Frank Burke Forecasts Future of Legal Industry

The January 2, 2006, Business Journal of Phoenix featured Frank Burke and his predictions for the law industry: its changes, its challenges, and his "reality check."

Mr. Burke predicts that lawyers will have to adapt to jurors "raised in a multi-media and Internet world," video link will be used for witnesses, and electronic discovery will become routine. Arbitration clauses will "proliferate in business contracts as a means of securing expert fact finders [and] avoiding jury trials, punitive damages and pretrial discovery expense." In addition, as a result of a biotechnology explosion, "biotechnology law, intellectual property law and bioethics law" will become increasingly important.

Future challenges include the need for a "higher percentage of lawyers with match, science and engineering training and more lawyers who can understand the computers that house our critical digital information."

Read Law firms face consolidation, new technology, billing changes here.