I recently received an e-mail from a solicitor saying that, although he broadly agreed with what I was saying in this column, he took exception to my comments about word processing as he thought this was an IT discipline all lawyers should master, as such skills ‘were essential for the future of the profession’.

It is certainly true that possessing some word processing skills is an undoubted asset to any computer-using lawyer - at the very least it means you can deal with urgent correspondence out of hours when all your secretaries have gone home - but my concern is with all those lawyers who do not use computers on a regular basis or even at all.


As Law Society President Peter Williamson recently pointed out (see [2004] Gazette, 13 May, 18), Society research indicates that fewer than 50% of firms have a PC on every fee-earner’s desktop - and apparently the most frequent explanation for this poor take-up of IT is that lawyers ‘prefer not to use them’. The president also expressed concern that far too many law firms ‘simply do not see the relevance of IT’.


These are the two of the most critical issues in legal IT today. Namely, how to get practices to see the relevance of IT and appreciate it is a pervasive element within the modern law firm that can help deliver real commercial benefits, rather than just an expensive overhead only used by secretaries and cashiers - and to convert all those lawyers who currently prefer not to use computers into at least regular IT users.


This also means removing any excuses for lawyers not using computers, but unfortunately trying to get them to use word processing - even without going into the cultural issues of whether it is in some way socially demeaning for a partner to be seen doing their own ‘typing’ - is a step too far for most. The difficulty here, which is the trap my correspondent has fallen into, is that for legal IT enthusiasts the benefits of technology are all so obvious that they cannot understand why other people are not equally enthusiastic about embracing technologies such as word processing.


The message has to be: start simple, go for the quick wins and obvious benefits before trying to tackle the more ambitious stuff - otherwise, you run the risk of turning off your less-than-computer-literate lawyers before they have even learned to switch on their PCs.


Charles Christian is an independent adviser to the Law Society’s Software Solutions guide