Legal Future Secure?

This book is about your legal future, a future that is very rapidly becoming today. It is and will continue to make profound changes in your life. This revolution is known as The Digital Age, The Information Age, The Multimedia Revolution, and The Superhighway. Whatever you call it, it is happening in all parts of society and in all parts of the world, and its consequences will impact us for decades to come.

This technology revolution has forever changed society and the practice of law. When I graduated from law school in 1975, an office, law books, legal pads, typewriters, and pens were the primary tools of an attorney. The preparation of pleadings took many hours in the library and the services of a typist to produce a professional product. Now, over 25 years later, the primary tools for a lawyer are a computer, CD-ROM and DVD drive, modem, printer and an Internet connection

The preparation of a pleading takes half the time then it took in 1975 based on legal research more accurate then was available over 20 years ago. These tools and information are now available in a “virtual” office located wherever you are physically located. This digital revolution has substantially altered and will continue to alter the way law is practiced.

The cornerstone of this transition is the change from a paper and analog based society to a digital society, along with the Internet. Analog devices, such as video and audio recording devices, record events in real time using film or audiotape. Digital is the recording of information in a binary manner as 1’s and 0’s for use by a computer. Once in a digital format, all forms of information - data, sound, graphics, text, and video - can be stored, accessed, retrieved, manipulated, organized and sent over the Internet using computers anytime and anywhere.

There are many differences between digital and analog information. Digital media is non-linear. This enables the user to instantly jump to any part of a digital book, video or sound. Traditionally, one reads a book sequentially or views a VCR tape from beginning to end or by fast-forwarding it. Digital information enables one to be interactive with the information - picking and choosing depending upon one’s response to the feedback from the information. It allows interaction with the media to move to different areas of the information, depending upon the user’s needs, such as hypertext links on WWW pages.

The world is moving from the age of paper and machines to the age of digital information. This move will impose technology changes upon the legal profession and radically alter the time, place, and manner of how we practice law. Competition in this new digital age will intensify and the law practice will lose its physical boundaries, resulting in a global law practice. Lawyers are already starting the transition and will continue to increase the automation of their practices. The dramatic increase in the number of lawyers and non-lawyers practicing law and technology efficiencies will put pressure on changing from the billable hour to a value based billing system. Marketing and communications to clients will involve digital connections through the Internet. Intranets and extranets will become commonplace.

We will increasingly be defined by our ability to communicate and access digital information. Case strategies, status, billing, and communications will be done increasingly by e-mail, extranets and other digitized communication methods. The ethical implications will be numerous as we struggle to understand the impact of this digitized changing world. Depending on the practitioner’s skills, a lawyer’s quality of life can dramatically increase with these new efficiencies. We are living in an exciting transitional period, and if we take the proper steps now to visualize and implement the digital practice of law, our legal future will be secure.