Our Hi-Tech Law Practice:
How We Use the Tools to Serve Our Clients
Nontraditional
We certainly do not look like a traditional law firm that you might see on TV because we aren't. While we have a great deal of respect for those good ladies and gentlemen who operate in that mode, we, respectfully, think that the cost to the client, especially the business client, is way too high. Those firms are set up with many layers of people, each billing everything from copies and faxes to time to the client’s “account,” with a supervisor, also billing time, who is "in charge" of the "account."
Unfortunately, when hi-tech tools became available, many law firms did not see the efficiencies created by the new technology as a means of holding the price line or cutting costs to their clients. Instead, in a profession that professes to have its clients as its first and foremost interest, they just saw technology as another reason to raise prices and a more efficient way to bill more to the client.
Look Around
All over the world people are using computers to speed the performance of tasks in their various arts and skills, allowing them to concentrate on the truly content based and artistic elements of the business. For instance, leasing agents use computer diagrams to sell floor space in your favorite local gigantic glass tower; architects can walk you through a three dimensional model of your office or home, decorated with different colors and textures, changeable by a few keystrokes, and can even do it from your-eye-view. New cars are now shown to the public on CD's and aircraft electrical systems are designed with all the wire routing and grounding accomplished by the computer.
“Cold Tar” Progress
Attorneys have been among the last professionals to computerize, and then mostly in paper document production, calendaring and court case management. It is our belief that, if the art of lawyering is to be brought to bear in your best interests, in a cost competitive manner, then automation of nearly all aspects of the practice is mandatory. However, we are not talking about computerized production as the manufacturing world knows it. In that system they connect a computer to a production machine, set it up to self load and off-load, and go home for the evening while the machine makes them money.
Basic Economics
In the practice of law, the automated tools will never be more then a faster and more competent way for the legal artist to do your work faster, at higher quality levels and, therefore, at less expense. The work still must be designed and supervised by an attorney and he or she must still bear the professional liability for the use of the tools. Consequently, while the portion of your fee attributable to production and communication costs will go down using our firm, the portion of that fee attributable to our floor space, personnel and liability for taking on your work will not and cannot.
It All Started When…
Jay W. Henderson, Ltd. (which is a California Professional Law Corporation) started using automated production and communication in 1974. At that time we used a cassette tape driven IBM Selectric II typewriter and an 11 channel automobile mounted public service band radio tied to the phone system by an operator.
Then it was on to an S-100 box with 80K floppies (40 pages each) (because the "Hard" drives around were platter drives used by the mainframes) 8K of SRAM an ADM 3 terminal pirated from some mainframe and a Xerox daisywheel printer (25cps). We were using a Micro-Pro text editor (designed for programmers) called TEX which could barely number pages. Unfortunately, it could only start at page number one. Communication was still the five button phone in the office and the radio-telephone in the car.
Now
Now we use the latest electronic communication and office management technology to hold your costs down and respond rapidly to your needs. All of this is networked with WAN servers and portable computers with voice, data and pictures linked up direct or over the IntraNet or InterNet. We share documents with clients and give and get email via the Net and, if a client needs immediate answers, there is a cell phone and voice mail. We use them all to bring to you our skills and art as your attorneys.
RESULTS!!
Is this all just a fun, expensive hobby? Not at all. Over the last 35 years we have proven to ourselves and to our clients, over and over again, that the most cost effective, the most rapid and the most extensive service can only be rendered using these tools. For example, if your company had an export license question in the past, you were pretty limited to the library and research skills of the firm you chose and the associate that was assigned to your case. Not any more. We can now access government bulletins, trade laws, treaties, case law, forms, filing requirements, shipment locations, export brokers and their costs, all before lunch and all without ever leaving the desk.
We can then format the information, copy it into a file, jump on line with you to edit it and issue you the report in electronic format.
Electronic research gets us across vast quantities of information that could never have even been accessed before, and do it very rapidly, sorting and categorizing on the fly. Electronic conferencing with our colleagues assures you that you will get the same or better service than you would have gotten in the granite and glass firms.
Consequently, we feel it an ethical responsibility and JGB (just good business) to conduct our practice of law in the most electronically advantageous way possible. We also believe that technical expertise is a competitive issue that is indicative of the professional competence of the firm. We hope you will feel the same way.