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FEATURE STORY
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Today’s Future Shock
Technology giveth to our law practices
and lives. It’s up to us to make sure it doesn’t taketh away
By Donald H. Kelley
At a rapid rate, the Internet continues to accumulate extensive
trusts and estates materials and links to primary resources. These
resources create an ever-expanding avenue for finding information,
speeding research and broadening the search for both primary and
secondary materials.
Technological advances also come at a price: with too much information
inadequately filtered coming at us so constantly and changing so rapidly
we can experience overload and, as sociologist Alvin Toffler warned back
in 1970,
future shock. See Richard Slaughter’s “Future Shock Re-assessed” for
an assessment and critique of Toffler’s thesis.
The big questions, then, are: What place does all this information have
in our practices and how can we manage the technology dragon so that it
doesn’t consume our lives?
Technophobes Need Not Apply
Back in the early 1990s, many lawyers didn’t know how to type and were
proud that only their secretaries touched computers. Now, it’s widely
acknowledged that technological skill is a necessity to practicing law
effectively. Gene Koo, in his article,
“New Skills, New Learning: Legal Education and the Promise of New
Technology,” (published by Berkman Center for Internet & Society
at Harvard Law School, Research Publication No. 2007-4) describes the
new paradigm of the attorney’s experience.
Koo says that changing business and technology demand attorneys master
new skills that can be grouped into three categories:
knowledge-generating, techno-social and meta-practice. As Koo describes
it, “Knowledge generation describes the process whereby professionals
pan useful information from the silt of data. . . then apply that
information as actionable knowledge. Techno-social skills enable
professionals to work with colleagues through the medium of
technology–for example, email. Meta-practice skills involve the
translation of one practice into systems of practice—for example, by
creating automated forms that can be reused in similar situations.”
Bottom line, says Koo, is that “attorneys equipped with superior
information-gathering skills can level the playing field for firms with
sparser knowledge assets.”
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(Article continues here.)
But increased efficiency creates its own pressures. Jim Calloway, in an
article for the Oklahoma Bar Association, “Technology
& Stress: Good Tools or Bad Tools,” names some of the new
techno-stressors:
• the faster pace of work;
• the intrusiveness of improved communications;
• the alienation of electronic communications;
• the flood of information;
• the growing dependence on technology;
• the anxiety created by constant technological change; and
• the expense of it all.
Calloway also offers suggestions for coping, including:
• Name and understand the negatives as well as the positives that
technology brings to your life and practice.
• Work on triaging information effectively.
• Exert discipline on the sheer quantity of the work you undertake.
• Do not work 24/7 no matter how easy technology makes it to do so.
• Grant yourself permission to have fun and take time off.
• Do not rely on email when communicating with people you could easily
see in person (especially colleagues in the office.)
Some Needed Perspective
Although the pace of change is quickening, it’s always been that one
generation’s great technological step forward is taken for granted by
the next generation. And all generations need to absorb and apply
advances. Today’s advancements are in quantity of information and its
speed of delivery. Perhaps the best embodiment of this is the hyperlink.
LaVern A. Pritchard notes in his February 2008 Nebraska Lawyer
article, “Beyond
the Top ‘Great Law Sites’–The Real Wealth of Legal Content Is at
the Base Waiting to Be Discovered”: “[N]ew value is being
generated across the board, percolating up from practitioners, scholars,
associations, large and small, and all levels of government. The most
interesting of it may not even be noticeable at the site level. It is
happening at the problem level, the solution level, the concept level.
Bits and pieces of ‘law brain’ are popping up all across the Web.”
Keeping up with modern technology in the use of Internet links to take
you to additional information is a critical skill for all disciplines
dealing with trusts and estates clients.
But before you feel too overwhelmed, it may help to be reminded that
there is really nothing new under the sun. The
Roman Law site of the University of Saarbrücken notes, “In the
middle ages already, the ancient legal texts and the commentaries were
liked [sic] together in a way very similar to modern hypertext
documents. Single words in the texts of Justinian create links to the
medieval comments which in turn contain large numbers of references to
other parts of the Corpus Iuris.”
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Complimentary Resources
Okay, so we have our traditional printed materials and our hyperlinked
Internet highway. How do we handle it all?
Research shows that reading text on a computer monitor is some 25
percent slower than reading the same text in hard copy. See Michael
Agger’s discussion in “Lazy Eyes, How We Read
Online” of the differences in utility, content and presentation
between on-screen and hard copy materials.
Internet-based materials are not capable of replacing hard copy texts
for technical research. But they do serve to supplement them in terms of
the currency of the material available and in quickness and convenience
in locating resources and data.
The strength of commercial research services is in their search
capabilities, the scope and depth of their content, and the quality of
their expert analysis and commentary. Intensive study and analysis are
often being best done with hard copy, particularly with lengthy and
complex articles, commentaries and primary law sources.
At the same time, many Web sites may be practical, particularly for
locating secondary materials and quickly locating specific primary
materials. The strengths of computer-based applications are in finding
and storing materials. Consider the comprehensive Web sites that present
links to other Web sites organized and categorized by subject matter.
Such sites include:
• Findlaw,
which contains wills, trusts, estate and probate links to other useful
Web sites.
• The
American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) Web site, which
contains a number of categorized links to sites providing both primary
and secondary materials useful to researching trusts and estates topics
and issues. ACTEC also has a list of links to trusts
and estates resources, including legislative materials,
estate-planning topics, types of trusts, forms, estate administration,
ethics and other resources.
• Trusts &
Estates’ Web site, which has a searchable archive of the
magazine’s articles, links to all the major industry resources, free
e-newsletters including this one on technology, as well as Fiduciary
Litigation Update and Wealth Watch.
• Jason E. Havens’ Web
site, which lists useful estate-planning papers and general
estate-planning research, and links remarks regarding trusts and estates
software and much more: An area of this extensive site is specifically
devoted to estate-planning practice
tools including links, research, articles and software and estate-planning
and tax memoranda.
• BNA Tax
Management, which maintains a site with current tax insights and
commentary on a variety of subjects and an archive of articles from BNA
Tax Management's specialized journals including the Estates, Gifts
and Trusts Journal.
• The Pennsylvania Estate and
Trust Cybrary by Daniel B. Evans, which emphasizes Pennsylvania
practice, but has numerous links to trusts and estates Web sites,
including both primary research materials and articles of national
interest.
(Article continues below ad.)
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• Dennis Toman’s EstatePlanningLinks.com
Web site, which contains numerous well-organized links to estate
planning, elder law, tax and related Web sites including primary
research materials and articles on a variety of estate-planning topics.
• Legal Resource
Links, which has many useful links on estates, trusts and taxation.
• Leimberg.com,
which includes selected links to resources on estate planning, financial
planning, news, business planning, marketing planning, retirement
planning, business, U.S. government, life insurance and charitable
planning.
Moreover, using Google and other generic search engines is an important
electronic research process. See the Trusts & Estates Technology
Newsletter, “Googling
for Trusts and Estates Materials on the Web” (December 2007).
Hyperlinks are inevitably, in Senator Russell Long’s felicitous
phrase, “shooting straight at a flying duck.” Use sites with the
understanding that some links may be inoperative or lead to obsolete Web
pages or materials. To catch the ever-moving Internet, and the
constantly changing development of trusts and estates material available
electronically, regular updating of such sites is critical.
The Bottom Line
Information handling and calculation are not new. What is new, startling
and challenging is the speed at which these things can now be
accomplished. What we are really talking about here is CONVENIENCE—the
convenience of calculation, the convenience of information gathering and
the convenience of communication.
But, remember, everything, especially convenience, has a price. And we,
particularly as lawyers, should know the value of identifying hidden
tradeoffs—and negotiating a better deal.
— Trusts & Estates magazine is pleased to present the
monthly Technology Review by Donald H. Kelley — a respected
connoisseur of the software and Internet resources wealth management
advisors use to further their practices.
Kelley is a lawyer living in Highlands Ranch, Colo. and is of counsel to
the law firm of Kelley, Scritsmier & Byrne, P.C. of North Platte, Neb.
He is the co-author of the Intuitive Estate Planner Software
(Thomson-West 2004). He has served on the governing boards of the
American Bar Association Real Property Probate and Trust Section and the
American College of Tax Counsel. He is a past regent and past chair of
the Committee on Technology in the Practice of the American College of
Trust and Estate Counsel.
Trusts & Estates has asked Kelley to provide his unvarnished
opinions on the tech resources available in the practice today. His
columns are edited for readability only. Send feedback and suggestions
for articles directly to him at dhkelley@qwestoffice.net.
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