I am not much of a html buff but if I am correct, the cookies and all which the websites place on the users system are meant to in fact carry such tasks and offer customized solutions to the online users. There is no reason why the lawyers cannot make use of such techniques especially when they are relying more and more these days on online communications and have devoted sites and servers catering to their needs.

More at http://legalperspectives.blogspot.com/2008/01/interactive-legal-systems-change-with.html

Technology can certainly be used wisely by lawyers provided we get passed the "privacy" issue. Clients are demanding and have very high expectations and lawyers must find ways to ensure that such demands are met without sacrificing excessive time and engergy.

Well reasoned. Thanks Jordan.

We're at something of a turning point in the evolution of what it means to be a lawyer. Lawyers today are busily engaged in many services that have little of "the law," as many people would understand the term, in them. How much law is involved in issuing a solicitor's opinion on title? How much legal skill, analysis and judgment? How many lawyers rely on "precedents" and "checklists" when drafting wills, contracts or separation agreements? I'm not for one minute saying that any Joe off the street could do these tasks as well as a lawyer, without risk of errors both slight and serious. But I am saying that the fewer high-end legal skills you employ in your practice, the greater the risk that a non-lawyer (person or machine) can mimic or duplicate what you do.

Sure, the non-lawyer's work will be lower quality in most cases, and won't have a solicitors' insurance fund behind it. But an increasingly large number of clients don't care, because the non-lawyer does it much cheaper and usually much faster. That title insurance is a thriving business today is testament at least in part to the fact that people have run the cost-benefit analysis and are willing to accept fewer guarantees in exchange for lower costs (it also speaks to lawyers' failure to market their services better). Lawyers have positioned themselves as a luxury good in an increasingly downscale market. If you’re offering luxury services to match, that’s terrific; if not, you’re going to be in trouble. That, I think, is the fundamental market reality to which most lawyers have yet to adjust.

The “luxury lawyers” who survive will be precisely those whose work does require legal skills, analysis and judgment – characteristics that an insurance policy or software code can’t provide. These will be the lawyers higher up the trust spectrum who would be in a position to install and make use of an Amazon.law approach. I might hazard a guess that 30 years from now, these lawyers will be the only ones left who answer to the name – the rest will simply have been run out of the business by a punishing marketplace.

I think you’re right that most people will always try to hold a certain line on privacy, although I’m frankly not optimistic about technology’s ability to protect those lines in future – I suspect our cultural definition of what is deemed acceptably accessible to public view will change, as the reality of a truly flat world emerges. A lot will depend on what we think our service provider needs to know – we think nothing of sharing deeply personal information with our doctors, for example, because we’re sufficiently motivated to preserve our health. Lawyers aren’t in that league, not least because for most people, legal services are less important and crop up less frequently. But over time, as the new legal marketplace establishes itself – and as we see legal and medical issues more frequently intersect; e.g., the right to your own DNA – I can see some lawyer-client relationships, at least, moving much deeper past the client’s privacy line than we’re used to seeing today.

I'm also interested in your thoughts about the public-private continuum with regard to client relationships. If we are increasingly putting more of our personal data in public view, do you think that will drive better relationships & service?

My personal take is that there will always be a line drawn for personal privacy, and that clients may be forced to pick some of their service providers for a 'Trusted Advisor' role. I also suspect stronger partnering concepts & relationships will push these closer ties.