“Nice pair of legs” was the comment of a partner in a law firm in the early 1980s when he saw a male partner of his using a keyboard, the implication being that it was bizarre to see someone as important as a qualified solicitor typing; and as for the sexual harassment issue, well that was just par for the course in those far off days. Office politics and information technology have changed beyond recognition since I was first appointed as Administrative Secretary (as I was then called) of the Society for Computers and Law (SCL) in 1987, but the one thing that has not changed over all these years has been the commitment of so many members to give their time and expertise to SCL, both in the field of technology for lawyers and in the increasingly important and burgeoning field of information technology law which pervades all our lives. SCL is indeed the IT Law Community.

Information retrieval

But my association with SCL started seven years before my appointment. It was when I was appointed by the then SCL Chairman, David Andrews, as General Manager of the National Law Library (NLL). In that role I organised over 20 seminars throughout the UK (yes, Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow and, most significantly of all, Bristol, were all visited) to promote the concept of computer-assisted information retrieval systems for lawyers.

This may sound unbelievable to many of you reading this article, but back in 1980 access to Lexis was via a unique red terminal. It was so expensive to use that one law firm I visited in New York in October 1979 kept it in a locked room. Eurolex used a normal computer as did NLL which had access to a very small statute law database based in Harwell. At each of the seminars I was faced with the challenge of trying to access the data via a modem attached to a normal telephone line and sometimes even via a hotel switchboard; how many times did I type in the words “discretionary trust” whilst hoping that the connection would last long enough for the search to produce the necessary results? After all, we had a group of sceptical lawyers to convince of the future for computer-assisted information retrieval!

IT and the courts

My eighteen months with the National Law Library played a most significant part in my life; it was a chance meeting with Colin Campbell (an NLL Board member) seven years later at Heathrow airport that led to me to apply for the position of Administrative Secretary of SCL. Following my appointment by SCL, Sir Brian Neill asked me to become the Administrative Secretary of Information Technology and the Courts (ITAC). (Oh, and I met my husband at the Bristol seminar!)

At my retirement dinner in April 2013 Sir Brian Neill said, “People say that old men forget; the trouble is that they remember”. And remember they do! Perhaps now is the time to remember that ITAC was established in 1985 by the then Lord Chancellor with the following terms of reference:

a) To exchange information on developments, and planned developments, in information technology in areas which may affect the administration of the Courts in England and Wales;

b) To consider the future requirements for working relationships between the Courts and their users in the field of information technology;

c) To discuss means of satisfying requirements in ways that will be cost effective and technically compatible

But it was only on 15 January 2015 (some 30 years later) that Frances Gibb wrote an article in The Times entitled “From Dickens to digital – the courts join the IT revolution.” She ended her article with the comment: “Progress, like the justice system, has been slow but finally, it seems, courts are moving into the digital age.” How very true.

Only four days later the Today programme featured an interview with Lorin LaFave, the mother of murdered schoolboy Breck Bednar (murdered by Lewis Daynes who had groomed him over the internet). She spoke of her fury after it emerged his killer was on two national crime databases but the police did not act. I remembered sitting at ITAC meetings in the 1990s and learning that every police force in the UK had developed their own computer system and there was no compatibility between the systems.

Nearly 30 years later this is no longer the case. The technology is here; what was missing was the intelligent use of it. Perhaps the use of artificial intelligence could have prevented such an error; AI is just another area with which SCL has been involved, hosting the Third International Artificial Intelligence Conference in Oxford in June 1991 under the chairmanship of Richard Susskind.

Quality of life

Information technology has become all pervasive in our lives, not just in the legal world, and in many ways I feel that the quality of the lives of lawyers has deteriorated, not financially (and certainly not for successful IT Lawyers!) but in the actual enjoyment of life.

Lawyers feel the necessity to be on call 24/7. I can promise you all that there is an awful lot more to life than billable hours. Did you know you can actually eat without continually checking your smartphone for messages? At a stroke you could increase your own life expectancy as well as reducing the risk of a premature wrinkly neck. You might even find that you enjoy the food and face to face contact with family and friends. Put it away now!

I know that the law has become much more complicated, but do contracts really have to be that long? Couldn’t more time be spent on training lawyers how to draft concisely constructed contracts? In my view, IT (particularly in law firms) has become its own worst enemy. “Just because we can does not mean we have to” is perhaps a mantra we should all bear in mind. Do we really need to send that email? ”¦ and to cc it to so many people? If the same content was being sent out in a letter in an envelope would you really copy it to so many people? The problem is that once the email has been composed there is virtually no cost involved in its distribution; hence the huge number of unnecessary emails sent and received each day, taking up precious time and depriving you of living a real life.

Privacy and data protection

Privacy and data protection is a huge minefield; how often do we bother to read those carefully constructed terms and conditions on websites before clicking “agreed”? The growth of this area of the law has been met by SCL by its very active Privacy & Data Protection Group but why, oh why, are people so obsessed with telling everybody about everything they do? Is it surprising that Facebook is now cited in many divorce cases and is relied upon as proof of inappropriate behaviour?

I don’t need anyone to “like” me thank you very much. I know who my friends are (and many of them are SCL members) and if they want to tell me their news, they will let me know without sharing it with the rest of the world. I felt totally liberated when I left Facebook but have to say that it was not easy to discover how to do so.

Everything’s changed but the name

During my time with SCL I saw many changes: focus, faces, logo, magazine, website etc. In 2010 the Society for Computers and Law was rebranded as SCL – The IT Law Community, and I remember why the then Trustees decided not to make a legal name change: they had learnt from the British Computer Society’s experience in 2009.

SCL – The IT Law Community – is a world renowned organisation with which I have been honoured to be associated with for nearly 30 years.

Ruth Baker retired as General Manager of SCL in April 2013 and remains an Honorary Member of the Society.

Email ruthbakercms@aol.com.

For an alternative view of her years at SCL, see her article on the SCL site at www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ed31931