I was an unhappy camper, cynical about the justice system, feeling my work had little social utility. Yes, but now I go downtown to watch friends try cases and steal good lines from their closing arguments. We already have bail hearings done by television in Miami. I have long thought that motion calendars, ten or fifteen minute hearings, should be conducted by TV-phones so that the lawyers don't have to travel to the courthouse and wait around two hours for a short hearing. Technology makes everything more efficient and therefore cheaper to the consumer.
Legal research is much faster thanks to computers.
Without going to the law library, any decent law student can find and print out dozens of cases in minutes instead of hours. I use the same technology to do research on the computer for a variety of topics, legal and otherwise. When I needed to write a scene in a house of Japanese design for 9 Scorpions , I found what I wanted in less than ten minutes. It might have taken hours in a library. Surveys often show that attorneys have some of the lowest job satisfaction ratings of any of the professions.