Introduction to Ethics and Technology

Abstract

That there should be a distinct set of ethical rules pertaining to lawyers’ use of technology seems odd at first glance. Ethics rules are written broadly by design and would seem to be able to apply across all practices; there are not, after all, distinct rules pertaining to the representing banks or trying malpractice cases. Yet, here, as elsewhere, the extraordinary changes that technological developments have made in the creation, processing collection and preservation of electronically stored information have required that broad rules be refined and then applied to problems that no generation of lawyers have ever faced.