BarTalk August 2001
Volume 13, Number 4

From Selectric to the World Wide Web

by R David Hill

Nothing is so difficult and dangerous, nor so unlikely of success, as an attempt to change the order of things . . . Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Book VI

Machiavelli might have added “in a law office.” The introduction of technology into the practice of law has been revolutionary. Like all revolutions, there have been some winners and some losers.

In the Beginning
In ancient times (the 1970s) about the only technology in a law firm was a Selectric and a dictaphone – even photocopiers and fax machines were rare. Late in the decade, law firms stepped tentatively onto the slippery slope of technology, computerizing their accounting systems. The next steps brought in photocopiers, faxes, and put dedicated word processing on secretarial stations – CPT, WANG, and AES supplanted the Selectric. In a few short years, they too were expensive boat anchors (a repeating theme), replaced by PCs sporting DOS and WordPerfect 5.1. But computers were not a tool for the early ‘80s lawyer.

The Renaissance
That all changed in the late ’80s and early ’90s. No longer was technology a backroom thing that administrators fussed with, or a secretary’s best friend. Lawyers stepped out on that slippery slope, and, in some minds at least, haven’t stopped sliding since.

Lawyers at all levels wanted to know just what computers could do for them. There was religious fervour. People wrote impassioned articles, books even, on which was better – PC or Mac. There were national and international conferences. Academics pursued Artificial Intelligence and decried the Boolean search. Oddballs and eccentrics with peculiar ideas about technology dined out on their “unique” perspectives, simply because they knew something about the way these things worked.

Not everybody was on-board. The Benchers in 1990 rejected a recommendation that PLTC include computer competency, and declined to fund computer education for the Bar. One of the era’s Law Society Treasurers proclaimed proudly “I’m going to use computers when they’re as simple to use as a telephone.” (I haven’t tried calling him lately...)

Most of the profession, at least, embraced the computer. The computer didn’t always embrace back. They were hard to use and harder to understand. They often didn’t do what you expected them to do, and whatever they did, they did slowly. In fits and starts, lawyers became computer users – for word processing, then e-mail, then computerized research, calendar and contact management, litigation support, document comparison, document generation, document management, matter management, and financial analysis, to name a few. Words like “spreadsheet”, “database”, “web browser” and “extranet” entered legal parlance.

The Modern Era
Despite the profession’s deep-seated reluctance to change, computers have become a fact of life at the Bar. So, what has been the impact of computers on practice? They’ve certainly made it more stressful. We suffer from Information Acceleration – the flow of legal information has gone from a drinking straw to a fire hose. Clients can now contact us virtually instantaneously, virtually anywhere in the world, and they do. They look for our responses in kind. The buffer zone of the mail or the courier or the search agent has disappeared. Law reports have become legion, and come to us online and CD as often as paper. Volume practices like real estate are under intense financial pressure – automation makes it practical to shave margins and create do-it-yourself alternatives.

Not all of the impacts have been negative. Legal research over the Internet has helped to level the playing field between large partnerships and sole practitioners. Firms grew: multi-office and multi-national partnerships would be all but impossible without the sinews of technology binding them together. Clear and direct communication with the public, uncomplicated by the filters of the media, became suddenly practical through the World Wide Web. The lawyer lifestyle improved with work from home.

Service to clients improved immeasurably – tasks that once were far beyond the law firm’s scope are now part and parcel of everyday service. Sophisticated and complex documents that once took days to complete are now done in minutes (with the concomitant drop in fees), and include the client’s logo to boot. Litigators carve through the details of a case using the tools of litigation support technology. We became more efficient, if not more profitable.

In an unexpected way, Information Acceleration has benefited the profession, by exposing the true value of the lawyers’ services. The lawyer as adviser, negotiator, advocate, collaborator, facilitator, communicator – in short, the nuggets of the lawyer as professional – shine through.

The public is better served too. Reasons for Judgment are available free online. The cost of public legal information and education has fallen dramatically, while its availability has expanded. Simple legal work has been automated, to the benefit of those who can’t afford the “real thing” – there is at least some chance that a drugstore Will & Testament is efficacious if the drugstore happens to be the Computer Department at London Drugs.

The Future
Law is fundamentally information; Information Technology should enhance practice. There are some emerging “killer applications” like voice recognition, but, overall, computers are still too hard to use. They don’t “understand” us in any meaningful way. That is not about to change, at least in the intermediate term. Lawyers and others in the legal community will have to become more technical, not less. Clients no longer think it’s charmingly modest to hear their lawyer lead with “I’m just a Luddite . . .”

“What are the other firms doing?” is the first, and often the only question firms ask in technology planning – technology is a tactic, not a strategy. So long as we are competing just with one another, innovation isn’t vital to our success. When others enter our competitive space, though, risks rise. Multi-disciplinary practices bring multi-disciplinary thinking, including strategic questions like “How can we use technology to win clients away from other firms?”

The distinction is vital. Businesses invest heavily and change technology swiftly to win market share. Technical excellence is a core value in their strategic thinking. There was a brief period when Word was the more efficient word processing program. The business world abandoned WordPerfect en masse, to gain the advantage. Law firms did not share that vision. Long after our clients’ desktops were overrun by Word, WordPerfect remained the legal word processor of choice. My point isn’t that Word is a better program (it’s not), but that firms need to be technically nimble and responsive, like their clients.

There is a new world coming, and we will have to be both brave and business-like to be part of it.

R David Hill is director of technology at Davis and Company.

This article was published in the August 2001 issue of BarTalk and is subject to the copyright by the British Columbia Branch of the Canadian Bar Association, 2005, all rights reserved.