Second Life : not your average law firm

Maybe it's because I'm not a gamer. Or because I'm not (currently) feeling a pressing need to escape into another persona. I'm just not into Second Life. I get as far as the first step of trying to create, dress and manoeuvre my avatar and get bored. I would need someone to hold my hand and give me an interactive demo.

Maybe I'll call my lawyer.

Montreal's Davis LLP has just become Canada's first law firm to venture into Second Life:

For Davis LLP, which already had a successful blog, Second Life was seen as the next logical step. Multinational firms such as IBM have been replicating themselves in Second Life and using it for many purposes, from marketing to conducting business.

“Lawyers go where their clients are or where they think they can get clients,” says Pablo Guzman, who practises in Davis’ Montreal office. (His impeccably dressed avatar is “PabloGuzman Little.”) “For us, Second Life is a great marketing tool and a recruitment tool. It’s not necessarily somewhere where we can practise law, because we do not practise law in cyberspace.”

(...)

at this point it’s mainly getting inquiries about what the firm is doing. While the avatars don’t provide legal advice, it’s seen as a way to connect with potential real-life clients, but it’s still too early to say whether it will become a generator of volume work.

The firm is also experimenting with the idea of “locked” virtual offices for private chats and meetings with potential articling students (...)

source: Canadian Lawyer, March 2008

Thanks to Roberto Rocha, who gave his Twitter followers a heads up about this announcement.