Technology Makes Legal Work Brief

The technology boom over the past five years has made legal work easier but not necessarily cost effective for the law firms.

“To draw a will 20 years ago, a lawyer spent 2 1/2 hours on it and billed the client for that,” said Fayetteville lawyer Jack Butt. “Modern days, it’s brought up electronically, a lawyer spends 30 minutes, and it’s more accurate. He bills the client for 30 minutes, but he has to use a $2,000 computer.”

High-tech computers, software and online research databases have cut down the time and money lawyers spend on traditional book-based research and mass mailings.

But lawyers are paying for it in other ways.

Chip Stacy, a partner with Hood & Stacy PA in Bentonville, said his firm spends about $20,000 a year on software, hardware and Internet subscriptions for the office. But it’s well worth it, he said, especially for a small firm with six lawyers.

“We’re going to try to stay on the cutting edge of technology and constantly look at it to determine whether it’s going to help us or not,” said Stacy, who has been practicing law since 1994. “More often than not, it will help us.”

Larger law firms, like Davis Wright Clark Butt & Carithers PLC in Fayetteville, spend between $60,000 to $100,000 each year to keep the company’s 15 lawyers up-to-date with technology, said Butt, a partner in the firm.

But many larger (and older) firms sometimes have an aversion to technology. Butt said his office isn’t going out there to be the first in technology — they’re just following the trend and keeping up with their clients.

Keeping Up

Many firms rely on the Internet and software to stay abreast of the latest law news and cases, along with being able to keep up with their clients.

Stacy’s biggest client is Arvest Bank Group Inc. of Bentonville, and banking technology is head and shoulders above that of many other industries, he said. So he needs to stay up-to-date on software, like Microsoft Office, to keep up with his clients.

“It’s common software [that lawyers use], but just in the last few years it’s really opened the door for attorneys to find a lot of specific uses for it,” Stacy said.

Many of his other clients like to do everything electronically through e-mail, which has become one of the easiest ways for a lawyer to communicate with clients and other lawyers.

Using Adobe Acrobat software, lawyers can scan documents and save them as Portable Document Format (PDF) files. They can then send them as e-mail attachments to other lawyers and even the courts to view.

PDFs also make getting a document signed relatively easy for lawyers. Electronic signatures are generally accepted in court, depending on the type of case.

In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, also known as E-SIGN. The federal law gives electronic signatures the same validity as handwritten signatures on hard copies. Still, some legal documents can indicate that a signature needs to be in writing.

Electronic case filing (ECF), which has become mandatory at the federal court level, saves time and money for lawyers and, consequently, their clinets. Stacy said he benefits from ECF because he also practices law in Oklahoma and Missouri. If he needs to file a pleading, he gets online and files it. Five years ago, he would have had to make copies of the pleading, mail them to the court and hope they got there by the deadline. Now, he said, there’s less stress involved to meet those deadlines.

However, ECF is expensive so many state courts don’t have it, including those in Arkansas. But Stacy said the courts would benefit in the long run from having it. In Missouri, some state courts have started using the program.

Also, technology has streamlined billing with programs like Timeslips, a time and expense tracking system. But Stacy took technology one step farther and paid $10,000 to have a billing and accounting system created that was customized to his firm’s needs. Now, his lawyers fill in their time and send their invoices to their clients as PDF attachments.

Technology’s Evolution

Butt, who has practiced law since 1975, said technology’s evolution has its pros and cons. In some ways, he said, e-mail communications has made practicing law more stressful.

“If anything, I think [technology] increased the stress of the practice because everybody expects an instantaneous response,” Butt said. “There used to be a pace to things, but now that pace is a blink of an eye.”

Today’s computers are the backbone of technology in the workplace, coming a long way since the electric typewriter and the word processor. But everything on the cutting edge used to be too expensive. Now, small law firms like Stacy’s can be as tech savvy and sometimes even more technologically advanced than larger firms.

Much of that has to do with the affordability of software and hardware, Butt said.

“In the early 1980s, all the secretaries had electric typewriters, but true word processors were very expensive — in the $15,000 to $20,000 range,” Butt said. “Unless you had a law office with 15 to 20 lawyers, you couldn’t afford it.”

Fax machines were even expensive and if a lawyer had to fax something, they would charge the client for the cost. But now a lawyer practicing on his own can equip his office with everything he or she needs to do business for $2,000. Twenty years ago it would have cost them $50,000, Butt said.

The costs of technology used to have a big impact on small firms. Five years ago, it would be too expensive to do extensive research for clients using online databases like WestLaw and LexisNexis, which has access to statutes, case law materials and public records that are updated instantly.

Larger firms were able to negotiate a decent price for the program, but there was nothing affordable for small firms. But software programs have come down in price and are offered in small business packages. Now, Stacy pays $450 a month to have unlimited access to all the files he needs.

“[Online] legal research has been around a long time but the accessibility and affordability has not,” Stacy said. “That’s been a big help for small law firms to be able to afford that. You used to have to run down to the law library and spend half a day because it was cheaper. We would have no reason to go to a law library now.”

Law libraries and law books have become almost obsolete, which leads to less paperwork in the office. But Stacy doesn’t think it will be possible for law offices to go completely paperless because there are too many original documents that lawyers need to maintain possession of either for their clients or for the courts. Of course, that may change in the future.

Law students at the University of Arkansas are more efficient with technology, Stacy said. So that benefits many law firms when they are ready to go into practice. But those students are still learning how to do research in law books because in some cases it still may be needed (see story, p 20).

Terry Jean Seligmann, director of legal research and writing at the UA School of Law, teaches law students how to use different types of research methods. Instead of giving them a topic and letting them research it on their own, she makes them use a specific research method for each project.

It doesn’t matter what someone is using, even if it’s suppose to make research faster, that doesn’t mean someone knows how to use it wisely.

“Research in general, you need to know what you’re looking at and what you’re looking for in order to use it effectively and efficiently,” Seligmann said.

Courtroom technology has also changed, Stacy said. Some federal courts have wireless Internet hot spots and many lawyers take advantage of that by using their laptops. Judges sometimes use laptop computers to look up reference cases online, he said, especially in bankruptcy court.

Another recent advancement in technology has been cell phones with e-mail capability, like BlackBerry phones. Stacy said many lawyers who are in court and away from their office a lot have taken advantage of the BlackBerry phones. Another thing the portable gizmos allow them to do besides send and receive e-mail is to check their schedule while in court.

Lawyers can now use technology to reconstruct accidents or other incidents in the court room. Audio/visual equipment enables them to reconstruct a car accident to look like real video footage, Butt said.

“Twenty years ago … they would have done it with chalkboard, words and two toy cars,” Butt said.

(For more on this, see UA Law School to Get Technology Upgrade).