LAW AND TECHNOLOGY

INTRODUCTION
As correctly said by Laurence Lessing, “Law and technology produce together a kind of
regulation of creativity we’ve never seen before.”
We are in the midst of a period of change in the conditions of human freedom and economic
production, which has been brought about by a series of technological shifts and is largely
governed by law. Law is a major field in which the conditions of the future are negotiated,
and it will continue to be so. However, it cannot be considered without comprehending the
technological, economic, and social context in which it operates and the historical moment at
which it intersects with these other fields. The need of the hour is for technology and the legal
system to merge. We must adopt online legal case analysis and move digitally. The
dissemination of legal knowledge to the general public will also significantly contribute to
the improvement of the country's law and order. Understanding the stakes and implications
of the current institutional battles requires a systematic commitment to comprehending how
technology is affecting life and how the law interacts with technology.
Law and technology have simple and extremely complex relationships. Technology, at its
most fundamental level, is the production of a product, a service, or some other desired
outcome through the use of labor. As new methods for producing new results or old results
with fewer or less expensive inputs are discovered, technology evolves. Law is considered as
a set of rules that apply to everyone in society and were made by the institutions that run it. In
all modern societies, institutions are in charge of deciding whether these rules are applicable
and how they should be interpreted. Additionally, they have established institutions to
enforce the regulations. When laws help or hinder the growth of technology, they interact
with the law. They also interact when society decides that technology produces undesirable
outcomes and uses legal rules to limit or alter those outcomes.

RELATION BETWEEN LAW AND

TECHNOLOGY
Humanity and society as a whole have been profoundly altered by technological
advancements. There has been no turning back for humanity since the stone age, the
industrial age, and then the technological age. Since then, there has been an explosion in
technology.
We require a means to reestablish moral and immoral behavior in society at this point, and
the law comes to our rescue. Law is significant because it determines what constitutes
acceptable behavior in our society. It is a powerful tool for influencing any social change.
The laws play no less of a role in society shaping than technological advancements.
“Technology is not good or evil in and of itself, it’s all about how people choose to use it.”
The legal sector has benefited greatly from technological advancements. It has increased
clerical workers' productivity and efficiency in legal offices. Clients and law firms now
communicate more openly thanks to legal technology. Clients are able to monitor the
lawyer's daily progress on their cases and are aware of their fees. In addition, there is no
doubt that technology, when utilized correctly, is more rapid and effective than any
individual. Any law firm may find this to be of great assistance.
Most of the time, all in-house legal tasks are done by hand. Lawyers interact with non-
lawyers and other business professionals a lot, but they also have to do the tasks that go along
with that. In 63% of cases, these tasks were found to be fact-based and repeatable. Legal
software, such as word processors and eDiscovery software, takes over and automatically
completes the tasks in this case. This not only speeds up operations but also gives lawyers
enough time to concentrate on other productive endeavors.
Even though lawyers are accustomed to conducting their research on the Internet and other
similar resources, they still rely on printed materials. While working on each case, they print
a copy of everything, including the revised laws and regulations. As a result, more time is
needed for research.
For this situation, legitimate exploration arrangements assist legal counselors with keeping
awake to date on each guideline change in any event, when they're not at their work area.
Additionally, print products may lack tools and features like "search" that these platforms
provide.
In order to increase profits, many lawyers still present clients' problems in a complicated
manner. They don't say that using a DSLR is the only solution to the issue they're having. In
addition, the legal procedures are constrained to offline resources. Because of this, clients
have doubts about every lawyer they meet.
However, with the assistance of the best legal practice management solutions and other offers
of this kind, this situation can be improved. Clients can find profiles of the best lawyers in the
business on a marketplace created by these tech solutions. In addition to getting acquainted
with the fundamental requirements of the law, they can converse with a variety of attorneys
and maintain real-time communication. They may be able to benefit from increased perks,
trustworthiness, and transparency as a result of this. They may also be able to collaborate
with the appropriate professionals.
Lawyers can now collaborate on important matters using productive tools like Slack, Google
Docs, Microsoft Teams, and others, which is one of the benefits of technology in the legal
field. In order for them to draft a petition or talk about important aspects of a case, they no
longer have to sit next to each other. A culture of remote law firms is made possible by legal
technology. More clients can now be served by lawyers and law firms regardless of location.
It is recommended that we familiarize ourselves with the difficulties before embarking on an
investigation into and embrace the trends in legal technology. Let's concentrate on the
difficulties associated with developments in legal technology.
The fact that many legal professionals still lack a thorough understanding of which
technologies to utilize and when to achieve better and more efficient outcomes is the primary
obstacle facing the legal technology market today. They also have to deal with the worry that
the industry's unemployment rate will rise as a result of the growing connection between law
and new technology.
It was discovered that 36% of lawyers are unaware of the collection of technology utilized in
law firms for improved purposes.
The legal industry's business model has undergone a complete 180-degree shift as a result of
technology's emergence. It has fundamentally altered how they acquire new customers,
conduct business, and generate revenue. As a result, a number of law firms are also facing a
number of organizational issues, such as the acceptance of technology and software for day-
to-day tasks, the ease of determining the scope of various types of legal technology, and
more.

EXAMPLES
Law frequently deals with technologies or human activities that use scientific discoveries to
create new media, tools, devices, and systems that improve people's quality of life.
The exploitation of natural resources (energy) and the law: Modern technologies have made it
possible to make use of energy. The distribution, processing, and production of energy and
natural resources are all governed by the law.
Biology and laws: We must deal with the technologies that enable the acquisition of gametes,
stem cells, crossbreeds, and chimeras in order to establish a legal framework for medically
assisted procreation or cloning.
Medical and legal: Some legally significant decisions regarding end-of-life issues are based
on medical concepts like brain death. The same idea of therapeutic tenacity needs to be
compared to the technologies that are currently available.
Information technology and the law: Tools like electronic signatures and documents have
been made available by IT. For these technologies to be regulated or made legally available,
the law must deal with them.

CONCLUSION
Every sector in India is being transformed by technology, and the legal system is not far
behind. A systematic study of law and technological change in our time seems to have
reached an important and immediate conclusion with the rise of the networked information
economy and its contributions to development. However, we are undergoing a series of
significant shifts in the ways in which we produce information, knowledge, and culture, as
well as in the ways in which these components of human knowledge will be utilized to
enhance the human condition.
There will be more chances to do the right thing and make mistakes in the coming decades.
As an open platform, the technological sphere lacks regulation, monitoring, and surveillance.
These headways are disturbing an administrative climate around the world, presenting
enormous provokes before controllers to work out some kind of harmony of development,
safeguarding buyers, and settling the potential dangers sneaking into the framework because
of the fast progression in innovation.
One needs a solid analytical foundation from which to evaluate both the old and the new, as
well as the stakes of the transition from one to the other, in order to diagnose the likely
benefits or costs of new practices and, as a result, the laws that will be proposed and opposed
along the fault lines of these transformations. In order to accommodate the exponential
growth of the technological sphere, the law must catch up with the rapid advancement of
technology by developing the necessary legislation, regulations, monitoring, and surveillance
measures.

REFERENCES
1) https://www.lawctopus.com/academike/law-and-technology/
2) https://appinventiv.com/blog/technology-in-legal-sector/
3) https://ucanapplym.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/RGU/notifications/E_learning/
notice_elearning_online.pdf
4) https://www.legalserviceindia.com/legal/article-834-law-and-technology-an-asymptotic-
relationship.html
5) https://www.ijlt.in/post/analysing-the-technical-workarounds-to-end-to-end-encryption
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