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Breaking Barriers With the Buddy List

By Nicole Minnick and James Alberg
June 01, 2004

Seven years ago, the Washington, DC, office of Shaw Pittman had an entire room dedicated to an army of fax machines cranking out the bulk of our documents and client correspondences. Clients and co-workers faxed important documents and relied on this method of communication to do business. While it may seem antiquated now, at that time it was unusual for businesses to send any documents over e-mail, for fear of security breaches. Now, that same fax room has one machine left in it, as almost all of our 750-employee law firm's document sharing and collaboration is done through e-mail and instant messaging (IM).

What was once seen as a chatting tool for teenagers, IM is becoming a required tool for more and more businesses. According to Gartner Research, enterprise instant messaging is growing at approximately 20% annually and is expected to be in use by 70% of all companies by the end of this year. By 2005, it's expected to surpass e-mail as the primary online communication tool.

With IM, you can look at your list of common users or buddy list and “see” who is online via presence awareness (the ability to view who is online and available to chat). When you're working on a time sensitive contract negotiation or just need an answer ASAP, IM is invaluable for lawyers.

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