Does the top-down expertise model still fit with our current fixation on the social web? That’s not an exact paraphrase, but an interesting tangent I’ve taken from Rex Hammock’s post today on the NPR’s music site. Rex says:

“…what I like about the new NPR service (and how it “compliments” those other services) is that it pulls together the “wisdom of experts” at some of the last, remaining bastions of full-time, professional musicology: public radio stations.”

This got me thinking in two directions. First, that this was a great illustration of how valuable it can be when a trusted expert recommends something. The web community is all aflutter these days on the ‘wisdom of crowds’, web 2.0, and the democratizing element of (non-techie) individual participation. And for the most part, I’m in the middle of all that. But one thing I’ve often thought missing is a connection to the concept of authority. Web communities enable us to connect and communicate within groups, to discover new people, and find new content. But ultimately, all that discovery needs to lead somewhere. And with time often being a finite commodity, along the way each of us must decide who we trust.

The web offers a lot of innovation these days, but the mileage for recognized ‘experts’ can vary. As an example, let’s compare the pure community approach of Wikipedia, to Cornell’s legal wiki Wex. Both are great sources, but at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to leveraging expertise. While Wikipedia is open to the world, and relies on its massive user community to fact check and create authority, Wex had no illusion of becoming authoritative using the same model. Instead, Wex’s approach of getting experts to apply and qualify themselves before contributing has allowed them to create an equally authoritative tool, albeit on a smaller topic. What Wex lacks in quantity (of contributors), it more than makes up with quality.

My second thought here, is on the opportunity the web affords those who take their expertise in a very narrow direction. In the legal community, there’s a bit of a land grab going on right now. Lots of lawyers setting up blogs, or attempting to digitally carve out their areas of expertise. But what often gets overlooked is how narrow one’s area of practice can possibly go. I look at Bill Marler’s online presence, and have to think we’ve only seen the beginning.

What does all this mean to lawyers? My response would be the same to anyone selling services & branding their authority online. We shouldn’t assume that being an expert has stopped working in a web 2.0 world. Keep looking for ways to expose these individuals (names & faces – same as before) in any website you build, or any community they participate in. By the same notion, don’t assume that being an expert offline will be an easy transition to recreating that same authority on the web. The land-grab mentioned above is still in play, and leading experts everywhere need to be proactive. Finally, expect our codification of expertise to continue to be all over the map — books, papers, blogs, micro-blogging, link-blogging, audio, video — it’s not slowing down any time soon. Manage the ‘mix’ of longer-vs-shorter discourse, and make sure the off-line and on-line elements are working together.