In 1988, I began using a personal computer in my employment law practice. At the time, I was a Clinical Instructor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. Chicago-Kent was a pioneer in bringing the personal computer revolution to legal education and the practice of law. Over ten years ago I began to use e-mail extensively to communicate with students, critique their work and exchange drafts with them. Today, e-mail is commonly used for communications and collaborative drafting.

In the early 1990s, I worked with the Chicago-Kent Center for Law and Computers to make available on the internet the decisions of the Illinois Human Rights Commission. The project had some urgency because the Commission was more than three years behind in publishing its decisions. In the Spring of 1994, Chicago-Kent began making available the decisions of the Commission in searchable form. This was one of the first instances of a case law database being made available on the internet. Today, including the U.S. Supreme Court, it is very common for appellate courts to make their decisions available to the public over the internet in searchable form.

From 1991 to 1996 I supervised the Advice Desk project on the sixth floor of the Daley Civic Center in downtown Chicago. The Advice Desk counsels and assists defendants without lawyers in drafting pleadings. Pleadings were drafted by hand when I started there. I introduced computers and forms software for greater efficiency and legibility.

Today, in private practice, I continue to benefit from the technology rich environment I experienced as a faculty member at Chicago-Kent. I gave a presentation to a group of employment lawyers entitled: "Computers are Tool-rific: Applications of Technology to Your Employment Law Practice." The outline for this program is available by clicking on Tool-rific.

--Ron Schwartz