Knowledge managers have long been the early adopters of change in law firms. One only need look at how the role of the knowledge manager has changed over the last decade or so - with the advent and widespread use of email, intranets and online search - to note their persistence in constantly evolving the function of knowledge in their workplaces.

It's no wonder then, that knowledge managers are the coalface of social media in law firms. They are the innovators, the experimenters and, for the most part, the active promoters of just how and why law firms should seek to take up technology that has otherwise been reserved for our personal lives

But with a name like "social media", the use of tools like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter in the workplace have not been an easy sell.

"When we first started having the conversation," says Margaret Williams, the knowledge director at Gadens, "people just thought 'well, we're just trying to control how people are using these things for their private use'. There has now been an education process to say there are advantages in using LinkedIn and Twitter and so on in a professional sense."

Mary Cavanough, the national know-how manager at Minter Ellison, agrees. "It [the term] has this implication that it's not a workplace tool ... People are seeing now that there are genuine applications [for social media] in the working environment."

Start with a purpose

Once the full gamut of potential concerning social media comes to the fore, perhaps new names and terminology may emerge that make it a little easier for law firm leaders to accept social media. But first, effective purposes for social media in the workplace, and specifically in a law firm, must be uncovered.

Such purposes may start with the fact that social media directly reflects how humans are interacting. It's a means for individuals to access their conscious and express the tacit information they have that may otherwise have simply remained trapped in their heads. Whether or not that's useful in a social sense is up for debate, but in a business productivity sense - particularly in an environment where knowledge trumps everything else - it may well serve to improve knowledge management dramatically, if used appropriately.

Williams sees social media as an opportunity to build on the explicit knowledge - or the more traditional documented knowledge - that resides in law firms, and to allow the open collaborative freedom and flow of knowledge, ideas, questions and answers. "Now we've got these tools that are much more immediate and powerful, but they do come with a risk. There is a case for finding a balance between a need for both."

Those immediate connections can also flow outside the law firm. Social media can simply aid information dissemination and many law firms are already utilising it to push out their client alerts.

But Cavanough believes that real acceptance of social media will enable law firms to step away from the scattergun approach to client relationships that has, for some time now, seen them broadcast newsletters on whatever topic to whoever accepts them. "[Updates will be] targeted to a specific need and a specific client and that will be a much more successful approach and a much more meaningful approach than the present scattergun approach," she says.

At Norton Rose, director of business information systems, Philip Scorgie says the firm has already been using Wikipedia for some time, but that they are starting to see a marked increase in the use of LinkedIn and Facebook in the organisation. "These tools are incredibly powerful for social networking and indirectly for knowledge management," he says.

These tools also carry significant pitfalls including data security risks, the potential to distract employees (which is no doubt happening anyway) as well as the ability for employees to access opportunities to promote themselves to potential new job offerings - especially via LinkedIn.

As such, plenty of firms have tried to block access to such sites as they have increased in popularity over the last couple of years and some firms continue to do so. But at Norton Rose, Scorgie says the firm has instead moved to accept that social media is a fact of modern life. "I think the key is to embrace them and use them to our advantage," he says. "Those advantages, if used effectively, will be greater than the disadvantages."

The take-up of social media has been and will continue to be informal, says Williams, and it makes sense that knowledge managers should seek to get value from social media while at the same time acknowledging how social media should not be used, and communicating that effectively to staff.

Still, many law firms, and indeed plenty of knowledge managers, are not entirely sure what those advantages are just yet. And it seems that a process of trial and error - with the acceptance that some failure is inevitable - is needed to truly harness social media's potential.

The tipping point

While many lawyers are well acquainted with using social media in their personal lives, the take-up of social media for business purposes has been limited in the Australian legal sector.

But according to Cavanough, widespread take-up for the purposes of legal work may simply just be a matter of time. "I have a feeling, certainly here at the firm, that we're at a real tipping point," she says. "Just in the last couple of months you can see a huge jump in terms of interest. People are hovering on the edges and making an assessment on how we can improve their lives and help them with their information needs, but they are not 100 per cent sure how to get into it."

For those on the edges, seeing firm leaders get involved in social media may just be the encouragement they require. "Somebody who is seen as a little bit out there," says Cavanough, on just whose involvement might help, "who doesn't have that fear factor at all".

The tipping point is nearing, but Scorgie warns that law firms are known for their tradition, and such strains may hinder the take-up of social media. "I don't know whether six months is long enough for Web 2.0 technologies to have a complete saturation in law firms," he says.

And for knowledge managers, such tools may make life a little more exciting, but they also make it much more complex. "There is absolutely no doubt it has made the task more complex in terms of choices and, I guess, deciding on appropriate solutions for various circumstances," says Williams.

But such levels of complexities have been overcome before and, like so many technologies before it, the challenge surrounding social media may not be in its various platforms, but rather in encouraging the necessary number of lawyers to make the leap.