Legal Brief for January, 2024

Technology Changes in the Legal World

At the start of every new year I am reminded of how much has changed in the day to day procedures and technology that are used in a law office.  Here are a few of the ways that we used to do things back "in the day" when I started my articling year in May 1983.

1. Office computers were unknown in 1983.  The first secretary that was assigned to me in the firm where I was, worked on an IBM "Selectric" typewriter.  Other assistants in the firm worked on a sophisticated new machine known as a "word processor".  These were produced by a Canadian company, Automatic Electronic Systems Inc.  , and were considered state of the art machines.  Their unique feature, considered revolutionary at the time, was that they were "programmable".  They used "floppy discs".  I'm sure there are some of us who still have a few of those "floppies" sitting at the bottom of our office drawers.
2. Fax machines were likewise unknown in 1983.  My firm had a forerunner of fax machines known as a telex machine.  These machines provided a text transmission point to point on a secure basis, but they were very labour intensive to use, and the material had to be typed into the machine letter by letter for transmission.  Telex machines were quickly rendered obsolete as fax machines started to became common in the later years of the '80s.
3. There were three means of communication with clients - in person meetings, telephone calls or mailing a letter.  Law firms certainly did their part in keeping Canada Post in the black in those years as a huge volume of correspondence was generated on a daily basis, much of which now is transmitted by e-mails with clients.  I venture to say that the huge majority of communication these days between lawyers and clients is by e-mail or texting, and that actually mailing a letter to a client has become a rarity.
4. If we wanted to "look up the law" we usually had to go in person to the Law Library at the Law Courts building.  If I had a dollar for every time I had to drive downtown to the Law Courts to do legal research in the '80s I would probably have been able to retire many years ago.  One of the major investments for my practice when I went out on my own in the late '80s and continuing through the '90s was purchasing sets of what are known as "law reports".  Now all of that material is available at no cost with the click of a "mouse".  I invested a lot of money building a "handsomely bound" set of law books filling the bookcases in my boardroom, which I now rarely touch during the course of a year.
5. Any documents needing to be filed with the Court were all done by actual paper documents filed in person by an agent known in the trade as a "runner".  You would send 4-5 copies of a document for filing, and the Court would keep the signed original and you would get back the remaining copies with the Court "filed" stamp on them.  This process actually was still the way things went for the most part right up to the time the covid pandemic hit us in March 2020.  The Court administration quickly shifted gears and developed online filing protocols and now all documents required for Court matters are filed by e-mail or by using interactive online Court sites.

These are just a few of the changes that I have seen in my 40 years in the legal profession.  I could go on for several more Legal Briefs talking about other innovations such as yellow "sticky" notes, scanning of documents, pdf document formatting, WordPerfect and Word word processing programs, cell phones and texting - it is truly amazing how much has changed in 40 years!