Technology for Lawyers: Fear, Over-Reaching and Acceptance

While the title says "Technology for Lawyers", this article and the next few are applicable to any business that is not technology based yet can use technology heavily. These articles are not directly about video, they address broader issues surrounding using technology in your business. Understanding these basic technology issues for your firm is crucial to being able to use video and audio technologies for their greatest benefits.  

In the lifetimes of many attorneys, we have moved from a completely manual world to a world of incredible technological depth. Where you once spent days searching through discovery documents, now you can scan them and use a computer program to run word-recognition and search for relevance. Today you can file pleadings electronically. Depositions can be reported directly to a computer with a time stamp that can be  synchronized with a videotape of the deposition and delivered almost instantly as a digital file to view and mark up on your computer.

You use email, on-line research, trial presentation software, time tracking software, and much more. It’s a veritable Candyland of technology, if you can use it effectively. Some of you are still resisting the technology because it scares you, some have found an accommodation that balances technology with productivity, and some have jumped in over your heads from either lack of knowledge, over-confidence or just pure exuberance.

What’s scary about technology for lawyers and other non-technical people? Well, lots of things and many of them are legitimate concerns if you are not technologically savvy. Is it secure? Can it be implemented without a lot of pain? Is it hard to learn? Can people who are not computer literate use it? Is it really productive and cost-effective? What extra hidden costs like ancillary programs and updates will there be? And the biggest one, is it reliable? Will it crash right when I need it?  Is it going to bog down my network? Will I lose all my work if it dies? How easily can I accidentally screw it up? If I use "the cloud" how reliable and secure is it? That’s a lot of issues.

Getting past the fear and finding a balance requires having some sort of methodology, a way of approaching your technology issues that makes sense and helps you make informed decisions that will work for you and your firm. The next article will address choosing to use a technology solution.