They come up with the maddening language that is influencing open source licensing, privacy and compliance debates, intellectual property protection. But lawyers themselves can be pretty conservative when it comes to using technology.
Or are they? I spent some time this weekend with Walter Aye, who runs a small law firm in Tampa. His son plays chess with my kids. And he was complaining about laptop batteries running out during court. Hard drives not being fast enough. His customizing his PCs with specific hard drive brands. Heat generated by chips. Failure rate of motherboards. I had to double check he had not taken up a part time job as a service technician.
This survey shows law firms have been investing heavily in technology - the dramatic shift from WordPerfect to MS Word to the leverage of electronic document management.
The survey does not even cover law firm blogging (as this San Francisco firm is), podcasting for lawyers, web based depositions.
Of course, this ABA web site on technology for law firms appears to mostly have articles pre-2002. Yellow pads will continue to still be very popular.
