Marcus on How Computers Have Affected the Legal Profession

Rick Marcus has published an essay entitled The Impact of Computers on the Legal Profession: Evolution or Revolution?, 102 Nw. L. Rev. 1827 (2008). Rick poses the question of whether technological change in the legal profession has had an evolutionary or revolutionary effect. He compares the technological boom in law practice to three historical phenomena: the transformation of modern large law firms; the effect of the telephone on society; and the effect of computers on the medical profession. Rick's preliminary conclusion is that it is too early to tell -- "Lacking a certain metric, and in the face of such varying criteria, we close with an ambiguous answer -- the revolution may be upon us, but we cannot be sure."