Why Lawyers Need to Use the Internet-part Ii
| Publication year | 1996 |
| Pages | 51 |
| Citation | Vol. 25 No. 4 Pg. 51 |
1996, April, Pg. 51. Why Lawyers Need to Use The Internet-Part II
The Internet continues to be a hot topic in the press today, and lawyers continue to ask themselves why this might be relevant or important to them. After all, participating in a discussion group of people who hate Barney the Dinosaur is not particularly relevant to the practice of law. Part I of this article, which appeared in the November 1995 issue at page 2575 http://www.lawyernet.com/colawart.html), made the arguments that (1) while research resources on the Internet are still imperfect, E-mail communications are extremely useful for the practicing attorney, and (2) soon enough, research materials---and search tools to access them---also will become an important reason to have access to the World Wide Web.
This Part II looks at other developments on the Web that will soon have substantial importance to attorneys. It contains many angle-bracketed hyperlinks to examples of what is being discussed, and it is being simultaneously published on the Web (http://www.lawyernet.com/colawart2.html), so lawyers with Internet access can read the article there and actually link to the example or reference pages while they are reading.
Much of the potential of the Web will be realized when enough people have access to this new communications medium to reach a "critical mass." After all, a telephone would not do you much good if no one else had one. An amazing thing about the Internet is that no one really knows how many people have access to it. A recent survey by Nielsen Media Research http://www.melsenmedia.com/whatsnew/execsum2.htm) came up with 37 million users in the United States and Canada, but not all of those seem to have access to the Web. The survey concluded that 18 million users have used the Web in the last three months. The survey also found that 25 percent of Internet users have an annual income over $80,000; 50 percent are managerial; and 64 percent have at least a college degree.
The Nielsen survey studied people over sixteen years of age, so perhaps a more accurate survey was one recently conducted of adults only by O'Reilly & Associates (http://www.ora.com/gnn/bus/ora/info/research/users/results.html). That survey came up with the more conservative number of 5.8 million users with direct access and 3.9 million users with access through online access providers (such as America Online or CompuServe). Interestingly, that survey projects an additional 6 million users will be added in both categories in 1996. Another study that tried to determine the size of the Web itself came up with 16 million pages (http://altavista.digital.com/). Compare this figure to the number that was believed to be accurate as of January...
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