His Hon Judge David Harvey
Technology and Law
June 2013
Information
Information Flow
Court proceedings are all about information
Printing Press
The printing press is an example of the impact of an information technology upon the law
The Properties of Digital Technologies
• Persistence• Continuing disruptive
change• Dynamic information• Delinearisation of
information• Dissociative
enablement
• Permissionless innovation
• Availability• Participation• Searchability• Retrievability
The medium is the message
Non-presence of witnesses
Nicholas Carr
The Shallows:How the Internet is Changing the Way we Think, Read and Remember
Susan Greenfield
Aleks Krotoski
Fear of Technology
The impact of the Internet lies in how it redefines information- Access- Process- Use- Responses- Expectations
Electronic land transfer and company registrations
Content layer changes
Depersonalisation of legal practice
E-mail = behavioural changes
Richard Susskind
Technology is reducing the need for expensive artisan trained lawyers
Legal work migrates from bespoke work
To standardised work
To systemised work
To packaged work
To commoditised work
An example of the “more for less” challenge
Liberalisation of legal practice
Legal profession has not been swift to embrace new systems
Can information technology be ignored by a profession whose business is information?
Because of continuing disruptive change there is no finishing line for IT or the Internet
His Hon Judge David Harvey
Technology and Law
June 2013