THINK BACK to what the practice of law was like a short 10 years ago. Computers were just beginning to become commonplace in law offices, replacing word processors and memory typewriters, as well as that old IBM Selectric. Few people had heard of the Internet, and fewer still knew how to use it. It still cost about $600 to install a car phone (analog, of course), and service was expensive and spotty. Yet many of the substantive issues confronting the profession have remained unchanged. In the early 1990s, the profession debated the extent to which lawyers could provide nonlegal “ancillary” services to their clients. Funding for civil and criminal legal services was seriously in question. Our Chief Judge, then named Wachtler, pressed for court restructuring. And lawyers continued to weather an economic downturn.
Instead of a retrospective, on the occasion of the 125th Annual Meeting of the New York State Bar Association, I thought it would be appropriate to look ahead and try to predict some aspects of the not too distant future: not 100 years ahead, or even 50, but a mere 10 years forward, to 2012. So allow me to assume the role of the 114th President of the Association, instead of the 104th, and address the New York legal profession as it may exist one decade in the future.
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