Reopening a conversation
A blog can | should liberate one’s mind and fingers to express thoughts that matter, to share ideas tested and untested. I hope to reopen in this blog the online and in person conversations that began some years ago when Woody’s Office Watch published my columns called “The Word of Law.”
This renewed conversation began this year with webinars and presentations at ILTA (the International Legal Technology Association.
Enabling
My interest and commitment to technology has always been to help lawyers and those who support them. Technology must serve the practice of law. Perhaps (not so perhaps?), technology seems to govern, to demand, to overwhelm. We technology evangelists must remember to remind ourselves of our responsibility to serve.
Here “enabling ” should be read as a strong positive – techniques, tools, strategies that support the practice of law instead of overgrowing, even crowding it out.
Why rethis and rethat?
It seems to be the right time, personally, professionally and in the industry for fresh thought about technology and the practice of law. As a profession and industry (and personally), we have pursued technology’s application to the practice for a human generation. What the equivalence in technology generations might be is harder to measure. Moore’s Law would measure the generations (doublings) since the dawn of legal technology (let’s call it 1976) at 24.
We want to become unstuck – to find and use the tools, techniques and strategies for technology that, in the words of Apple’s Human Interface Principles are “beautiful, intuitive, compelling” and not “unattractive, convoluted or illogical.” We buy and become emotionally attached to iPads in ways that have long eluded us when using technology for our practice.
For that to happen, it is time to rethink, to re-enable the tools, and especially the ways we use technology to practice law. I hope my voice will make that our story now.
Bob Blacksberg
October 1, 2012