Law Tech: More Reports About How Technology Will Change The Practice of Law.

The news from recent legal conference(s) focusing upon new technology and featuring authors/speakers such as Richard Susskind is that technology will fundamentally change legal practice and the ways legal services are provided in the future. However, this information, including Mr. Susskind's message, somehow doesn't seem that new, but rather, for the most part, recycled. Yes, we have new forms of and uses for communication technology, but will these technologies necessarily ease conflict, promote economy (e.g., enable us to focus upon preventative law) or result in a lower profile for law as some are saying? Mr. Susskind is also unclear about precisely what legal services he is talking about. The widespread use of new technologies in response to changing social times will no doubt create some change in all areas of social and business life. But, in the process, a host of new issues and accompanying laws will be created that will require resolution by more old-fashioned means, such as litigation in our newly wired courts. I am reminded of Jeremy Rifkin's writings on social entropy and conclude this post with some quotes from his 1980 book Entropy, A New World View as food for thought:

"...every technology ever conceived by the genius of humankind is nothing more than a transformer of energy from nature's storehouse. In the process of that transformation, the energy flows through the human system where it is used for a fleeting moment to sustain life (and the artifacts of life) in a no equilibrium state. At the other end of the flow, the energy eventually ends up as dissipated waste, unavailable for future use.''

Rifkin continues: "The next time a technician, politician, or businessman tells you he or she can eliminate the secondary problems associated with a particular program, product, or process with better planning or better leadership or better design, think about the second law. It is true that the secondary disorders caused by a particular technology can be temporarily solved by the application of new technology. But the solution will inevitably result in even greater disorders.''

We need new technology to streamline and ease communication and the sharing of an increasing amount of information, as well as to allow existing institutions to accommodate more work. However, a view that the increased use of new technology will somehow reduce or materially alter the role of law or legal practice seems counterintuitive. It may well be that just the opposite occurs: that rapid adoption of technology in society and law practice will force everyone including practitioners of the law to step back, slow change, and return to or strive harder to maintain the tried, the more predictably stable and sustainable means and methods of maintaining order and resolving disputes in our world.