| |
|
1960
Roy Freed Publishes “A Lawyer’s Guide Through the
Computer Maze”
Roy Freed was one of the founders of the CLA, its fourth
President and in many ways someone who in his writings
started the debate about how the law should be adapted to
deal with the special issues created by computerization. His
article in the November 1960 issue of the Practical Lawyer
entitled “A Lawyer’s Guide Through the Computer Maze” is
seen by many as the seminal piece in what became computer
law and is now known as IT law.
1961-1971
Roy Freed, the fourth President of the CLA, recalls
the developments that led in 1971 to the formation of the
Computer Lawyers Group and in 1973 to the incorporation of
the CLA in this way.
|
 |
The establishment of the CLA was not a completely
novel development. Instead, it was a natural, although
somewhat tardy, step in the slow recognition of the
importance of the expanding availability of computer
technology starting essentially in the mid-1950's and its
inevitable significance to the diverse substantive aspects
of the law. A look at the history that preceded its
establishment in 1971 should illuminate the response of the
legal profession to the momentous introduction of that
technology that provides the first, and probably the only,
inanimate machines that mimic to a significant extent the
functioning of the human mind as it has come to be
recognized to be a biological machine that literally
purposefully processes a type of electrochemical signals
that people traditionally unwittingly call information.
Computers have substantive legal significance largely
because la variety of legal issues arise from their use that
parallel those produced by the action or inaction of people.
In October 1960, the University of California in Los
Angeles conducted the First National Conference on Law
and Electronics at Lake Arrowhead in California. Despite the
ambitions of the sponsors, it was the first and the last and
its participants focused almost entirely on possibly uses of
computers in the legal process. Roy Freed was a voice crying
in the wilderness there with his interest in the legal
ramifications of their use in society, which attracted only
modest attention because the attendees were almost
exclusively technical people.
|
However, a notable one of them was Ben Kessel, a
computer engineer who was president of Computer Control
Company, Inc., of Framingham, MA He immediately took a deep
interest in Roy's attention to the substantive legal
ramifications, which he secured largely during their
fortuitous ride together in a limousine from the Los Angeles
Airport to Lake Arrowhead. In 1964, his company hired Roy as
its in-house general counsel, where he served until he
entered private practice in Boston to specialize in that
field until he retired in 1986.
Then, in November 1960, Roy's pioneering article that
introduced computer law to the world, "A Lawyer's
Guide Through the Computer Maze," appeared in The
Practical Lawyer, which was published by the Joint
Committee on Continuing Legal Education of the American
Law Institute and the American Bar Association. |
 |
ALI-ABA was
headed by Paul Wolkin, Esq., who also was editor of that
journal. He immediately sensed the importance of that
subject and set up seven consecutive national conferences to
explore its scope and named Roy its general chairman. Those
were the first conferences on that subject and its initial
one took place at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC and
attracted 300 people, who included both lawyers and computer
specialists. Roy invited the late Lee Loevinger, Esq., to
give a major talk at it.
Around that time, the Special Committee on Electronic
Data Retrieval in the ABA came into existence. It
probably originated out of a project led by innovative Prof.
John Horty, a lawyer, at the School of Public Health of the
University of Pittsburgh. In the early 1960's, with a grant
from the Ford Foundation, his group demonstrated a batch
processing system for searching for legal materials, the
first of its kind. Through a series of developments, it was
the seed for the Lexis system introduced by Mead Data
Central, an offshoot of the Mead paper company. The members
of that committee included Judge Vincent Biunno, Reed
Lawyer, a patent lawyer, Prof. Reed Dickerson of Indiana
University Law School, a specialist in legislative drafting,
David Link, a tax lawyer in Chicago, Robert P. Bigelow, an
in-house counsel at John Hancock Life Insurance Company in
Boston, who became fascinated by Roy's attention to those
substantive legal issues, Roy, and some others. Roy was a
lone wolf on that committee promoting attention to the legal
ramifications.
Soon, that committee was elevated to the Standing Committee
on Electronic Data Retrieval of the ABA. It sponsored
programs at ABA conventions and published the journal MULL:
Modern Uses of Logic in Law, which was edited by Prof.
Layman Allen, initially at Yale School until his colleagues
tired of his focus on applications of Boolean algebra for
drafting legislation, such as the Internal Revenue Code, and
he comfortably and productively moved to the University of
Michigan. Lee Loevinger also was a member of that committee.
For the 1964 Convention of the ABA in New York, Roy's wrote
a mock trial to demonstrate how to introduced computer
related records into evidence. To dignify its sponsorship,
its Business Law Section was recruited for that role.
However, at the very last minute, it abruptly and without
explanation withdrew its sponsorship. Nevertheless, the
trial went forward with great success. Judge Wilfred
Fineberg of the First Circuit Court of Appeals proudly and
enthusiastically served as the judge. AmJur2nd published its
text.
Later, that committee was succeeded by the present
Section of Law, Science, and Technology of the ABA. However,
its persisting overwhelming focus on applications of
computer technology in the legal process to the almost
complete exclusion of the already obvious potential
important substantive legal ramifications of computers
caused a number of its members, including particularly Roy
and Bob Bigelow, to become restive. They and the others
wanted an independent organization that would provide forums
for the exclusive consideration of those legal ramifications
and that would be free from the bureaucratic constraints of
the ABA.
Consequently, at the 1971 conference in Atlantic
City, NJ of the Association of Computing Machinery, a
professional association of computer specialists, seven
people met together extemporaneously to form the CLA. They
included Roy and Bob Bigelow, some computer specialists who
quickly dropped out of the picture, and two in-house counsel
of computer related companies.
Pages: 1 2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
|
