Why would I want my question to be viewable to everyone, it seems that this application is not particularly useful for a service organization such as ours.

Thanks for the response. I agree that your approach is great for many products and services, but it will be interesting to see if and how this would work with legal, accounting, medical, and other service providers whose communications are constrained by law and rules of professional responsibility. I would suspect that for such organizations, Get Satisfaction might be useful for FAQ discussions, but beyond that I don't see how it will be adopted by the professions. Still, one of the fascinating things about Web 2.0 is how on-line social networking and reputation services are transforming the "professions." The early adapters who give careful thought to how they can properly use these services within the bounds of their professional ethics guidelines will benefit, while the remainder will be drug along kicking and screaming or left behind in confusion and denial.

I'll be watching Get Satisfaction's development closely. It's a wonderful social experiment you guys have put together.

Question: let's say that a client of the firm Dewee Suem & Howe sets up a Get Satisfaction page for that firm and posts a question related to his case. Another client or ex-client sees the post and responds and soon you have a lively discussion between these two and others. At this point there is not much difference between Get Satisfaction and any discussion board or lawyer ranking sites like Avvo. But if an attorney from the firm sees this and warns his client that he is waiving privilege for anything he is posting on-line, can the client request that Get Satisfaction retroactively remove his posts?

Paul: This is a great topic. A lot of professions, like law, operate on the assumption of confidentiality. But, of course, lawyers speak in public all the time -- at conferences, in court, to the press, at continuing legal education workshops. So I think there is a lot that lawyers can say publicly about how they practice law. In fact, many lawyers are now blogging publicly, so that's another example of a more open, public approach to professionalism.

I agree, though, that one should not discuss specific cases on open forums, like GSFT, as it risks losing the protection of attorney-client privilege and violating the duty of confidentiality. However, beyond case-specific posts, I think lawyers can surely post hypotheticals and opinions, as well as referrals and other help on how to find more information on legal problems. They can also help clients and potential clients understand how to get the most out of their lawyers for the money they pay.

As to your specific question about removing posts, I think it would be bad form for GSFT to take anything down that was posted because at that point, it is part of the public record. Any privilege in those communications has already been lost, so removing them would not revive it. Alternatively, I think it is best to warn clients about many kinds of public disclosure can potentially waive privilege, whether on here or in email or anywhere. That kind of education is critical in the digital age for any client, not just those that use this service.

Paul, I think someone created the True Legal Partners section 3 months ago (as is dated by the "Welcome" post) and didn't really think about this, perhaps were just listing companies they knew about. I think in this case it is rare that a question would be suitable to a public forum such as this, yes.

As well, if someone just wants to get a professionals opinion, that is usually charged for as time is valuable. Of course, if some professional(s) decided that time was not valuable and opened a public system of inquiry into legal things that, while easy for a lawyer to help with due to experience, are impossible to Google... that could devalue the time of other lawyers (provided this public system was popular enough to actually increase the supply of good legal advice and decrease its value).

But seriously, asking a question on here could ruin your case. That's probably why no one has done so yet. Of course, I could be confused about what True Legal Partners actually does.

Agreed. One interesting twist to this would be whether an ethics board would see Get Satisfaction as substantially different from a discussion board, blog, or other social media. I see two potential scenarios: (1) somebody unassociated with a law firm creates a company listing for the firm and firm employees decide to participate and (2) the firm sets up its own listing or claims a listing on Get Satisfaction. The difference is the extent to which the firm places its imprimatur on the activity. Because this is marketed as a help board, might an ethics board not see participation as tacit encouragement to post questions and problems and if a client does so and thereby divulges confidential information, could the firm or participating professionals be held accountable?

Actually, I made the original post when testing the new Help Center app. The original point was that the help center would be more useful if it was more than a portal to the Get Satisfaction Web site. But I'll leave that discussion for the Help Center discussions. This has generated a much more interesting discussion.