Bob Ambrogi on Google Wave

I've been using the Beta of Google Wave for several weeks and I have been both intrigued and frustrated.  Thus I was very interested to hear what legal technologist Bob Ambrogi has to say about it.

Bob is, of course, one of the country's best regarded and widely read legal technology experts.  His Bob Ambrogi's LawSites blog is one of the most widely read and was just named one of the top-ten legal blogs by Avvo.

Here's Bob's initial take in his Law.com Law Technology News article:  Google Wave - Lawyers May Take Their Time Before Jumping onto this Technology:

Here is my prediction about Google Wave: It will be slow to catch on among legal professionals. But it will catch on.

The reason Google Wave will be slow to catch on is that it lacks a good elevator speech. By that I mean it is difficult to explain in short, simple terms just what it is all about.

My observation has been that after an initial rush of interest with Waves like "How Will Lawyers Use Google Wave," "Lawyers' Survival Wave," and great debates about how Wave will affect E-Discovery in "Google Wave and E-Discovery," the flood of Wave posts (Wavelettes etc) has ebbed to a quiet lapping on the shore.

I still think Wave has great potential.  Google's elevator speech is that Wave is email if you invented it today instead of 30-years ago.  Bob's probably right that if that is the case, at least in this prerelease version, lawyers would be using email a whole lot less.  It has wonderful collaborative possibilities.  But it feels like such a young technology.  Should there not be better integration with Google Docs - now that would be a hot feature for lawyers working in collaborative situations.  What about some system of notifying you when there are changes in a Wave like Facebook or Twitter DM notifications.  It feels like a new, young, very Beta technology - oh yeah, it is that!

I am going to keep working with it and I'll keep you all updated.  In the meantime, I highly recommend reading Bob's article:  Google Wave - Lawyers May Take Their Time Before Jumping onto this Technology.

- Peter H. Berge

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