Great article about the new federal discovery rules, describing these changes in an understandable, even humorous way:
"This changes everything."
"Those three words, wafting on the familiar, buoyant tones of the actor saying them, have staying power. No survivor of the dot-com boom of the 1990s could forget William Shatner’s ubiquitous ads on behalf of a certain online travel company.
"Indeed, online booking did change the travel industry. When was the last time anyone had a paper ticket, or called a human travel agent just to check flight times? Buyers and sellers of books, music and news all have seen the same cataclysm in their business models — a subtle but certain shift from dialing a phone number or visiting a store to signing in, logging on and clicking a mouse.
"And, in fact, e-commerce lawyers are included in this migration to technology. Just as e-commerce has disrupted the travel, music, book and news retailing industries, the influence of technology on business and the law has also wrought havoc on our legal system. [Emphasis added.] Certainly, the law has always had to adapt specific rules for new technology.
"Today, the pervasive role that technology has assumed in business and legal practice, as more and more of our daily lives are lived online, provides a more fundamental challenge to how attorneys practice business law. In an age when ‘paper file’ has become an anachronism and an oxymoron, business law and the way it is practiced have required more than just tinkering with particular rules."
Author Stanley P. Jaskiewicz, a business lawyer, helps clients solve e-commerce, corporate, contract and technology-law problems, and is a member of the Board of Editors of Internet Law & Strategy ‘s sibling newsletter, E-Commerce Law & Strategy.