If one views case files from earlier years, say prior to 1970, one can see that the amount of information being presented to the court today is much more than in the past. There is no doubt that the tools which attorneys have at their disposal, including automated legal research and document assembly systems, makes their task both easier and more comprehensive. I would venture to guess that the time taken to prepare a ten page legal brief in 1970 may be no more than it takes to compile a 50 page brief today. Thus, the third reason for courts to embrace electronic documents is to deal with this avalanche of data. Data is the raw product that we work with, in this case legal documents.
Information is data which causes action.
We must use the automated tools to extract information from the data. I recently consulted with a state Supreme Court. I asked several justices about the legal briefs they read daily. The justices agreed that this boiler plate could be handled either by reference or, in the case of an electronic document, by automated data linkage. If a justice wished to refresh his or her memory regarding a standard point, it would be a keystroke or mouse click away.