Legal Commentary

I turn the mic over to my colleague Sean Doherty, tech editor of Law.com:

LegalTech impacts how we provide legal services and manage the business of law. With technology we can provide better legal services with research tools from LexisNexis and Westlaw, and software that cull and review data for evidence, assemble documents, and manage trial notebooks.

We can also better manage our business with time and billing programs, as well as case and matter management applications installed on premise or in the cloud.

Technology also impacts the law itself. Ken Strutin, director of legal information services at the New York State Defenders Association, writes that science and technology at trial is constantly re-examined. "Disputed assumptions about long-standing forensic methods have propelled legal practitioners into an era of heightened skepticism," says Strutin. It seems that Frye and Daubert have run their course.

Today, most litigators would not go to trial without conducting internet searches on the parties and witnesses to the litigation to work up their case. New technology such as Web 2.0 and social networks can also be the reason, ab initio, that litigants are in the courtroom.

Where is all this going? To LegalTech New York on February 1-3, and that is only the start of the conversation for legal technology that ALM has in store for 2010.