Legal Research and Information Systems: The Impact of Information Retrieval Systems on Provincial Legal Practice

Abstract

Despite a burgeoning literature on the computerisation of legal practice, there have been few in-depth empirical studies of the affect of IT on lawyers’ practice outside North America. This article reports on a study of the impact of IT, and of legal information systems in particular, on the legal profession in and around the city of Bristol, England. It confirms that the use of back-office applications such as word processing and accounting systems is increasingly widespread, even in provincial law firms and chambers. Its findings also suggest that, despite increasing systems availability, information retrieval and other front-office applications remain, for a variety of reasons, the preser..