Technology Didn’t Democratize Trial Law After All … At Least for Now

Lawyer and technology consultant Sam Guiberson remembers the heady days of litigation technology some 20 years ago, when he and other experts predicted that advances would even the playing field and allow smaller law firms to take on big defendants.

They said that technology would allow smaller firms to uncover evidence and manage cases on a small budget. The idea, Guiberson writes for Texas Lawyer, was that technology would “democratize trial law, as it has democratized video and print publishing, the Web and Internet commerce.”

But after the digital technology revolution, he writes, big litigation is still handled by the big law firms, which hire legal technology companies with scores of technology specialists for litigation support.

Guiberson sees a different future. “A trial lawyer in the next technological era will need digital resources that unify facts into theories about those facts,” he writes. “Computers should assist lawyers in visualizing patterns and recognizing themes in facts, rather than just presenting documents that share similar data.”

He says the legal technology industry should add “insight ergonomics” to its products, so software will fit the way lawyers form ideas. “To produce useful tools for litigators in the future, legal technology 3.0 will have to mimic how good teachers, good storytellers and good lawyers bestow meaning upon the most subtle of observations,” he says.