Practice Points. Looking Back 50 Years: My, How Times Have Changed

• Pages: 32-33
• Date: 01 January 2026
• Published date: 01 January 2026
• Author: Hon. Mark A. Drummond
• Subject Matter: Civil Law

Published in Litigation News Volume 51, Num ber 2, Winter 202 6. © 2026 by the Amer ican Bar Ass ociation. Rep roduced with pe rmission. A ll rights reser ved. This info rmation or any po rtion thereof

may not be copied o r disseminated i n any form or by any means o r stored in an elec tronic databas e or retrieval system w ithout the expres s written consen t of the American Ba r Association .

By Hon. Mark A. Drummond (Ret.), Litigation News Associate Editor

y mission for the 50th anniversary edi-

tion of Litigation News was to look back at

how advocacy in the courtroom has changed

over time. Wow, where to start? In 1980,

I was sworn in. Over the last 45 years, I

have gone from carbon paper to fax machines, then to email,

and now to AI. In 1996, Bill Clinton was elected to a second

term, the Olympics were in Atlanta, and I started writing for

this publication. It is safe to say that I have written over 100

“Practice Points” columns.

In my opinion, the two greatest changes in the last 50

years are technology and its impact on our brains. A decade

ago, I wrote a column that began with a short story by

Kurt Vonnegut. It is a dystopian vision of the year 2081.

Attempting to make everyone equal in all aspects, the govern-

ment declared that everyone should be the same. Accordingly,

those who were exceptionally smart had to wear an earpiece

that would send “some sharp noise” out every 20 seconds or

Looking Back 50 Years:

My, How Times Have Changed

so to keep smart people from “…taking unfair advantage of

their brains.”

Back in 2015, I asked if we had already reached Vonnegut’s

vision of 2081, 66 years early, through our growing addic-

tion to technology. Now, in 2025, the answer is even clearer.

We have. The question now is how we adapt to these changes

when we advocate in court.

Be Visual Bu t…

When cell phones f‌irst appeared, we used them to talk to other

people. Now, we mostly look at our phones. On average,

people spend more than three hours per day staring at their

phones and check them over 50 times daily. Our information

is fragmented, sporadic, and overwhelmingly visual. Given

this, how do we hold the attention of our judges and jurors?

For any aspect of advocacy, ask yourself if there is any way

you can make your submission visual. Timelines can be espe-

cially eective in showing what happened and perhaps, more

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WINTER 202 6 • VOL. 51 NO. 2

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PRACTICE POINTS