The Impact of Technology on Law the Practice Coursework

TOPIC PROPOSAL
To conduct a research on the impact of technology on law practice
Student ID 00000
An academic paper discussing the impact of technology on law practice
Title
Virtual Libraries and Search Engines are enhancing the Legal Profession
Problem Statement
There are many legal documents that are used in the legal profession. Finding these documents offline is time consuming and so a system that allows faster access is a welcomed relief. In many cases, individuals are searching for various legal documents for various legal requirements and moving from office to office is time consuming. A system that is faster to access and also affordable has become a priority for many legal professionals.
Discussion any Pre-emption Issues
The last 100 years has witnessed enormous leaps in the use of technology in most areas of everyday life. This progress is gradually being witnessed in the legal practice as technology is being intertwined in the working lives of legal professions. One emerging area where technology is witnessed in the legal practice is the virtual libraries and search engines. The essence of law and enormous libraries are intertwined but things have drastically changed over the years. The development of online libraries has drastically increased efficiency in doing searches of legal documents and this enables individuals to save time. Virtual libraries have an essence of flexibility that is not possible when searching documents offline. This means legal professionals are able to have flexible work arrangements because they can easily access these documents and books from anywhere and at any time. The vast growth of search engines allows legal professional to search large databases for any documents that they may require.
Stemming from the notion of virtual libraries, the idea of virtual law firms has been on the increase. Virtual law firms are possible because of the technologies of teleworking that make it possible to work remotely with various clients. These law firms conduct their businesses solely online including management of cases, preparing legal documents, and billing among others. Ultimately, the online presence allows the virtual firms to offer services at a lower cost because of the absence of large scale information technology and human resources infrastructures.
Approach of Presentation
This paper will follow the traditional research paper because it enables generating of a topic and then come up with a hypothesis or research question. This means having to introduce the topic of technology impacts on the legal profession and describe the problem created by traditional forms of legal practice. The literature review analyzes what is known about virtual firms in the legal practice. The literature review is crucial because it provides an up-to-date understanding of the topic of virtual libraries and search engines while showing the significance of the subject. It also focused on answering the research question and compares findings from earlier studies about the topic. The paper will also discuss the possible problems associated with technology in legal practice. This is in regards to the probable problems that virtual legal libraries and search engines pose in legal practice. The conclusions of the research and recommendations will be included.
Expected Outcome or Benefit
The expected outcome or benefit from this topic is the understanding of the influence that technology has on the legal profession. The topic becomes an eye opener on the need to enhance the use of technology especially virtual libraries and search engines in legal practice. There is a greater appreciation of what technology can do in the legal profession and techniques of advancing this involvement are bound to become evident. In this way, the topic becomes an eye opener to those not “bought” on the idea that technology positively impacts the legal profession.
Ethical concerns
The virtual legal practice offers an additional method of delivering legal services that are more responsive to the issues of the twenty-first century. However, the literature reveals that the idea of virtual legal services raises ethical implications that touch on professional responsibility. Issues of identity theft, unauthorized practice of law, competence, confidentiality of client information, admission in inappropriate jurisdiction are some of the ethical issues associated with the virtual legal practice.
Virtual legal practice presents numerous ethical implications that should be addressed using the model rules of professional conduct. Virtual lawyers may be faced with issues like identity theft. An imposter may take advantage of the fact the practitioners do not verify whether they are the actual client or have no authority from the client. Fraudsters may use the online lega...