Google’s Sidewiki as an example of a knowledge development tool for legal departments

For all kinds of material on law department intranets, it would be good to accumulate comments and improvements by members of the department. An example of a tool that would make this easy is Google’s Sidewiki. With it you can “View other people’s perspectives on any webpage or contribute your own entries by clicking the Sidewiki button in the Google Toolbar. As you surf the Web, the Sidewiki button’s color lets you know whether Sidewiki entries are available for the page you’re viewing.” That description is from the Help file for Sidewiki.

“A yellow Sidewiki icon indicates that people have left Sidewiki comments for the page you’re viewing. To see these entries, click the button or the blue tab on the Sidewiki notification bar to open the Sidewiki sidebar.”

If such an easy-to-use, and easy-to-spot tool were available for in-house webpages, lawyers and others could quickly comment on or improve material posted for standard templates, checklists, outside counsel guidelines, process maps and other material.