Legal Systems | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

As in many areas of business and professional practice, the use of computers in the legal sphere had become widespread by the beginning of the 1990s. In some realms of law practice, such as research and office management, computer automation had a major impact a decade or two earlier. Everything from the way courtroom trials are undertaken to the way lawyers prepare documents has been affected by automated systems. This article focuses on digital technology in six major areas of legal practice. Some topics, like artificial intelligence (AI), that have yet to be developed to the point where they have everyday practical applications are not covered. This does not mean that they do not hold tremendous promise for the future, just that more work needs to be done before they are ready for a commercial market.

The heart of an attorney's work is research. One must be able to locate the primary sources, the cases, statutes, and regulations that make up the law, before clients can be advised, contracts prepared, or litigation brought to trial. This is the area of legal practice that has been most radically affected by the introduction of computer technology.

The earliest experiments with computer-aided legal research were undertaken by John Horty at the University of Pittsburgh in the early 1960s. Horty encoded the text of state public health statutes into a digital form that could be read by a computer. Simple searches could be run by matching language submitted by the researcher against the statutory text using Boolean logic.

By the mid-1960s, Horty's research had attracted the attention of several key members of the Ohio Bar Association. They wanted to take automated legal research to the next level by developing a system that would allow massive amounts of legal information to be stored and then retrieved by searching the full text of each document. By 1973 the system, now named Lexis, was ready for commercial marketing. The earliest version of Lexiswas rather primitive; it mostly contained just state and federal case law. Communication problems were frequent and complicated searches were dreadfully slow, often taking longer than thirty minutes.

By 1975 a competing product, Westlaw, was being marketed to attorneys. West Publishing Company, the developer of Westlaw, originally built their product to work solely as an indexed system utilizing the topic and key number indexing employed in their print compilations of cases. Within a few years Westlaw was redesigned as both a full-text and an indexed system.

Today both Lexis and Westlaw are powerful research tools containing hundreds of databases incorporating millions of legal, news, and public record documents. Besides full-text searching, both Lexis and Westlaw now allow for indexed and natural language searching, the latter being introduced as a means to introduce computer-aided legal research to less computer-literate lawyers.

The success of both Lexis and Westlaw has led to several complementary software products. One of these works by extracting case citations from legal documents, such as a brief, and verifying that the cases are still valid law by referencing an electronic citation service. Numerous smaller companies have developed more modest research systems and tools. These CDROM (compact disc-read only memory) and online-based products offer relatively low-cost searching compared to Lexis and Westlaw. In addition, with the advent of the Internet, many courts, legislatures, and regulatory agencies have made their documents available via the World Wide Web. Using these Internet-based sources for detailed and comprehensive legal research has drawbacks, however, including the absence of older material, unsophisticated search engines, and the need to consult many different sites.

The popular image of an attorney is usually based on television characters making heroic gestures in front of a jury. The truth is that many attorneys have never spent a working day in a courtroom. Legal work such as preparing wills, filling out tax forms, incorporating businesses, and handling real estate transactions can at times require shrewd analysis and attention to detail. Just as often, though, they are routine processes that can be automated to save time.

Beginning in the 1980s with the introduction of the personal computer, programs were developed to assist with document assembly. At first these were simple programs, like those to assist in drafting wills, based on word processing software. More sophisticated products, like those to compute taxes, were soon built around database or spreadsheet programs. These software packages quickly gained favor with the legal profession and now there are dozens of companies offering a wide range of document assembly products.

A successful law practice involves more than good research skills and thorough knowledge of the law. There are business components that can be time-consuming, but many of these can be handled with computer technology. Storing client data, keeping track of timesheets, and debt collectionare all business functions that are easily automated. One of the most important innovations in this area is software that functions as an electronic calendar or tickler file. These programs allow the busy attorney to track and maintain filing deadlines. The most sophisticated of these are keyed into state or federal court rules and automatically compute the date that a filing or court appearance is due.

Complicated trials involving large corporations can require enormous numbers of documents. Boxes full of business records and depositions from potential witnesses may have to be examined, indexed, coded, and stored in a manner that allows for rapid retrieval. Up until the 1980s, microfilm was the storage vehicle of choice; computers were relegated to an indexing role. Low-cost scanning technology and cheap, abundant computer memory have allowed the entire process to be automated. It is still a labor-intensive undertaking and generally involves scanning documents onto compact disks as image files. Sometimes, at great expense, these documents are converted to text files using optical character recognition software so that they can be retrieved through full-text searching. At the same time, these records are assigned codes that capture identifying information such as date, author, title, addressee, and type of document; each record is also given a unique document number.

Another way computer technology provides litigation support is through the creation of graphics and other visual aids for courtroom use. The most sophisticated of these are simulations that can recreate an accident scene or show the path of a bullet.

A revolution is currently underway in the court systems of the United States. Fueled by the communications potential of the Internet, courts of all types are developing the capability to allow attorneys to file and retrieve documents in pending cases electronically. The potential is there for all parties in a case to receive filings simultaneously and without delay. Electronic docketing or registration of legal proceedings also allows attorneys to take note of other cases that were filed against a particular party within a specific period of time.

The judiciary, as a whole, traditionally has not been eager to embrace new technology. Little by little changes have been working their way into the courtroom. In many U.S. counties it is now possible to receive real-time transcription of the proceedings of an ongoing trial. The court stenographer utilizes a system that converts shorthand to a transcript format that is distributed through multiple channels in the courtroom. This nearly simultaneous record can benefit deaf or blind jurors and participants.

The paperless trial is another reality that is being played out in a few selected courtrooms around the country. Jurors can view video clips, computer simulations, and exhibits on video screens or monitors in the jury box. The reported advantages have been faster and cheaper trials and the abilityto focus the jury's attention in a more direct fashion.

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Staudt, Ronald W. Litigation Support Systems: An Attorney's Guide. New York: Clark Boardman Callaghan, 1995.

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