Beyond The Paper Chase
Steven C. Bennett of Jones Day in New York is speaking truth to power in his recent National Law Journal article posted at Law.com about "Teaching Tech Skills to Lawyers". Lawyers can no longer avoid committing both resources and attention to the specific purpose of becoming "tech savvy". For even among a new generation of lawyers who have been technology end-users all their lives, the range of typical technological understanding is pretty much exhausted by email, cell phones, ipods, and online shopping.
And why not? "Essentially," writes Bennett, "what law students learn about technology during law school they learn on their own." And veteran lawyers have precious little to choose from in the way of technology skills training sponsored by bar associations, law firms and CLE providers.
There's a reason why interviews with policy makers are staged before a bank of West and Shepards systems, and why law students in 2006 pass DVD's of 1974's Oscar-winnning The Paper Chase from hand to hand. In traditional law firms, and in most law schools, the paper document is still stubbornly regarded as coin of the realm. But its time is already passed.
Relentlessly ongoing technological developments have the potential to increase lawyer productivity significantly. LexisNexis, for example, has just launched its new Toolbar for Attorneys. IT folks and lowly non-legals welcome this customization of a common browser peripheral. And it's just one of hundreds of litigation support technologies that will automate and facilitate the 21st century practise of law. But many senior partners will be flummoxed. That must change, says Bennett, or once venerable firms will find themselves at unrecoverable competitive disadvantage.
Both the corporate community and the courts are out ahead of the legal profession at large on this issue. Law firms are finding -- sometimes the hard way -- that courts and regulatory agencies already expect law firms to be able to file and retrieve information electronically. And electronic communication inside and outside of the firm runs smack into crucial privacy implications of modern data management. So clients increasingly demand diverse technological services and compatibilities from their law firms to maintain compliance.
Lawyers must finally accept the essential value of networking and sharing, even embracing soft-sided principles of knowledge management, in order to remain viable in the current market. Electronic data rooms and shared editing of deal documents must be coordinated to online discovery document repositories. Massive volumes of case information must be captured and sorted, and many a tech-savvy legal assistant or litigation support manager has watched a case crash and burn, only because a senior lawyer mismanaged meta-data and/or discovery documents.
Make no mistake: technology will still be handled by IT and litigation support, but it is no longer acceptable for partners not to understand -- and endorse -- what they are up to -- however much retooling that may require.
And why not? "Essentially," writes Bennett, "what law students learn about technology during law school they learn on their own." And veteran lawyers have precious little to choose from in the way of technology skills training sponsored by bar associations, law firms and CLE providers.
There's a reason why interviews with policy makers are staged before a bank of West and Shepards systems, and why law students in 2006 pass DVD's of 1974's Oscar-winnning The Paper Chase from hand to hand. In traditional law firms, and in most law schools, the paper document is still stubbornly regarded as coin of the realm. But its time is already passed.
Relentlessly ongoing technological developments have the potential to increase lawyer productivity significantly. LexisNexis, for example, has just launched its new Toolbar for Attorneys. IT folks and lowly non-legals welcome this customization of a common browser peripheral. And it's just one of hundreds of litigation support technologies that will automate and facilitate the 21st century practise of law. But many senior partners will be flummoxed. That must change, says Bennett, or once venerable firms will find themselves at unrecoverable competitive disadvantage.
Both the corporate community and the courts are out ahead of the legal profession at large on this issue. Law firms are finding -- sometimes the hard way -- that courts and regulatory agencies already expect law firms to be able to file and retrieve information electronically. And electronic communication inside and outside of the firm runs smack into crucial privacy implications of modern data management. So clients increasingly demand diverse technological services and compatibilities from their law firms to maintain compliance.
Lawyers must finally accept the essential value of networking and sharing, even embracing soft-sided principles of knowledge management, in order to remain viable in the current market. Electronic data rooms and shared editing of deal documents must be coordinated to online discovery document repositories. Massive volumes of case information must be captured and sorted, and many a tech-savvy legal assistant or litigation support manager has watched a case crash and burn, only because a senior lawyer mismanaged meta-data and/or discovery documents.
Make no mistake: technology will still be handled by IT and litigation support, but it is no longer acceptable for partners not to understand -- and endorse -- what they are up to -- however much retooling that may require.
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