The Tech-Paper Balance for Law Firm Tech
What to Digitize and What to Not in Law Firm Tech
Your phone and laptop is your life. They’re on you all the time. You pack them in your briefcase out the door each morning. When you’re headed out of town, they’re always with you. It’s hard to remember a time just twenty years ago before such a massive shift in tech. Despite all of these major changes, there is still a world outside of electronics and law firm tech.
Sounds crazy, I know. However, stick with me for a little while here. There’s so many different ways to look at the role of technology and where it leads. Your cell phone keeps you connected to the world. However, it also keeps the world directly connected to you. When every other attorney forgot how to take notes because they simply record on their phone, maybe it’s time for you to try something different.
Back to the Old Ways?
That’s not to say that you should give up everything in your home and office with a screen. There’s no going back on the tech promises of the future. Smartphones will now always outrank dumb phones. You’re not going to write a deposition on a typewriter. However, there are certain advantages that paper has that new electronics still don’t.
Paper offers a closer connection to your clients and office. Frankly, people don’t take notes on the computer as seriously as a pen and pad. They see you listening as your scribble in a notebook. There’s a certain amount of activity going on with such an act. Writing such notes improve your memory and keep you more focused.
Paper also allows you to make mistakes. You don’t have to worry about that email being CCed to everyone in the office or your old law school class. Sometimes a paper memo carries the weight you want without the feeling of anonymity.
Michael Ehline is a prominent auto accident attorney in the Los Angeles area. His firm helped thousands of clients. Ehline passed the bar by reading the law in the manner of Abraham Lincoln and hopes these articles inform and inspire a new generation of lawyers.
