LEGAL RESEARCH ON THE DIGITAL MARKET.

 

TRANSFORMATION OF THE LEGAL RESEARCH THROUGH TECHNOLOGY.

Technology is the catalyst by which the world turns. Over the past several years, technology has had a significant impact on the practice of law. With the rise of the internet, most professionals use free online resources to help in the legal research process. The practice of law for lawyers is changing as well. Lawyers once did all of their legal research using books. However, now most of that research is done electronically with legal research databases such as Kenya Law Database.

One of the biggest steps that have enabled technology in law to involve is the digitalization and storage of case law, statutes, and regulations. The Kenya Law Reports has made their entire Collection of case law available to the public. This has enabled technology firms to aggregate, store, and provide statistics about the law in a way that we have not seen in the past.

With the rise of smartphone technology, people have access to large quantities of legal information at their fingertips. Now, there are various apps that you can download that will allow you to ask legal questions. Sometimes, those questions are not actually answered by an actual advocate but by a computer. Consumers turned to these apps for mundane legal questions that they do not want to have to pay an advocate to answer.

The Bench Research Hotline (BRH) which was started by the National Council for Law Reporting, has supported the administration of justice by providing Judicial Officers with dedicated research facilities. The BRH utilizes an online ticket system for logging and managing research queries from judicial officers and applies legal research tools.

Increased capabilities and legal research databases are also changing the legal profession some databases have broken down case law and statutes in a way that allows users to look up statistics on things like how often a judge has been ruled for plaintiffs. Databases are now incorporating non-legal sources such as newspapers and internet articles in order to provide a wider birth of information.

With the rise of technology in the legal profession, more bar associations are making it mandatory for lawyers to have technology-based programs.  This is a big step because there are many lawyers who rely on paralegals to do the technical work and have little understanding of how far technology has come in the legal profession.

Reliability and security are important aspects of computer-assisted legal research. The amount of information that is born digital and published exclusively on the web will continue to become a greater part of the information landscape. The shift to digital publishing and online distribution is motivated by technological considerations and consumer demands.

Legal professionals require information that is accurate. Authenticity is an important concept in law and has evidentially implications. One of the big advantages of digital publications, especially on the web, is the ease with which the information can be created, published, and modified.

Legal Research is an important part of the legal practice and the associated skills which are used to locate case law, legislation, and other legal information. Legal writing is a backbone of a well, researched legal document services, and both legal research and writing greatly complement each other.