Go to Law School, Use a Personal Computer

Lawyers are some of the most eager users of the Internet, commercial online networks, CD-ROMs and electronic mail. They might not strike you as a high-tech lot, but that just goes to show that professions steeped in the liberal arts tradition haven’t been able to ignore the onslaught of technology.

In a national study conducted this spring by Pitney Bowes Management Service in Stamford, Conn., 94% of lawyers surveyed credited technology with making their law practices more efficient. A whopping 74% said the Internet is playing an increasingly important role in the way they do their jobs, and 64% agreed that the Internet is the wave of the future for the legal profession.

“Law is certainly information-intensive, probably more so now than ever before,” said David Hambourger, director of the Legal Technology Resource Center for the American Bar Assn. in Chicago. “You’ve also got more competition out there, so if technology can make you more efficient, that may affect whether you get business or not.”

Lawyers have long relied on computer databases operated by companies such as Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw to store the texts of vast quantities of laws and legal decisions. Now they are using CD-ROMs, which are much cheaper to maintain and much easier to search than either a database or a library of legal books.

Online services geared to lawyers are signing up members at a rapid clip. One of the oldest is Counsel Connect, which was launched in 1993 and now boasts roughly 40,000 members. Counsel Connect features online law libraries and hosts hundreds of discussions on topics ranging from criminal law to legal ethics, said Mark Obbie, president and chief executive of the New York-based service.

Part of the appeal of such services is that lawyers can pick one another’s brains for advice on how to handle cases.

“You might say, ‘Has anybody ever had a case where this and this happened?’ It’s tough to do that on the phone because you don’t always know who to ask,” Hambourger said.

That networking can also lead to referrals and other business, Obbie said.

Then there are the flashier uses of technology, such as the computer-animated video that helped attorney William Braniff defend a police officer charged with assault after he shot a suspect. The computerized reenactment helped Braniff get an acquittal after only 10 minutes of jury deliberations, he said.

“With animation, you can put in the essential details and leave out the distracting, irrelevant details,” said Braniff, a litigator in San Diego with the prestigious firm of Latham & Watkins.

In part, Hambourger attributes the rise in the use of technology in the legal profession to the affordability of personal computers. As the number of PC users has risen, so have the incentives to create software and build online networks aimed specifically at attorneys.

Now, Obbie says, “all of the basics of their professional life can be done online.”

Times correspondent Karen Kaplan covers technology and careers. She can be reached via e-mail at karen.kaplan@latimes.com