Technology and Law: A Story of Change

From bricks and mortar to spiders and robots, the evolvement of technology has evolutionalised our world and how we see it. To get on a plane and travel hundreds of miles in hours – not weeks or months. To pick a telephone and ring a friend thousands of kilometres away – without shouting or screaming. And to read words typed but not ‘written’. These and more may all be considered little of what the wonder called ‘Technology’ has availed us.

What is Technology?

Technology, to be said simply, is the application of science in solving human problems. Science is the organised and structural study of the world through observation and experiments. When science evolves, it produces technology, like a mother to its child. And since the child matures to reciprocate the mother’s care, technology guarantees rapid explosion of scientific discoveries.

Additionally, it may be hard to state the beginning of technology, since it can be argued that it was quite ‘techy’ for the early humans to have developed a sickle-like stick in pulling an orange from its tree.

What is Law?

Law is the nerve-centre and life-wire of any sane and organised society. It is rightly said that a land of no law exists in nothing but the state of nature. It is imaginable to have a land with no drugs, schools, or even power. But it is rather impossible for a people in any state in time to exist without laws. For the mere statement of ‘no law’ is in itself the first law. Law is life, a fundamental need of human interaction. Rules, norms and definite regulations help in averting situations of chaos, crisis, and anarchy.

Advantages of Technology to Law and Legal Practice

Technology has evolved with law, and law with technology. To go back in time, if the fundamentals of technology is as old as the first humans, law has definitely set boundaries for all. These rather inalienable factors of existence have helped and guided the development of, not just sound human association, but each other. Technology without laws is nothing but mere ‘attractive coincidences’ that cannot be reproduced or duplicated. And worse, catastrophe to the very human existence it seeks to make better. On the other hand, Law without technology will at best be solitary, disjointed, and easily disregarded.

1. Advancement in Legal Research

It is rightly said that a lawyer has no office, but a library. In other words, the office of a lawyer is a compendium of books, notes, and more books. This specifically defines the fact that accurate and complete documentation is the backbone of a functional and desirable legal system. To uphold the law, we must uphold legal research. It is essential, in solving any legal questions, to consider the intellectual disposition of most revered jurists, scholars, and philosophers who have once attempted it. And then to give due attention to cases where the court has decided on similar matters, as well as relevant legislation.

2. Aid in Legal Documentation

Documentation in law goes beyond just legal research, but into easy and safe record-keeping of information, client identification, consolidated records, among others. Technology has successfully removed the stumbling block in legal documentation to a very big extent. Doing a traditional check for authorities on a legal question can take hours of rigorous research, if not days or more. But with technology came the emergence of spiders and crawlers, devises or robots that can search through millions of pages of documents in seconds, literally. Thus, while doing a traditional research is time-taking and might be rather frustrating for a novice, technology solves the puzzle in seconds. Wow! What a flabbergasting intervention.

Record-keeping, as earlier mentioned, is the backbone of legal relations. From the lawyer-client relationship, to invoices, contracts, and other documents, it is the duty of the lawyer to make sure that each document is kept safe and secure. Books and papers kept on shelves can be affected by fire, water, insects, etc. But how about books kept with cloud computing, a central data system that can keep millions of documents in one column? More reliable!

3. Legal Mobility

Technology has not only aided easy documentation and retraction in the legal world, it has helped in making research and record-keeping mobile. When a library will take days or weeks to be moved from one location to another, an e-library will take little or no time at all. With the use of online spaces, apart from physical drives and hard-disks, a legal practitioner can have access to needed documents from his online repository at anytime, anywhere, without moving an inch.

4. Increase in Security

Security is close to the heart of humans, so much that it can be argued that the greatest valued interest of humans is the security of lives and properties. Technology annihilates many security issues in legal documentation. With password verification and other advanced protective procedures, security is better achieved in the legalsphere.

5. E-commerce

With the expansion of technology came the drive for e-commerce. Goods are now sold with the existence of no physical shop, store, or property anywhere. This has also influenced the legal world. The domestic way of purchasing statutes and codified judicial authorities has been radicalised with the introduction of electronic options. Additionally, templates of legal documents are sold across boundaries in split seconds.

6. Virtual Possibilities

When the world experienced a global lock-down in 2020, we were opened to a new world of virtual possibilities. Lawyer-client consultations can now be made effectively without any physical contact. From this to virtual court proceedings, there is a great economic advantage in riding with technology.

7. Artificial Intelligence

More recently, legal research and document review have been highly improved and made more efficient through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude have helped laymen get results on legal queries and created effortless access to legal information.

Are we there yet?

With all that has been seen, we have not scratched the fullness of the extent to which technological innovations can solve legal issues. Different forms and degrees of victimization can be drastically reduced with technological accessibility to the system of justice in forums and public groups. This can also substantially boost the rate of court proceedings and culminate in financial increase for legal practitioners.

Self-help has continued to resurface because of the distrust in the slow judicial processes of many countries. With technological advancements incorporated into the judicial system, the course of justice can grow in speed by a thousand percentage. Slow justice, among others, is ‘emotionally’ denied justice.

Conclusively, it is utterly glaring that technology has transformed the space we call our world in no small way. It has changed entertainment, banking, communication, healthcare, and the legal space has not been left out. Many time-consuming and power-draining problems of the past have now been made paths in progress. And progress we follow to lead us to a promising future.