Gnu Juris Penguinus

“Electronic court filing. Paperless record management systems.
Twittering jurors. Web-surfing secretaries. Web-surfing judges.
Thumb drives, gigaflops and terrabytes. Cell phones smarter than
law partners. LANS, WANS and Wifi. Welcome to the brave new world
of the digital Information Age.

“But whatever happened to that ballyhooed “efficiency dividend”
that was supposed to make toiling in the vineyards of the law more
modern and less medieval? Like the so-called “peace dividend” that
failed to materialize at the end of the Cold War, was the
“efficiency dividend” of the Information Age a mere chimera of
office technology marketing where the more you bought, the more you
had to buy?

“Like a carrot on a stick, the latest and greatest new releases
of software dangle before your eyes, always promising the law firm
efficiency nirvana that seems just within reach. But always it
requires new computer hardware, in-house retraining and outside
contract expertise as you migrate from your ‘outdated’ computer
system (only a few months old!) that you have only just managed to
stabilize from last year’s latest and greatest software
release.”

Complete
Story