Counsel Connect

David Johnson began Counsel Connect (CC) in 1992 as an online lawyers’ cooperative. The idea was simple: give subscribers access to each other; let them engage in conversations with each other; and through this access and these conversations, value would be created. Lawyers would give and take work; they would contribute ideas as they found ideas in the space. A different kind of law practice would emerge—less insular, less exclusive, more broadly based.

I thought the idea amazing, though many thought it nuts. For a time the system was carried by Lexis; in 1996 it was sold to American Lawyer Media, L.P.; in 1997 it migrated to the Internet and remains there today. It boasts thousands of subscribers, though it is hard to know how many of them contribute to the discussion online. Many no doubt simply watch the discussions of others, perhaps linking three or four discussion groups of their particular interest, plus a few of more general interest.

This is how the more interesting feature of the space is designed: legal topics are divided into discussion groups, with each group led by a discussion leader. The leader is not a moderator; he or she has no power to cancel a post. The leader is there to inspire conversation—to induce others to speak by being encouraging or provocative.

There are today some ninety groups in this space. The poster of a particular message may have it removed, but if the poster does not remove it, it stays—at first in the list of topics being discussed, and later in an archive that can be searched by any member.

Members pay a fee to join and get an account with their real name on it. Postings use members’ real names, and anyone wondering who someone is can simply link to a directory. Members of CC must be members of the bar, unless they are journalists. Others have no right to access; the community here is exclusive.

Postings in the space look very much like postings in a USENET newsgroup. A thread can be started by anyone, and replies to a thread are appended to the end. Because messages do not move off the system, you can easily read from the start of a thread to its end. The whole conversation, not just a snippet, is preserved to be read.

These features of CC space were obviously designed. The architects of the space chose to enable certain features and to disable others. We can list here some of the effects of these choices.

First, there is the effect of being required to use your own name. You are more likely to think before speaking and to be careful about being right before saying something definitive. You are constrained by the community, which will judge what you say, and in this community you cannot escape from being linked to what you have said. Responsibility is a consequence of this architecture, but so is a certain inhibition. Does a senior partner at a leading law firm really want to ask a question that will announce his ignorance about a certain area of law? Names cannot be changed to protect the ignorant, so they will often simply not speak.

Second, there is an effect from forcing all discussion into threads. Postings are kept together; a question is asked, and the discussion begins from the question. If you want to contribute to this discussion, you must first read through the other postings before responding. Of course, this is not a technical requirement—you certainly have a choice not to read. But if you do not read through the entire thread, you could well be repeating what another has said and so reveal that you are speaking without listening. Again, the use of real names ties members’ behavior to the norms of the community.

Third, there is the effect of reputation: the reputation you build in this space is based on the kind of advice you give. Your reputation survives any particular post and is, of course, affected by any subsequent posts. These posts are archived and searchable. If you say one thing about topic X and then the opposite later on, you are at least open to a question about consistency.

Fourth, there is the effect of tying reputation to a real name in a real community of professionals. Misbehaving here matters elsewhere. CC thus gets the benefit of that community—it gets the benefit, that is, of the norms of a particular community. These norms might support relatively productive community behavior—more productive, that is, than the behavior of a group whose members are fundamentally mixed. They might also support punishing those who deviate from appropriate behavior. Thus, CC gets the benefit of community sanction to control improper behavior, whereas AOL must rely on its own content police to ensure that people stay properly on topic.

We can describe the world of CC that these features constitute in two different ways, just as we can describe the world AOL constitutes in two different ways. One is the life that CC’s features make possible—highly dialogic and engaged, but monitored and with consequences. The other is the regulability by the manager of the life that goes on in the CC space. And here we can see a significant difference between this space and AOL.

CC can use the norms of a community to regulate more effectively than AOL can. CC benefits from the norms of the legal community; it knows that any misbehavior will be sanctioned by that community. There is, of course, less “behavior” in this space than in AOL (you do fewer things here), but such as it is, CC behavior is quite significantly regulated by the reputations of members and the consequences of using their real names.

These differences together have an effect on CC’s ability to regulate its members. They enable a regulation through modalities other than code. They make behavior in CC more regulable by norms than behavior in AOL is. CC in turn may have less control than AOL does (since the controlling norms are those of the legal community), but it also bears less of the burden of regulating its members’ behavior. Limiting the population, making members’ behavior public, tying them to their real names—these are the tools of self-regulation in this virtual space.

But CC is like AOL in an important way. Neither is a democracy. Management in both cases controls what will happen in the space—again, not without constraint, for the market is an important constraint. But in neither place do “the people” have the power to control what goes on. Perhaps they do, indirectly, in CC more than AOL, since it is the norms of “the people” that regulate behavior in CC. But these norms cannot be used against CC directly. The decisions of CC and AOL managers may be affected by market forces—individuals can exit, competitors can steal customers away. But voting doesn’t direct where either CC or AOL goes.

That’s not the case with the next cyber-place. At least, not any more.

Footnotes