Most people who read this will not have had the experience of working within a large corporate law office, so I will tell you as someone with that experience it is much the same as any large corporation though I think there is obviously less emphasis on anything other than traditional marketing and now blogging – though I would argue that blogging previously was just a law firm’s paper newsletter, turned e-newsletter, turned blog.

The thing you need to understand about a law firm and the ability to use Yammer before I tell you why I think there is a real business case for it. First you need to understand that in a law firm there would need to be the ability to set permissions, not necessarily hierarchies, but there are times when two lawyers in the same firm (or two groups for that matter) are working on files for two firms that may not be legally combative but are competitive and so you the groups of lawyers are “firewalled” from talking to one another about either case. So in that scenario you need the ability to set a subject line that immediately stopped the other group of lawyers from seeing your Yammer. Seems pretty simple.

The other thing that you need to realize is that the legal community as a whole is facing perhaps the biggest recruiting and retention challenge of the last 50+ years. Young lawyers are leaving big corporate firms for government or in-house jobs that allow them to have a work-life balance. Law firms make their money as a partnership where the senior most lawyers are partners and share in the profits. In order to make these large profits there needs to be a healthy (3-1) ratio of junior lawyers to partners. As the junior lawyers leave the ratio becomes smaller and smaller, squeezing the profits of the firm further and further.

So my business case for Yammer in mid-large corporate law firms (say 70 lawyers or more).

As A Recruiting & Retention Tool

Just because the senior lawyers at most firms do not have the first clue about most technologies, you can bet your bacon that the students at every law school and the junior lawyers all are on some social networking site. Further many students are starting to Twitter so it is completely natural for them to communicate in a short and to the point manner. They also appreciate the ability to drop a quick line even when the reason has nothing to do with work. For the most part they want to use new technology to communicate and law firms are the essence of the walled garden. Everything is priviledged so a private Yammer network would open the lines of communication between young lawyers at the same firm, sharing everything from the latest decision on their motion to a case they recently researched (more on that below). It can also serve as a mechanism to bridge the gap between older more senior partners and the young lawyers at their firm. Many partners can be tough to approach face to face but if there is an ability to approach them in a less formal setting first, knowledge can be shared and a bridge built. Starting a Yammer network is not going to change the fact that you need to work 80+ hours a week, but it might make young lawyers feel like their firm is at least in tune with how they like to work.

As A Knowledge Sharing Tool

The law is built on precedents. Never do you go into a case without having done a ton of research on every possible decision at every court level to ensure that you know which ones you will argue and as importantly which ones to be prepared for the other side to argue. In a law firm there are often large libraries and often several librarians to help with your research. However it is that invaluable tidbit that comes from a more senior lawyer who has had a similar case or simply knows the law that much better that he/she can be more strategic within it that makes all the difference quite often. So being able to shoot a company wide Yammer about a specific angle of the law or asking about how to interpret a court’s decision would be an invaluable knowledge sharing tool for law firms. Many firms have been and continue to invest heavily in knowledge management databases storing everything from research memos to court decisions (though everyone uses Westlaw or Quicklaw for those), in my opinion Yammer would be a very cheap complimentary tool.