February 2013

Experts are experts first and competitors second. Experts share knowledge all the time if they are truly experts.

Take software engineers - they are paid or valued by the hour, exercise technical judgment on a daily basis, words are their tool, and they, and their clients and employers, are extreme competitors. Just like us. And yet they freely share tremendously valuable work in open source communities, and always with robust management encouragement.

Why? Because collaboration produces better code.

Be open and willing to put it out there and defend it, and then learn in the process. You'll be a better lawyer by defending your work. And then you'll be making better law.

No profession on the planet manifests power, knowledge, and wisdom the way lawyers do. The world's governmental powers are the result of lawyers' daily work. The planet's conflicts, between powerful private and public interests, are adjudicated via the lawyer class. We represent the awesome power of the state and the might of billion dollar mega-corporations; yet we also provide the dignity of representation to the low-income housing tenant facing forcible eviction. All while being bound by a strict code of ethics rigorously enforced.

We are the gatekeepers to justice in all its forms - whether in the boardroom or the courtroom, we make it happen. We make it legal.

It's about time we had a research and collaboration tool worthy of our profession.