Since the launch three years ago of the first online dealrooms the imagination of many has been captured by the potential of this technology to transform the interaction between lawyers and their clients. Most large law firms now use online collaborative workspaces in a range of ways: for large transactions; to create dedicated client relationship sites; and as client document repositories for particular collections of documents.
Firms such as Eversheds have derived impressive results from their initiative. However, when colleagues from different firms meet offline there are quiet rumblings that suggest online collaborative workspaces have not lived up to their initial promise (in the words of one participant in the survey discussed in this article: “I have not seen such a good example of technology chasing a need as this one. It is no mystery why companies offering this keep going out of business. The mystery is why new companies keep popping up”.)
