Credit is due to the Wired GC for first coining the phrase “Law 2.0” back in December 2005, having posted the week before on Web 2.0, Law Style in which he foresaw that:

Web 2.0 will be disruptive for the [law status quo], because some measure of control will be lost. And its simple technical browser-based attributes will necessarily lower user costs. That is something that always grabs a client’s attention.

He followed this up a week later with Web 2.0, Heading West to Law 2.0 wherein:

a few of the attributes of Web 2.0 are things like open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and a more organized and categorized content. Sounds like legal-research nirvana to me. … Yes, someday maybe the Death Star hovers over [Thomson/West and LexisNexis]

Then in a later post he points to Dion Hinchcliffe’s helpful summary of various “offshoots” of the Web 2.0 “revolution”, and there Law 2.0 is, centre stage:

Dion describes the Law 2.0 and similar movements in rather expansive terms:

The interrelated, mutually reinforcing concepts in Web 2.0 like true disintermediation, customer self-service, and harnessing collective intelligence, are resonating with many other industries. As it turns out, these industries are in the process of being transformed by technology including the relentless collapse of formal central controls, pervasive Web usage, rapid technological change, and more. These communities seem to be craving a new model for collaboration, relevance, and usefulness. And Web 2.0 seems to give them both a beacon to rally around and a useful set of practices that can then be used for constructive reinvention.

As I posted recently, other thought leaders have developed the discussion, including Between Lawyers (in particular, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell).

I’m hitching my bandwagon to these commentators, rather than the SCL who also adopted the term in promoting its recent two-day “blue skies” intensive legal investigation into the world of Web 2.0 entitled Law 2.0: New Speech, New Property, New Identity. As the title suggests, the focus there was the law and regulation of Web 2.0 rather than the use of Web 2.0 by and for lawyers.

And, convinced of its importance, Delia Venables and I have tagged the title of our bi-monthly newsletter Internet Newsletter for Lawyers & Law 2.0.

So, what does Law 2.0 mean to you?