INTRODUCTION

With the virtual explosion of the Internet and its proliferation throughout the legal community in the past few years, lawyers and law firms have come to realize the unique benefits of online services. Specifically, the Internet offers lawyers and legal assistants the capabilities to:

• Create common communications structures including electronic mail
• Access practice-specific information at any time through the use of sophisticated search engines

BACKGROUND

When we speak of the "Internet," many of us assume that it is an entity to itself, a "place" one can visit. In fact, the Internet is a formal name for a 20-year old decentralized network of individual computer networks that developed as an outgrowth of a Defense Department global communications project. The Internet encompasses the World Wide Web, the graphical structure that most online searchers use to find information. The World Wide Web (WWW) allows for a page-to-page connection of documents through the convention of hyperlinking. Users can click on hyperlinks, which are highlighted, underlined words or phrases, to access related information on a specific topic. This information may take the form of another document, a list of links, or a multimedia object, such as a sound or a picture.

While the WWW is available for general searching needs, sometimes organizations want to tap into the other benefits of online services, such as controlled and speedy communication and reduced paper transmission. In such instances, it makes sense for firms/companies/schools/groups to create Intranets. Intranets are secured, internal environments comprised entirely of html (hypertext markup language) documents and occasionally other types of software programs, such as schedulers and contact list managers. Intranets allow companies to post internal information in the same way that a person can post a homepage out on the Web. For instance, rather than print several hundred copies of benefits books and procedure manuals, a corporation may choose to post these guides/manuals as html documents. This way, employees have access to the information around the clock, and updates need only be made to one version of the document, saving the company administrative time and printing costs.

COMMON COMMUNICATIONS STRUCTURES

The Internet has created what may in fact be the biggest advent in communications since the invention of the telephone system--global electronic mail. Email, as it is commonly known, has revolutionized the way we as a society communicate, especially the way corporate America communicates. The legal community has embraced email as an efficient tool for both internal and external communication.

Several studies have been commissioned which track the use of email in the legal profession. One such study is the American Bar Association's 1996 Survey of Automation in Smaller Law Firms. This study examined the pervasion of technology in firms with 20 or fewer lawyers. With regard to the Internet's communications enhancements, fifty-three percent (53%) of firms in this group have network-based, internal email in the office, while thirty percent (30%) of firms have external email capabilities.

Interestingly, 44.5% of firms/lawyers responding to the survey use email to communicate with colleagues, while 41.4% use email to communicate with clients.

In larger firms, the findings are similar. Seventy-four percent (74%) of respondents in Pitney Bowes Management Services' 1996 survey on The Use of Technology in the Legal Profession maintained that the Internet is playing a crucial role in the way lawyers practice law. Over eighty percent (80%) of the firms surveyed have access to the Internet, with fifty-one percent (51%) of the respondents using it for professional reasons. Of this percentage, thirty-eight percent (38%) feel that the key benefit of the Internet is its common communications structure through email. Apparently, some attorneys are becoming more confident about electronic mail's safety and security--eighteen percent (18%) of those using email for communication purposes transmit confidential information over the Web.

Network security or "firewall" systems create a physical barrier to conceal the internal firm networks and Intranet capabilities from the outside world. These firewalls track authorized users and restrict access to websites based on predefined sets of criteria. This multiple-tiered methodology, which is scalable to a large number of simultaneous connections, can also provide secure point-to-point encrypted communications. Firewalls provide the basis for comprehensive, secure network environments capable of supporting both fixed and mobile users.

The Internet has defined a common communication interface for firms as well. The popularity of Web browsers and the advent of defined standard communications have made it easier to organize and consolidate internal and external communications. Software applications that will dramatically affect the amount of resources available to traveling attorneys will soon be accessible via Internet/Intranet homepages.

PRACTICE-SPECIFIC RESEARCH

The Internet offers lawyers the enticement of being able to search on any topic at any topic at any time; and according to the surveys, the lawyers are making good use of the resources available. These resources include legal research conglomeration sites such as Hieros Gamos, FindLaw, and ITMCite. The benefits of using research sites like these are many. Consider the following:

• Reduced search time--much of the attorney's search time has been dramatically reduced at the outset if he or she chooses to do research through a site of compiled resources. A comprehensive legal research site includes a thorough list of relevant links for a variety of practice areas in a well-developed, mapped site.
• Time and space savings--the attorney is spared the necessity of creating endless bookmarks to key sites because the research site administrator has already taken the time to map relevant information for the firms. Attorneys who access these sites can be productive immediately.
• Access to training and support--a mapped site's developers can train and support their clients. Most of these sites have a place for users to email questions to the site's webmaster.
• Hassle-free updates--mapped legal research sites are maintained by the webmaster at that site, and "dead" links are automatically updated for users, sparing them the dreaded "Please update your bookmarks" message.

What do the firms themselves think about the Internet as a research tool? In the ABA's survey of smaller firms, over sixty-five percent (65.6%) of respondents were using the Internet to meet their legal research needs. Interestingly, approximately nine percent (8.6%) of lawyers were locating their expert witnesses through the Internet.

In the larger firms, Internet use and appreciation is even greater. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the respondents in PBMS's large firms survey on technology appreciate the Internet specifically for its information-searching capabilities, with thirty-four percent (34%) using the Internet for general background research and twenty-nine percent (29%) using for government research.

THE FUTURE

We can only expect that Internet use will continue to grow at an unprecedented rate. If the surveys reflect an accurate indication of the trends in Internet use, we can predict that online research will change the way lawyers conduct business. In small firms, close to half (42%) of the respondents who lacked Internet access at the time of the survey indicated that they would be obtaining it within 12 months. In the larger firms, the expectation is much the same. Sixty-five percent (65%) of the large firms surveyed feel that the Internet represents "the wave of the future in the practice of law."

Voltar ao começo da página

Voltar à página principal