Year 2000 Problem Legal Alert

By David M. Nadler and Kendrick C. Fong


A newsletter offering a practical look at the legal challenges of the Year 2000.

Issue One September 1997

Year 2000 Legal Assessment

Background

Business and government entities will spend billions of dollars in the next few years defending themselves against the Year 2000 Problem or the Millennium Bug--the names commonly given to the problem some computer systems will have switching ffrom the year 1999 to the Year 2000. This year-switching problem can cause massive computer errors for businesses and the government alike, resulting in the loss of business and corrupted data.

This problem can be traced to the early days of computing, when memory and data storage were very expensive. To conserve these limited resources, computer programmers used just two digits to identify calendar years. Accordingly, the year 1999 is identified as "99" and the Year 2000 as "00." Because many computer functions are time-sensitive, systems