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The first time we heard an attorney ask us to convert all his electronic discovery materials into paper, we gasped. This resulted in several boxes of paper that could handily have been burned to a single CD-ROM. Now, after many similar requests, we have grown jaded, and dutifully perform this senseless task after a patient, and usually ineffective, explanation of why their request doesn’t make any sense. As we often sigh to one another, it is a long and winding road to change the deep-rooted practice of paper generation.

Why have lawyers been so slow to adapt to the paperless world? Is the reason no better than the one Tevya gives in “Fiddler on the Roof” about the customs of Anatevka? “We do it because it’s a tradition!” Most practicing lawyers, especially at the upper reaches of the profession, were weaned on paper, and weaning them off has been painstaking, as a multitude of bankrupt legal software companies can attest.

Naturally, part of the problem is lack of time. When you are frantically trying to keep up with actually practicing law, there isn’t a lot of opportunity to test, much less master, the latest technology. The practice of law has always changed slowly and cautiously. This may have its good points, particularly when law tends not to embrace things that are trendy and may quickly fall out of favor. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that lawyers have the reputation of being hidebound. The legal profession has a tendency to cling to its traditions with veneration and is not quickly persuaded to abandon them. Some cynics have suggested that there is little motivation to accomplish things more quickly when one is billing by the hour.

Two years ago, Fairfax County Virginia engaged in an electronic filing project--the technology worked fine, but participation was low. As court officials and developers agreed, lawyers were simply not going to make the switch to electronic filing until it was mandatory. Where electronic filing have been mandated, the systems tend to work very well, at least after initial birthing pains. Virginia lawyers have been quite accustomed to the electronic filing of bankruptcy cases in federal court--and without much complaint--but then they had no choice. The Virginia Supreme Court appears very reluctant to impose mandatory electronic filing in state courts, which does not bode well for its success.

Tradition is all well and good, but the necessity for change has been demonstrated many times. Remember all the lawyers who clung fervently to their IBM Selectrics® and refused to buy a computer? And the lawyers who insisted they would never own a fax machine? Even today, there is still a small percentage of lawyers who absolutely refuse to use e-mail, though their numbers are dwindling. In Fairfax County, roughly 95% of our attorneys now use e-mail to conduct business--a dramatic change from five years ago.

The numbers are likely much less in Southwestern Virginia, where we recently had the opportunity to make an electronic evidence presentation to the region’s Circuit Court judges. Let us hasten to add that they were gracious hosts who listened intently, asked a great many questions, and were eager to learn. But when we asked them to raise their hands if they had any experience with electronic evidence in their courtrooms, not a single hand went up. When we demonstrated fairly common courtroom technology, including computer animation, the reaction was blunt and universal: “Not in my courtroom.”

Our longtime friend, IT consultant Ross Kodner, has long been the proponent of the PaperLESS Office ™. He equably understands that paper cannot disappear from the practice of law but preaches its diminution--its extreme diminution.

There are drivers that make it impossible for lawyers to stand rooted in the mud, however, much of that might be their inclination. Clients are the strongest--most companies are far ahead of their attorneys on the technological curve and they are demanding electronic correspondence, document exchange and collaboration, encryption, digital signatures, and everything else technology offers. In several instances, we have been called by panicked law firms that had just been told bluntly by a client to upgrade their technology or get axed. Now that’s a driver.

Courts will continue to move in the direction of mandating electronic filings, albeit that process is moving somewhat slowly at the state level, partially due to budgetary constraints and partly due to the failure to resolve public access vs. privacy issues. At the federal level, the courts are within a couple of years of nationwide electronic filing, which will undoubtedly have a huge ripple effect across the legal profession.

Efficiency seems to be the very last reason that most lawyers will willingly make a change. But again, clients are demanding efficiency and a more sensible expenditure of legal fees. They are not happy with the antiquated paper systems because they inevitably take more time and result in higher bills. As many solo or small firm lawyers have delightedly discovered, all this electronic efficiency can really pay off as they are now able to compete with larger firms on a more level playing field. Those who truly master the technology add significantly to their bottom line--a keen economic incentive to move from the realm of paper.

Want a practical incentive? There is no doubt in our minds that technology easily saves a bare minimum of 30 minutes a day (and that’s an extremely modest number). With a billing rate of $200/hour, that translates into another $100 of billable time per day, $500 per week, and $24,000 per year. If you are in a firm, multiply that number by the number of lawyers and the revenue increase is dramatic. Many lawyers are finding that either they no longer require a secretary or that a secretary can easily be shared between two or more lawyers because the lawyers are doing so much document preparation themselves.

The use of templates, macros, document and case management programs, electronic time and billing systems, online legal research, area specific software of all kinds, etc. has made the actual practice of law much, much faster. Simply finding things electronically is much easier than hunting down files and particular pieces of paper within them, especially if they are archived offsite. When a client calls looking for case status, popping the case up on your monitor is infinitely faster than shuffling through files, especially since the file is rarely conveniently on your desk. Collaboration with colleagues is a snap compared with the old days of passing paper back and forth, annotating one another’s drafts. Most of all, the ability to work remotely by having an electronic connection to your e-mail and documents while on the road has transformed the profession of law into a law office without walls.

Though the legal profession is still creeping toward becoming paperless, the trend and inevitability are slowly being accepted by most attorneys, however, grudgingly. It may not be the future they wanted, but it is the future that has become inexorable. As Yogi Berra once noted in his inimitable fashion: “The future ain’t what it used to be.”