As we enter the new century, it’s appropriate to take stock of where we’ve been and where we’re going. History is replete with examples of how law was administered and practiced in previous centuries. The 20th century has been a whirlwind of movement and innovation that has changed not only the way we live and work but how lawyers practice.

Before the 20th century, legal documents such as contracts to buy and sell houses and land were handwritten by clerks as many times as needed. The introduction of the typewriter and telephone were among the first inventions that changed how lawyers did their work. The typewriter caused a staffing shift from clerks, who were predominantly male, to secretaries, who were mostly female. The job changed from copiously copying legal documents and correspondence to typing them. Carbon paper allowed typists to make multiple copies in a single pass. However, the standards required them to be letter-perfect and called for secretaries to be very precise or risk retyping the page. I can still recall, in the late 1970s, going with my parents to their lawyer’s office and waiting for a page of my mother’s will to be retyped because of an error. While personal computers had yet to come into their own, I already sensed there were better options like electronic typewriters and word processors available. While it took my parents longer to find a new law firm to serve their needs, I never used that firm based on my evaluation of their lack of efficiency in delivering services.

Mid-century brought photocopying technology to the law office. Before introduction of the Xerox copier, secretaries typed through layers of carbon paper. While it was primitive compared to digital copiers that can serve as printers for computer networks and handle distribution and other aspects of document production, the early photocopiers were greeted with scepticism by most lawyers. In fact, from what I have read, lawyers for more than a century have been slower adopters of new technology than most other businesses.

The pace of improvements and new technological tools began to accelerate in the second half of the century. The earliest computers were in use by scientists and academics by the mid-1950s. Mainframe computers began to be used in businesses by the early 1960s although it was another 20 years before the introduction of the IBM personal computer. As NASA was working toward putting an astronaut on the moon, IBM and other manufacturers made improvements to typewriters. Memory typewriters allowed secretaries to change typefaces and save recently used text in case it had to be redone. Making several originals became significantly easier. “Mag card” machines were the next step up from memory typewriters in both functionality and price. After training, typists were able to create a card that stored the text from a frequently used document. A basic will could be saved on cards and retyped when needed.

Telecopiers were invented early in the century but didn’t make their way into most law offices until the early 1980s when manufacturers agreed on a transmission standard, the prices dropped and the speed of transmission increased. A short 20 years later, it is hard to imagine a law office without a fax machine as these have come to be known. Today, lawyers even in small offices can send faxes through a modem and phone line from documents created on their desktop computer. With the rapid acceptance and availability of e-mail, however, it’s easy to imagine the fax machine playing an increasingly smaller role in transmitting documents to and from clients, courts and adversaries.

Word processing

The 1970s saw law firms purchasing expensive, dedicated word processors and setting up word processing centers with staff trained to handle large and complex documents. Products like Wang, Syntrex and NBI vied for dominance. These machines — designed primarily for document production — suddenly looked like dinosaurs with the introduction in the late 1970s of personal computers from startup companies like Apple and established companies like Radio Shack. The early PCs were able to produce documents and do mathematical calculations.

The introduction of the IBM personal computer was, from a technological standpoint, a watershed in terms of changing the nature of businesses, including law firms. The original IBM PC cost more than $4,000 and had one floppy drive, no hard drive and 256KB of RAM with a 12-inch monochrome monitor. The first hard drives were add-ons that gave people a whopping 10 MB of space in a box the size of the computer. The next generation had the hard drive built in. Most lawyers stayed away from these early models. The available software for the first popular personal computers were spreadsheets like Visicalc and Lotus 1-2-3 and word processors like Scripsit and Wordstar. The only time-keeping and billing programs were from small companies with small market share. Most lawyers who were using computers during this period were pioneers and developed their own systems using the rudimentary tools available.

The early PC-based modems transmitted information at a whopping 300 mps. Comparing that to the 56KB fax modem or cable modem, DSL and high-speed ISDN lines available today is like comparing a buggy to a jet. In the early 1980s, few lawyers communicated with each other by e-mail. Services like CompuServe had special forums for lawyers, and many communities established bulletin boards for groups of people sharing information.

With the introduction of the IBM AT, along with more legal-specific software in the mid-1980s based on an Intel 286 chip, more lawyers began purchasing computers. The word processors competing for market share included SAMNA Word, XyWrite, IBM Displaywriter, MultiMate and WordPerfect 4.0. By 1989, when WordPerfect introduced version 5.1, most law offices had computers for all their secretaries and some professional staff. Today, getting a fully loaded state-of-the-art desktop computer will cost about $3,200. That money will buy a Pentium III 550 with 256 MB of RAM and a 20-GB hard drive, plus a 17-inch monitor, a tape backup unit and either a high-speed CD-ROM drive, a CD-writer that lets you make your own data and audio CDs or a combo DVD-CD-ROM drive.

Portability

Laptops started as “luggables” in the early 1980s, weighing around 20 or 25 pounds. The next generation in the mid-1980s came in at 12 to 15 pounds. Today’s laptops range from ultra light models between 3 and 4 pounds and more traditional laptops with all the components built in between 6 and 7 pounds. Today, many people use a high-end laptop as their only computer.

Still other lawyers have discovered the value of personal digital assistants or PDAs. The most-popular brand is the 3Com Palm Pilot. About the size of a pack of cigarettes, these devices, costing about $500 for the mid-range model, let you carry in the palm of your hand your contact list, to-do list, calendar and access your e-mail. Earlier efforts were hampered by poor mechanisms to get the information into the hand-held device. The Palm Pilot took off, in part, because people were able to use popular programs on their desktop computers to enter their basic information and share it with their palm pilot by pressing a button.

The first PC-based word processors tried to copy the dedicated word processors they were trying to replace. Multimate was designed to look and feel just like the Wang word processor while SAMNA was aimed at NBI users and IBM offered Displaywriter software as well as the dedicated Displaywriters. At the time, these programs had a lot of clutter on the screens to try to mimic the keys and options of the dedicated word processors. Satellite Software, which eventually became WordPerfect Corp., took a very different approach to document production and marketed a “clean screen” where users could focus on getting their words and thoughts into the computer without being distracted by codes and margin bars. The company also broke ranks with other vendors by eliminating copyright protection and offering unlimited toll-free support.

Office standard

In 1989, at the behest of the Department of Justice, WordPerfect Corp. released WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS with new features designed to assist lawyers preparing documents. Among the new additions were tables of contents and authorities, footnotes and cross-references. While their market share had been growing steadily during the late 1980s, by 1991 WordPerfect’s version 5.1 became the standard word processor in law offices.

At the time, most people were using DOS as their operating system. Novell had already established itself and distanced itself from competing network systems like Vines and Banyan and Unix. IBM was actively working on OS/2 as a joint venture with Microsoft, having successfully co-developed and marketed DOS 10 years earlier. In 1990, Microsoft shipped version 1.0 of Windows. It was tediously slow on current hardware, had limited functions and almost no software that could run with it. Until version 3.0 of Windows, Microsoft had no success moving people away from DOS. Although we may never know the truth, I believe the stories I heard at the time that implied Microsoft encouraged its leading competitors, IBM, Lotus Development Corp. and WordPerfect Corp., to invest heavily in OS/2 products while Microsoft quietly invested in its Windows product line.

Whatever the truth is, by 1993 businesses were beginning to move toward Windows 3.1 and the Microsoft family of desktop applications: Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint. By 1995, with the introduction of Windows 95, Microsoft had taken the lead from its competitors and had its products pre-installed on millions of new computers. Since then, outside the legal market, Microsoft’s suites are the de facto standard. Law firms, to a lesser extent than a decade ago, still cling to the WordPerfect suites.

Many law firms didn’t go much beyond word processors for many years. In the past decade, most firms automated their accounting, time-keeping and billing functions. More recently, there has been a big interest in case and practice management tools with products like Data.txt’s Time Matters, Gavel and Gown’s Amicus Attorney and Abacus Data Corp.’s Abacus Law dominating the market.

Features, features

An interesting phenomenon in software trends occurred over the past decade. In every software category, there has been a features war. While products have become somewhat easier to use because of the common Windows interface and shortcut keys, vendors continue to add so many features that even simple processes and functions often have become complicated or confusing. A perfect example of this is the changes in Timeslips from version 8 to version 9. In rewriting the product, it seems the developers wanted to appeal to many different kinds of time-keeping professionals. They added all sorts of budgeting components and task-tracking elements. The result, however, to most existing Timeslips customers was that they found a program that was broken by too much complication.

Today, there is a delicate balance vendors must reach between adding new features and making the software too complicated. Sometimes, however, new features do, in fact, make a product significantly better. For example, the newest Time Matters (version 3.0) adds more than 40 functions but makes some of the difficult tasks easier to accomplish. The simple addition of hot keys to quickly access the main lists in the program lets people move around the data base more effectively. Time Matters 3.0 also has the ability to act as an e-mail program and connect e-mail messages to case records.

Despite many improvements in software and the amazing pace at which faster chips enter the market, there has been slower development in printing technology. Early printers were noisy dot-matrix printers that used continuously fed paper in rolls. The next generation was known as “daisy wheel” printers because of the daisy-shaped wheel that impacted the letters through a ribbon onto paper the same way electronic typewriters did. These printers were so loud, there were sound-proof cabinets to hold them. The introduction of the Hewlett Packard Laserjet in the mid-80s at a cost in excess of $4,000 changed the ease with which lawyers edited documents. The ability to reprint a corrected document at eight pages per minute made it easier to go back and make minor changes that earlier technologies did not allow. Today, printers can double as fax machines, copiers and scanners. The printing speeds have increased, but paper handling is only slightly better than in the past.

In the mid-70s, a company in Dayton, Ohio, began a revolution in legal research. Until the introduction of the Lexis data base of cases and statutes, lawyers had to purchase and maintain expensive libraries of case books. By the early 1990s, CD-ROM versions of legal research materials were available from Lexis and its main competitor, Westlaw. As prices came down, lawyers were more willing to consider using CD-ROMs as an alternative to books.

Internet plusses

Without a doubt, the Internet has had the greatest impact on general technology and its application in law offices. The ability to look for background information about adversaries and clients, review patent information or access alternative legal research sources has changed the playing field for virtually every aspect of legal technology. Lawyers who can’t even articulate why they need one are clamoring to have a firm web site. Vendors are rethinking their products to determine how best to incorporate Internet access. For example, traditional time-and-billing vendors are looking at the Internet as a possible source for lawyers to be able to enter their time when they are away from the office.

With all the changes of the past 25 years, it is impossible to imagine the changes that will occur over the next quarter-century. Some short-term trends are easy to predict: Cell phones will be combined with Internet access and PDA data so users can look up and dial someone on their Palm device or find information on the Internet while commuting by train or bus. Car manufacturers offer navigation systems to help direct you to your destination. Accessing your office data from your car isn’t that hard to imagine down the road. Wireless access to information will continue to increase.

One trend worth watching is the increasing popularity of home area networks (HANs). As the growth in home-based computers continues, and parents no longer can get by sharing a single computer with their children, HANs will receive more attention in the media and marketplace.

Systems are being installed in various parts of the country that will track where we are driving and how. To encourage us to use this, insurance companies are offering lower rates. Cynics assume that after the EZ-Pass toll system is implemented in New Jersey, authorities will be able to use it to track drivers’ comings and goings and change fares depending on various criteria. In fact, difference in price already is a possibility in the coming year.

The impact of the new technological developments will have a profound effect on lawyers since clients will be using these tools and expect their lawyers to do the same. To service existing clients and attract new ones, you will have to keep up with the lawyer down the block and across the country.

Carol L. Schlein is president of Law Office Systems, a Montclair-based training and consulting firm assisting small- and medium-sized law firms with technology. She formerly chaired the Computer and Technology Division of the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section and is an author of The Lawyer’s Guide to Timeslips, published by the ABA. She can be reached at carol@losinc.com.

Questions for Carol L. Schlein on law office technology may be faxed to New Jersey Lawyer at (732) 650-7010 or mailed to “Law Technology Questions,” New Jersey Lawyer, Edison Square, 2035 Lincoln Highway, Suite 3005, Edison, N.J. 08817.