Utilizing new information technology to improve the delivery of legal services is impeded by obsolete ideas about law firm productivity. Analyzing the benefits of utilizing document assembly, and other specialized legal software programs in law firms requires that the analyst have a concept of productivity which generates meaningful measures that can be objectively evaluated. Most law firms today, other than contingent fee firms that earn their fees based upon a successful result for the client, measure output in terms of attorney or paralegal hours billed to the client. A typical annual objective for a lawyer is 2,200 hours of billable time; although there are stories of lawyers who bill as much as 3,000 to 3,500 hours a year. It is obvious that profitability is a function of hours billed times the hourly rate. Once the maximum number of hours have been billed per lawyer, for most firms the only way to increase a firm's profits is to increase the hourly rate.

Introduction

One would not use farm models to manage a factory economy, and one shouldn't use factory models to manage an information economy. One hallmark of the new economy is the need to define business in terms of customers' changing needs. Defining a law firm from the producers' —the lawyer's— point of view is simply no longer workable and will have vast implications for the practice of law and the structure of law firms. Information technology enables an organization to differentiate itself along several critical dimensions: 1) time; 2) space; 3) matter; 4) substitution of electronically-based information service for high-priced labor; 5) elimination of intermediaries through direct contact with the customer; and 6) customization of product or service to the particular needs of the single individual.

The rise of information technology within the legal profession will have unanticipated consequences as the technology shifts from being the servant of our wishes to master of our destiny. The technology may soon escape lawyer’s control, change their routines, challenge the inefficiencies they enjoy as well as create opportunities for new forms of law firms and law practice.

The future of communication between like minded individuals is the Virtual Community. Virtual Communities contrast with the 20th century institutions and organizations in many ways. Even as the use of the internet for business finally replaces the paper based systems, traditional institutions and organizations are still hopelessly trying to use national laws to govern a jurisdiction-less space.

"Evolution has been seen as a billion-year drama that led inexorably to its grandest creation: human intelligence. The emergence in the early twenty-first century of a new form of intelligence on Earth that can compete with, and ultimately significantly exceed, human intelligence will be a development of greater import than any of the events that have shaped human history.

"Creating wealth, which is business expertise, and promoting human security in the broadest sense, the UN’s main concern, are mutually reinforcing goals. Thriving markets and human security go hand in hand. A world of hunger, poverty and injustices is one in which markets, peace and freedom will never take root"

In the digital world corporations and governments have forged ahead of civil society on the Internet, charting their own course regarding an individual's right to information privacy. Corporations and governments, the leaders of our economic and social systems, are taking charge by influencing the code which creates cyberspace.