Want to Cut Lawyers’ Fees? Route Justice to ‘Interplanet 1’

For 40 years, practicing law in Los Angeles has depended on an automobile technology for mobility and a typewriter-paper technology for record-keeping. It is as archaic as circuit-riding judges on horseback going from town to town.

Then came the Northridge earthquake--and opportunity.

The quake virtually stopped the machinery of justice. Police stations and courthouses were either condemned or declared uninhabitable. Irreplaceable files were lost or destroyed. Damaged freeways and streets impeded travel to standing courthouses. The county may not be able to find the money to put all the pieces back together again.

But why rebuild a legal-judicial infrastructure that depends on the antiquated technology of the 1950s? This is the age of computerized communications. With the exception of actual trials or evidentiary hearings, everything in civil litigation could be done electronically by computers and telephone lines, and court time in criminal cases could be radically reduced. Since criminal filings last year surpassed 600,000 cases--all done on paper--the time saved would be significant.

Rather than write out their numerous required crime reports in pencil, for example, officers could dictate them into cassettes, to be transcribed onto computerized forms by clericals. The clerical would then push a button to send all the reports to a computer console in the district attorney’s office. If the deputy D.A., sitting at his console, chose to file the case, he or she would input the appropriate charges, add the formal complaint to the police reports, push a button, and the entire package would be transmitted to the clerk’s office, given a case number and a court date.

It is high time for the law enforcement, legal and judicial community to start driving on “Interplanet 1,” the much-vaunted information superhighway.

Technologically, there is no reason why an attorney could not file a lawsuit, call his opposing counsel, serve the complaint by computer and commence the pretrial exchange of information, all without leaving his or her office. Court filing fees could be charged automatically by a credit- or debit-card system administered through the courts or the County Bar Assn. Thus, instead of clogging up the freeways with messengers running around to serve 30 different lawyers, the same result could be achieved with the push of a button.

Such suppliers of legal information as Mead Data Central, Thomsen Publishing or West Publishing Company already have mainframe computers and a history of storing cases and case documents. These companies could move from being a secondary source of data--copying records from the courts--to the primary source of data--the holder of the data for the court itself (with secondary distribution rights to customers). Moreover, by charging attorneys for the service, private-sector funding could provide a major public record-keeping service, make its owners a profit, while saving lawyers and their clients large sums of money--a “no lose” situation.

Courtrooms could be set up wherever telephone service existed, and courts could readily retrieve files from any location that had a computer and modem. Judges--perish the thought--could work from home, unless they happened to have a trial on calendar that day.

Rather than dozens of civil litigators sitting around waiting to argue at “law and motion” calendars, judges could post their indicated rulings by computer, invite comment and then allow a 700-word computerized rebuttal.

The biggest roadblock to Interplanet 1 is technophobia, since lawyers are notoriously fearful of anything new. Fortunately, the IBM-clone computer world is learning with Microsoft’s “Windows” what Apple’s Steve Jobs figured out years ago with the Macintosh. Anyone can point and click--the computer version of banging two rocks together to get fire.

If you point your computer “mouse” and click at the screen icon (picture) of an envelope going into a mailbox, the computer will transmit your mail electronically to the right electronic mailbox. If you point and click the “mouse” at, say, a “scale of justice” icon, the computer will electronically file your court papers, get a case number, pay the filing fee, obtain an electronic receipt from the court’s computer and print out the transaction onto paper--just to make you feel better.

Clients--and this won’t make lawyers feel better--will eventually find out that enormous, mahogany-paneled law offices are largely unnecessary, that partners bringing three young associates to court and charging the client quadruple time is similarly unnecessary and that most of the classic 70-hour lawyer workweek can be done from home.

An example of a telecommuting judge already at work is state Court of Appeals Justice Michael G. Nott, who resides mostly in Idaho, for family reasons, telecommutes by computer to his chambers in the Ronald Reagan State Office Building Downtown, confers with his colleagues by telephone and receives emergency writs and other papers by facsimile or electronic transmission. He flies to Los Angeles several days before oral arguments are scheduled to confer with his colleagues about anything requiring face-to-face encounters.

While there has been some suspicious judicial back-biting that Nott’s physical absence detracts from his job, he produces just as many opinions as his colleagues.

Fewer marble-tiled hallways and more microchips will mean more cops on the street, lower lawyers’ fees, less traffic and fewer courtrooms.

As the man said, “Just Do It!”