The Florida Bar: changing through technology.

A Year 2000 member of The Florida Bar might feel lost without a cell phone. Fifty years ago, a vital piece of equipment was the paperweight. "We had no air conditioning and no heat, so everybody had a little oscillating fan in their office," recalled Miami attorney Preston L. Prevatt, who clerked in the Miami office of Shutts & Bowen before joining it as a lawyer in 1953.

"The first thing you would do when you came in in the morning was turn on the oscillating fans and open the windows. You had paperweights on everything. Papers had been known to blow out of the windows onto Flagler Street. Title insurance companies gave paper-weights out as gifts, like calendars."

Indeed, much has changed around legal offices and in the practice of law in 50 years.

The clatter of manual typewriting keys has been replaced with the clicking of computer keyboards. The rustle of interleaved layers of typing and carbon paper has been supplanted by the hum of the printer. The scratch of the pen in recordbooks has given way to the whir of computer disks.

The equivalent of shelves of legal books are now available on computer screen at the touch of a button, either from a small CD-ROM disk or via online research.

Instead of waiting a few months for advances to bring word of appellate court decisions, now they can be found via the Internet within minutes of issuance.

There was also a different outlook.

"Everybody in the firm had gone through the Depression, either as a lawyer or as a child growing up, and then suffered through World War II, either at home or as a serviceman. Everybody was pretty conservative and didn't spend a lot of money," Prevatt said. "When you sent a letter, it was three cents regular mail or six cents air mail. We hardly ever ,Dent anything air mail; no one was in that much of a hurry and they wouldn't spend the extra money.

"A long distance call was expensive; that was an extravagance. Hardly anyone made long distance calls, things weren't that urgent. Frequently, we used to send telegrams for short messages that had to get there in a hurry."

There was another difference that many of today's debt-laden law students would appreciate. "Most of the young lawyers could go through part of their schooling through the GI Bill," Prevatt said. "A lot of people are practicing law who wouldn't have even thought about law school if it hadn't been for the GI Bill."

Veteran Florida lawyers can point to two major trends that perhaps no one saw when The Florida Bar came into existence in April 1950: the explosions in the numbers of lawyers and in technology.

"It was totally different in the sense I do think there was much more collegiality in the profession at the time," recalled retired Supreme Court Justice Ben Overton, who joined the Bar in February 1952. "When I went into St. Petersburg, I got a personal call from the president of the St. Petersburg Bar Association. Older lawyers took responsibility for the younger lawyers who came into the practice."

"In those days, your word was your bond and your handshake was just as good," said retired Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan, who joined the Bar in 1955. "You didn't have to worry about putting agreements between lawyers in writing."

Technologically, it was the era of manual typewriters. "The biggest thing that occurred in the first year I practiced law is the nonjury courtroom in St. Petersburg became air conditioned," Overton recalled. In recognition of the climatological imperatives, ties were optional from May through mid-September.

"When I started, we all had manual typewriters and you had mimeograph briefs and we had carbon paper," said Ft. Lauderdale attorney W. George Allen, who joined the Bar in 1962. "The fees? We were working for peanuts. Now fees are much better too. It has just changed; everything has changed."

"It was completely different," said former Supreme Court Justice Stephen O'Connell, who joined the Bar in 1940. "I think more people had respect for lawyers than they do now and the trust between lawyers was so great. You never had to worry. If a lawyer told you that you didn't have to worry about something, you didn't. They would never take advantage of you. They would try to beat you in court, of course, but they would not try to take advantage of you in any other way."

Firms were smaller also--O'Connell recalled the largest firm in Ft. Lauderdale had six attorneys. Kogan noted that in the mid-1950s, the largest firm in Miami had 35 lawyers, and it probably was the biggest in the state.

Although court jurisdictions were different, consider this: When the Bar came into being, there were two circuit judges in St. Petersburg. Miami had six. (The Sixth Circuit, which includes St. Petersburg, now has almost 40 circuit judges; Dade County has more than 70.) Establishment of the district courts of appeal was still several years off, and the state only had 15 instead of the present 20 circuits.

And like legal practices, the pace for courts was different.

"When I became a judge [in 1968], I was able to probably ponder and contemplate the legal issues presented to me far more than I was toward the end of my time as a trial judge [in 1990]," Supreme Court Chief Justice Major B. Harding said. "I used to prepare my own orders, and I used to think through the problems. I probably had a greater sense of certainty about my decisions in the early part of my career than in the latter part, when I was presented with far more cases by far more lawyers in approximately the same amount of time.

"Judges today, in addition to making legal decisions, have to place a far greater emphasis on management of dockets and time, and how to get the cases efficiently, effectively, and fairly through the system."

The first notable technological change, Overton said, was the widespread use of electric typewriters in the 1960s. About 10 years later came electric typewriters with erasing capabilities, and at roughly the same time, the availability of copiers sounded the death knell of the tyranny of carbon paper.

Not everyone moved at the same pace. "When I came on the Supreme Court in 1974, they were still making all entries into all docket books by hand," Overton recalled. "No one had seen a[n IBM] Selectric and no one had dictating equipment. I remember my secretary, when I suggested they bring in a Selectric, she said, `Judge, I don't think that ball [which did the typing] will work.'"

But after two weeks using it, with its erasing capability, she was enthusiastically sold.

Legal research was different. Lawyers were limited to whatever law books they had ready access to, while now they have far more information at their fingertips in CD-ROM and online resources

Advance sheets, Overton said, took five to six months to be distributed with the "latest" opinions. As Allen noted, "Now it's computer driven. The technological changes have been tremendous. The judges have computers. You talk about what the case law is and they mash a button, and up come the cases and they get what was ruled last week."

But the important thing to remember about technology, Overton said, is "it's a tool, not a toy, and it's not a substitute for the deliberative process. You utilize it to become more efficient and provide the public with a better justice system. I don't see technology as making deliberative judicial decisions. I do see technology as giving the decisionmaker more information to make the decision."

There may be no better symbol of how technology has changed the profession than the Bar program begun last year to provide all new members, in lieu of a printed packet of information, with a computer CD-ROM. Developed by the Young Lawyers Division at the request of Bar President Edith Osman, the disk provides video snippets and direct Internet links to important information.

Technology--and how lawyers use it--will be an important factor in determining what the practice of law looks like in the next 10 years, let alone the next 50, according to YLD President Greg Coleman.

"This is the single biggest thing we need to look at: where our profession is headed. We can't use the old maxim, look where we've been, because society is changing so rapidly, technology is changing so rapidly, business is changing so rapidly, and consumers are changing so rapidly," he said. "We as a profession need to see how we can remain independent and still serve our clients, who are our customers.

"The lawyers who are able to stay on top of changing times are the ones who are going to be successful. The ones who think they can rest on their laurels are the ones who are going to fall by the wayside. I think you're going to see exponential changes in the next 10 years, more than in the last 50. In 1990, no one was on the Internet, now everyone is on the Internet. Where is it going to be in 2010?"