Text 5 The Practice and Use of Legal Informatics

Though legal practice may seem to be quite separate from modern technology, there is actually a surprising amount of technology that goes into making the legal process as efficient as possible. Court records are kept in both physical and electronic files, a significant amount of research and information gathering goes into establishing legal cases and public law and policy is made available to individual citizens through a variety of means. Legal informatics is used to study the methods in which this information is handled, and the ways in which technology can be improved so as to make the legal system both easier to work with and more efficient while retaining the rights and freedoms of those within.

Legal Informatics and Information

In order to have a better understanding of how legal informatics works, stop for a moment to consider the immense amount of information that must be dealt with by the legal system. Case files, current laws, past legal decisions, and records of arrests and charges all must be dealt with on a regular basis so as to be able to keep the legal system running. In order to guarantee those involved in legal matters proper legal representation, this information must be easily accessible so that it can be used in order to present a case based upon facts and legal precedent. The need for some system by which attorneys, legal assistants, and others can easily access this information should be readily apparent, and it is through advances in legal informatics that these records and other information can be easily accessed and made use of.

Legal Informatics and Technology

As with any science dealing with information, the usefulness of legal informatics is limited by the technology that is available to facilitate it. As years have gone by and internet and networking technology has become more sophisticated, advanced searchable databases have been developed so that attorneys and other parties in the legal system can easily find the information that they need in order to do their jobs. Complex computer programs have been developed to make these searches and the organization of relevant information even easier, with user-friendly interfaces to allow even those who aren’t technologically-savvy to be able to take advantage of these technological advances. These advances have also served to make legal information and public records much more available to the public at large, allowing for an increase in public knowledge in legal matters and pushing for even further advances in legal informatics.

The Future of Legal Informatics

As public knowledge of legal matters and the technology available to drive legal informatics continues to grow, further advancements in the field are likely to be developed. A number of advanced software packages already exist which are designed to aid attorneys and others in day-to-day activities vital to a legal office, and advances in database design and artificial intelligence applications will likely serve to improve this software further. A variety of new programs and technology applications will likely be developed, including “smart searches” which will assist in finding often-overlooked legal information and new methods of storing and analyzing legal data. This will allow for more in-depth legal defense, easy reference to relevant legal rulings that might otherwise be overlooked, and an increase in the amount of time that can be spent reviewing information for a case because less time will have to be spent researching and finding the information used to build the case in the first place.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14