The legal profession is sometimes criticized as being willfully resistant to change. Some within the industry even wear this stubbornness as a badge of honor; partners may boast that, if their white-shoe law firm has weathered economic and social vicissitudes for decades or even centuries, then surely the firm’s continued existence is inevitable. In my more than 30 years in the legal profession, the only inevitability I have observed is the accelerating pace of technological change and the need for the legal professional to change with it.

When I first went into legal practice at the Legal Aid Society in 1986, the major technological development was the fax machine. So fancy was this new technology that we newly minted Legal Aid lawyers needed to secure permission from the office manager before using it. The widespread adoption of the fax machine and the release of personal computers (such as the Commodore 64 I used as a law clerk) in the mid-1980s made clear to us that technology was on the march. And we had better move with it.