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In 2004, Ron Friedman wrote rather profoundly of the law technology evolution that “legal technology always comes back to documents and how to manage them.” By that measure, one might argue we can trace the roots of legal technology to the advent of the Gutenberg, or perhaps even further to papyrus.
Today’s featured infographic is now a couple years old and was originally produced by Smart WebParts. The infographic traces the technology used to produce documents from the 1970s to 2012, though these tools are likely found in any business, let alone the business of law.
While legal IT conversations tend to center on how slow the legal industry has been to adopt new technologies, sometimes it’s worth reflecting too on just how far the industry has come. Certainly there are other aspects of legal technology that are not included – the transformation of a traditional legal library to research databases notwithstanding – is one example.
As Mr. Friedman wrote:
The start of the computer revolution in law begins in 1973, when Lexis invented the red “UBIQ” terminal to let lawyers search case law online rather than laboriously pore through books. The revolution quickly moved from document searching to document creation when Wang introduced a computer dedicated to word processing. By 1979, when The American Lawyer first published, many law firms had purchased Wang or similar machines, placing them in central word processing departments where they could be used virtually nonstop. Around the same time, firms also started buying fax machines.
What other legal technologies merit reminiscence?
Photo credit: Flickr via Creative Commons
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