice
2. Started small
3. Worked with ‘trusted communities’
4. Focused on easy but important groups and objectives
5. Emphasised experiment not pilot
6. Took the lead (with internal IT support)
7. Spread the word
8. Supported our ‘growing phase’
9. Created a market
10. Applied ‘hard’ business principles to ‘soft’ software

19. Our social software roadmap
Phase 3 planned
On demand
Phase 2 Enterprise wide
50+ sites for: RSS
Phase 1 legal teams Subscription
3 sites support teams Integrated
Standard template clients Flexible
Member specific Communication
Email alert News provision
Group blog
collaboration
Wiki (Group Space) project management
Shared bookmarks thought leadership
Newsfeeds know-how enquiries
Social tagging operations manuals
courses

20. Social media in a Law Firm: Allen & Overy’s journey
Mart van de Kerkhof, Allen & Overy LLP Amsterdam