Information Technology & lawyers

Information Technology and lawyers, at first sight not the most natural combination one can think of. Information Technology is fast, schematic, and futuristic; lawyers are cautious, verbose, and old-fashioned. When one of the authors once told a chemist he was working in the field of IT & Law, the first reaction was: " Is there any connection between the two at all? " This was back in 1995. The influence of IT and in particular the internet on law has become ever greater since, and also the use of IT and in particular the internet by lawyers (the side of the IT & Law diptych this book focuses on) has increased significantly. Currently there is indeed a connection between IT & Law that is also clear to people outside the field, viz. IT plays a central role in law, legal practice and legal research. The reliance on technology has even become so great that one could say the combination Information Technology and lawyers has become a natural one. Not everyone seems to be convinced of the benefits of Information Technology though: " Despite impressive advances, IT still remains prone to error and less easy to use than fixed-line telephones and typewriters, for instance. " This quote seems to originate from 1984, or maybe 1994, and right now it is 2004. Surprisingly, this quote is from Schäfer (2004). First of all, one might doubt the convenience of a typewriter in comparison with modern computing facilities. What the author possibly means to say is that once the ink is on the paper the fixed text normally remains there for years to come. The future of the bits and bytes in any file are less certain. Nonetheless, typewriters have faded away over the last 10 years and it will be quite hard to find a working typewriter in any office, including lawyer's offices. This was not the case at the beginning of the 1980s when the personal computer appeared. At that time most lawyers were reluctant to switch to electronic media and abided by pen, paper, typewriters and Dictaphones, although in some countries, like the US, databases with precedents were already widely used. In other countries, mostly those with a statutory legal system, this was not the case. In the 1980s only few lawyers might have realized the social impact of Information Technology in the years to come. About a little over a …