WestlawNext Promotes a New Form of Social Media

Westlaw has just announced a new feature for WestlawNext - folder sharing. You can see their pitch for this new product here on their blog, Legal Current. According to the post

-...anyone in an organization can create, share, and modify legal research folders, whether across the office or across the country. Each member of a team can now quickly share information, review research materials, and participate in the strategy of the organization’s matters.

Think of a law firm as a closed, finite society. When you introduce peer-2-peer file sharing you introduce a new form of information and data sharing dependent on social networking. Can an informal user hierarchy and problems maintaining privacy be far off? Not likely.