Lions and tigers and bears ... oh my!(Florida Bar Vision 2016) (President's page)

• Author: Coleman, Gregory W.

If you have not been following the Bar's work in Vision 2016, I would encourage you to take a moment and go to our website, www.floridabar.org, to get up to speed. For those of you who have not heard, Vision 2016 is a three-year commission charged with looking at the changing landscape for the future practice of law. Vision 2016 began in 2013, and we are halfway through our work.

We were the first and only state to begin to look in depth at issues that pertain to the future of our practice, and Florida was about a year before the American Bar Association took up this topic. We are looking at four areas relating to our future: technology, bar admissions, law schools, and access to justice.

Initially, thinking these were four discrete silos, we very quickly learned it is one big silo with four ingredients all churning together.

Recently, after meeting with Chief Justice Jorge Labarga, the Supreme Court agreed to come to our January Board of Governors meeting in Tallahassee to listen to a presentation on the future of our profession. This is the first time such a presentation was made in the history of the judiciary of the state of Florida.

I would like to thank the entire Supreme Court for their engagement on these very important issues.

We all must realize technology is driving drastic changes in the traditional practice of law. Our customers now have access to the same information we historically controlled. A customer can now go to Google Scholar and research case precedent in the state of Florida, by district court of appeal, and by circuit. Our customers now have as much information as we do, albeit, they may not necessarily know how to use it.

On a parallel track, the 60 percent of our Florida citizens who cannot afford a lawyer because they are the...