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HEARSAY

FRANK FLETCHER is general counsel for Nero AG headquartered in Karlsbad, Germany with subsidiaries in Hangzhou, China; Yokohama, Japan; and Glendale, California, where he usually can be found. Fletcher can be contacted at ffletcher@nero.com.

“The Times They Are a-

Changin’,” or so wrote

Bob Dylan. I am not

sure he was writing

about in-house legal counsel then,

but the words ring true for us today.

The biggest changes are brought by

technologies, one of which I have used

successfully over the past three-plus

years: the wiki.

I have often thought about how

I could establish a successful global

legal department for a company with

offices in Germany, the United States

and Asia — a company that never

sleeps. I wanted to develop a system

that was user-friendly and would

encourage involvement. After some

consultations and discussions, I settled

on developing an information source

through a wiki. For those who are only

partly familiar with the term, a wiki is

software that allows you to make a site

of internally linked webpages that can

be easily edited. The best example is

Wikipedia.

A wiki is not as wide open as some

would think. The administrator can set

the rules and be informed of changes.

For example, access can be limited to

certain groups such as senior manage-

ment. A wiki is also relatively easy to

use. The tutorial we developed is only

one page. A primary reason I selected

the wiki was because it allows contri-

butions to be made directly by users

without involvement of IT. Not that

I have anything against IT (in case

someone from our IT department ever

reads this), but the more steps you add

to a process, the more complicated it

becomes, and the less likely the process

will be successful.

As for what to post on a wiki, the

sky is the limit. Our legal group is a

particularly good looking group (just

in case someone from the legal group

reads this), so we started out with

photos of ourselves and then listed

our areas of responsibility — a list

of who to approach

when you need legal

support. Each section

is assigned to a dif-

ferent person within

the legal group, and

where appropriate,

a business partner is listed. The wiki

covers basics such as template agree-

ments and attendant rules of use,

directions on how to work effectively

with legal, and when it is necessary to

get finance or the technical approvals

beforehand.

The wiki is a good place to post in-

formation on the company’s intellectu-

al properties and what needs to occur

to protect the company’s rights. We

listed our company trademarks and

instructions on how to use the marks,

training materials and procedures for

how to involve legal in the trademark

selection process. The same works in

the patent area as you can post issued

patents and patent applications in

process, training materials and blank

invention disclosures. Another good

topic for a wiki is your company’s

export compliance rules and prod-

uct classifications. If you have open

source and/or new product release ap-

proval processes, this is a great place

to post these materials.

Such processes can be complex and

it can be difficult to get internal buy

in. A set of clear procedures helps to

simplify the processes. You know you

have done this job right when people

start quoting your own procedures

back to you. One area I found particu-

larly useful is posting our copyright

registration procedures. The overall

policy is posted along with the reason-

ing behind the policy. Having the

policy and procedures posted makes

it all the more efficient to collect the

necessary pages of source code from

extremely busy engineers.

Another benefit of a well-planned

wiki is that you have a ready-made

presentation for new employee orien-

tation. All you have to do is boot up

your laptop, go to the wiki and walk

through the sections of interest. If a

situation arises such that you need to

create a new internal presentation or

training module, you can post it on

the wiki. This also applies to an email

that summarizes policy. After you draft

the email, you can cut and paste into a

memo template, and then post on the

wiki. No reason to reinvent the wheel,

or in this situation invent the wheel and

then lose the wheel. Individuals who

want to grow have a resource they can

access. As long as the rules of use are

followed, the employees can go forward

and in such a way that they are empow-

ered. Or at least they have someone to

blame if they follow the rules and get in

trouble.

A wiki isn’t the solution for every

company but it makes for a user-

friendly, collaborative, cost effective

solution for some companies. With

a bit of daring, it is a process that a

legal group can set up and own.∑

Have a comment on this article? Visit

ACC’s blog at www.inhouseaccess.com/

articles/acc-docket.

A Worldwide WikiBY FRANK FLETCHER

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