>From the New York Times, Friday November 12, 1993 (page B20):
At the Bar. David Margolick. "Court asks a lawyer, if a computer is doing
most of the work, why the big fee?"
[Abstracted and excerpted] Craig Collins, a lawyer in San Mateo California,
used the West CD-ROM library, a system that contains every court opinion
published in California in the last 33 years on three compact disks, to
research a parental rights case. Under penalty of perjury, he swore that he
had devoted 22 hours, ten of them over the Fourth of July weekend, to writing
several memorandums concerning the rights of step-parents in custody cases.
"At his normal rate of $225 an hour, that worked out to $4,950, part of his
total tab of $9,591.50. The money was to come from the stepfather, who lost
the case, provided it was approved by Judge Roderic Duncan of the Alameda
County Superior Court."
"That was not quite what happened. Indeed, after deconstructing the
mechanics of modern computer research, Judge Duncan not only balked,
but handed Mr. Collins to the disciplinary enforcement section of
the State Bar of California."
As it turned out, large portions of Mr. Collins memorandums were copied
directly from the court opinions, without attribution. Collins explained
that he had quoted the courts at length because "their language ``was
better written than I would have composed it myself.''" The court, however,
found that 22 hours was rather extreme for cutting and pasting since Mr.
Collins was an experienced lawyer. At the hearing, William P. Eppes II, a
representative of the West Publishing Company testified that Mr. Collins
had used the system for a total of of 9 hours and 33 minutes since he
had purchased it. The witness, who was also a lawyer, testified that it
seemed entirely plausible that Mr. Collins had put in the time he claimed.
The judge was impressed by the witness' reasoning and withdrew his claim
that Mr. Collins had not worked as long as he did. "All those hours at
the computer, the judge seemed to say, reflected inefficiency rather than
dishonesty."
Although disciplinary proceedings were dropped, Mr. Collins is still
displeased with a judge who, in an interview, he described as "a ``cavalier''
judicial ``maveric'' whose ill-considered opinions had periodically been
criticized by the California courts of appeal. How did he know? He consulted
his trusty CD-ROM, and plugged in the words ``Duncan'' and ``reversal.''"
["Quotes" are directly from the article. ``Quotes'' are quoted material
in the original article.
On the same page of the Times, you will also find an interesting article on
modern computerized fingerprint systems. The FBI has a database of 30 million
unique cards and performs more than 32,000 searches per day. The modern
systems can compare a print at rates faster than 1,000 per second.
Martin Minow minow@apple.com] [Martin Minow via risks-digest Volume 15, Issue 28]
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