Legal technology is quickly introducing new opportunities for the way law is practiced, but many lawyers remain ignorant of advancements in tasks like research and review. To combat this ignorance, the New York State Bar Association announced the formation of its Committee on Technology and the Legal Profession, and leading the group will be Ganfer & Shore partner Mark Berman.
An NYSBA statement announcing Berman s appointment listed its mission as finding opportunities for lawyers to use technology in enhancing their practice; using technology for access to justice efforts; recommending regulations and practices for legal technology service providers; and helping attorneys achieve reasonable technological competence in their practice areas. The areas in which the committee will examine technology s impact include e-discovery, data privacy and security, and artificial intelligence.
As head of Ganfer & Shore s e-discovery counseling practice, Berman is no stranger to technology in law. He told LTN, This committee is about action, and time is of the essence to get ahead of the ever-changing technology. We want to be proactive and not reactive, and that is the best way for the State Bar to provide value to lawyers and the public.
In terms of lawyers and their technological competence, he noted that while attorneys are getting there, what s needed is more education.
Just because an attorney may use email, tweet or is on Facebook, that does not make him or her technologically competent when it comes to representing clients, he said. He noted that litigators should get comfortable using things like hyperlinks and bookmarks in briefs, as well as be cognizant that electronic communications need to be confidential.
The committee, which is comprised of 19 legal professionals in New York, isn t the NYSBA s first brush with legal technology education. The Law Practice Management Committee features educational programs on legal technology as well, and according to NYSBA president Sharon Stern Gerstman, will continue to do so.
The technology committee was created to deal with issues that were not currently addressed in a single entity, and because there were issues that had been addressed by a previously informal working group, as well as issues (like AI) which were expanding and changing daily, she said. We wanted a single committee to address all of these issues.
Gerstman said NYSBA chose Berman because in his career, he has shown to be aware of and concerned with many of the technology issues and has an excellent reputation as a consensus builder.