Rutgers tracks usage of its legal databases by asking researchers to complete a survey. In 1999, it was attracting 600 questions a day. This consumer information trend could change the legal profession the way that it is disrupting the medical community. Medline and other online health services are providing access to recent and credible medical information. Dr. Tom Ferguson, a senior associate at Boston's Center for Clinical Computing, a medical computing think-tank at the Harvard School of Medicine, believes that this phenomenon is undermining physician s traditional authoritarian relationships with patients.
Doctors are no longer a patient s sole source of information.
Another impact of computer technology is that lawyers are regularly citing opinions that are not published in print reporters, even though most courts have rules against using unpublished cases. Traditionally judges have designated which cases to publish, picking those opinions that have significant discussions of legal issues. These become part of American common law, the others are supposed to be forgotten by everyone except the parties to the litigation. Until recently, if a case was not published in print it was unavailable to the public. In a recent Texas Lawyer article, Justice Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court explained that citation rules were originally designed to insure that those who had the resources to find unpublished cases did not have an unfair advantage over those without the resources.