When I entered the profession nearly 20 years ago if you'd
have told me that you could run a document-heavy commercial dispute
to trial without using a printer in anger, I would have looked at
you with scepticism, but I would have been inspired. My colleagues,
who had by that time been in practice for 20 years, would have look
at you as if you had just arrived from another planet.
Therein lies the problem with the legal sector's slowness
to adopt technology. Experienced practitioners have tried and
tested approaches to resolving disputes that work, and introducing
new technology carries with it risk and uncertainty. For every
frontier, however, that has ever been conquered there was always a
pioneer who pushed the boundaries. Thankfully, a handful of
technologists and practitioners have pushed the boundaries and we
are now seeing the adoption of certain technologies, once seen as
trailblazing, as the norm.
