The Importance of Technology to the Legal Secretary

Remember carbon paper? Remember what life was like before fax machines? Remember electric typewriters? If you answered yes to all these questions, then it is likely that you are an experienced legal secretary that has witnessed a variety of changes within the legal secretarial role.

Another significant change in the profession is that a lawyer rarely has his or her own secretary. Indeed, the one-on-one legal secretarial employment situation has increasingly become a fading memory over the past decade. Only in rare situations do legal secretaries now have this distinction.


Although there are a variety of reasons why legal secretaries are now required to provide secretarial support to several lawyers, new advances in technology appear to have made the greatest contribution to this growing trend. Over the past decade, law firms have been implementing new business technologies, which are at least partially responsible for redefining the role of a legal secretary. Additionally, law firms have compartmentalized their staffs creating a variety of specialists. These changes have further defined and streamlined the role of a legal secretary.

Technology

The basic business technologies of yesterday have been replaced with the new technologies of today. And, the technologies of the future will be even more amazing. There are however three technological developments that have dramatically impacted the role of the legal secretary:

1. The introduction of the PC (personal computer)
2. The introduction of advanced software & networking
3. The emergence of PC-literate lawyers

Thirty years ago, there were few, if any, PCs in offices. Instead, there were electric typewriters and archaic photocopy machines. Prior to these “office tools,” there were manual typewriters and carbon paper. Today, there are PCs, networks, software, portable devices & laptops, email, voice mail, scanners, hand-held organizers & palm pilots, wireless technologies, cellular phones, digital technologies, and of course, the internet. In the future, there will be voice recognition systems, newer forms of artificial intelligence, smart computers, and other technologies that will increase productivity and efficiency.

The facsimile machine was one of the first business technologies that emerged during the late 1980’s. The fax machine was seen as a revolutionary business tool. It allowed for faster distribution of documents, and reduced the amount of time it took to draft, edit and complete a document. It was not uncommon for legal secretaries and lawyers to fax drafts back and forth to clients and other third parties for review. This technology had an immediate and profound effect upon business.

Soon thereafter, PCs entered businesses everywhere. They were affordable on a large scale, and the benefits were immediately felt. In addition to document storage & retrieval, the PCs allowed the legal secretary to switch gears quickly. That is, a legal secretary could multi-task between several documents for more than one lawyer simultaneously. Law firms recognized that the PC allowed for increased productivity and efficiency, and soon legal secretaries were able to provide administrative support to more than one lawyer.

Many Boston area law firms initially implemented Wang PCs. The Wang soon conceded to the IBM PC. Software companies recognized the shift in corporate America to IBM and developed compatible software. Law firms may have first utilized WordStar or MultiMate—then switched to WordPerfect or to a custom software—and now regularly utilize Microsoft Word. The PC was only as effective as the software, and new software was rapidly changing.

As the software became more advanced, legal secretaries were able to perform many computer tasks that were performed manually only a few years prior to the PC. Law firms began networking their PCs to mainframe computers and legal secretaries were able to utilize a variety of relational software products, including billing and database systems. Many people agree that these developments marked the point where legal secretaries began to diversify their daily routine from functioning as a typist into more of an assistant role.

One of the most dramatic results of the corporate technological boom involves the emergence of technology-efficient lawyers, a new generation of lawyers that have had the opportunity to work with PCs years prior to joining the workforce. As a result, many new lawyers are as efficient as legal secretaries and prepare much of their own work. The evolution of self-contained lawyers contributed significantly to the evolution of the legal secretarial role.

Support Services & Internal Staffing

The development of support services and compartmentalized internal staffing have further changed the role of the legal secretary. Large law firms now have floaters, night staff, accounting/billing, information technology personnel and help desk staff, internal postal services, copy centers, filing personnel, temp staffs, operations & facilities personnel, and more. In fact, the expansion of the paralegal profession has helped narrowly define the current legal secretary. That is, the legal secretarial role has become increasingly streamlined over the past two decades to become a more efficient and important member of the legal industry.

This streamlining of the legal secretarial role began in the larger firms and has since trickled down into the mid-sized firms. The intent was to allow legal secretaries to remain focused on their primary responsibilities with as little interruption as possible. For example, if a legal secretary experiences technical problems with a PC, all he or she has to do is call the internal information technology department for immediate assistance. The sooner the problem is fixed, the sooner the legal secretary is able to return back to his or her work. When a legal secretary is having technical difficulties, the law firm suffers.

Summary

The legal secretarial role is changing with the times. As new technologies, support services, and staffing continue to expand, law firms will require their legal secretarial staff to adapt to these changes. Many insiders believe that the changes to come will be a welcome relief, and may even provide more diversification and variety of duties during the workday. To illustrate: Many legal secretaries felt their jobs were in jeopardy when PCs were first introduced two decades ago. By contrast, it is the PC that has made the life of a legal secretary easier and more interesting. Voice mail, email and other technologies have also contributed to the higher job satisfaction levels of legal secretaries.

The future looks bright in many respects for legal secretaries. Many insiders now believe that in the next boom market, salaries will steadily increase and job opportunities will expand with the growing business markets. The technologies of today will be gradually replaced with the technologies of tomorrow and the effects upon the role of the legal secretary will follow.