I was travelling home on the tube the other day and the chap next to me was tapping away on a Windows Mobile device. He looked like an IT type so I engaged him in conversation. Nice fella – turns out he was working on a government project to create a shared workspace solution that different government departments could use.The way he described it sounded like a private Facebook/social networking site where users could log in, look up or post information and documents in a single workspace. It also listed individuals' details and other useful bits and bobs. The idea sounded really good to me, and is surely going to help where different government departments are working on the same project, or where they need to keep each other updated about events.

So I started thinking about this for law firms. Now, some of you will probably think, 'we have deal rooms for that sort of thing', but the reality is that a deal room is fairly restricted in terms of what it offers compared to a social networking site. You might argue that social interactions and work interactions are different beasts, and to a certain extent they are, but what my new friend clearly demonstrated to me is that some of the methodologies that social networks apply would clearly benefit business users. And to my mind, lawyers are included in that.

But ask a lawyer if they would be prepared to contribute to a site that shared a varied spectrum of information on a deal, or case, and I suspect you would get a very mixed response. Participation in social networking sites can be categorised into four rough genres: those who can and will; those who can but won’t; those who would but can’t; and those that won’t and can’t. It’s the first 'type' that drives the success of the site. The other three simply don’t get involved. Fine for social scenarios, but not much use for business.

From my dealing with lawyers over the years they fall into all four genres of participation, so a shared workspace might not meet with much success. This seems a shame to me.

The technology is there to support such ventures, and I’ve no doubt that all parties would benefit. I’m sure there are plenty of lawyers out there with objections to this approach, and I’ve no doubt that some readers will think their firm already has something of this ilk. But to be universally useful this would have to be a site that was open to all. Maybe a forward-thinking law firm will have a crack at doing something like this.

For those of you interested in this kind of thing, there are vendors out there selling tools to enable these kinds of activities. If you want to see one in action, check out Blogtronix.

I find it interesting that there are government projects of this kind. Scepticism of government departments' use of IT is rife, and fuelled by high-profile failures and seemingly never-ending projects. This one looks like very smart use of current technology, and deserves to succeed.