Gender, Lawyers and Legal Throughput – Some heretical thinking
In his book, Undaunted Courage, about the Lewis & Clark Expedition (the first expedition to cross the United States by land in 1804), Stephen Ambrose wrote:
“A critical factor in the world of 1801 was that nothing moved faster than the speed of a horse. No human being, no manufactured items, no bushel of wheat, no side of beef, no letter, no information, no idea, order or instruction of any kind moved faster. Nothing moved any faster and, as far as Jefferson’s contemporaries
were able to tell, nothing ever would.”
In 1977, when I began practising law, no original, copy or image of a document moved faster than the speed of a FedEx jet plane. No typed document was prepared or edited faster than the speed of a secretary’s fingers. When a lawyer left his or her office, the only way to reach that person was on a land line telephone. Opening the hard copy mail every morning took time because that was how you received information.
If you rang someone on the telephone and they weren’t there, you either tried again later or left a message with another human being, as there was no voicemail. If you were working on an international matter, you communicated via airmail letters, with an occasional very brief phone call because international phone calls were exorbitantly expensive. #ere were no computers, no internet, no email, no scanners, and legal research involved walking around libraries and opening books