Sponsored by Freshfields, its introduction follows the success of a pilot run in the last academic year and passed by about 170 students, who gave overwhelmingly positive feedback.

The motivation for establishing the course was a joint statement in 1999, by the Law Society and the Council of the Bar, that plainly requires law schools to introduce to their undergraduates a basic range of IT skills. For regulatory reasons alone, all law schools in England should follow the lead of Cambridge.

As crucial, however, is the reality that confidence with the IT applications and legal research tools that Cambridge is teaching is no longer an interesting, optional add-on for the CV of the law graduate. In all branches of the profession, IT is becoming pervasive and law students should be prepared accordingly.

THE Supreme Court of Israel is using the first searchable database of Israeli law to run on hand-held computers. Designed for the popular Palm range of machines, the system is known as Palmdinet (http://www.palmnetis.com/) and was developed by CDI, a Jerusalem-based company (http://www.cdisys.com/). For English lawyers, a convincing demonstration called HandLaw, complete with sample legislation, can be downloaded from www.palmnetis.com/ldemo.shtml. This shows how users can be given instant, mobile access to significant bodies of legal materials and can comfortably search, browse, view footnotes and even add their own comments.

HandLaw is no doubt a forerunner of numerous legal applications that are likely to emerge soon for pocket-sized computers, a technology for which 2002 is a crucial year, given the impending arrival of a new generation of machines. These will be colour-screen hand-helds, running on Windows (specifically, Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002), with built-in mobile phones and providing always-on connection to the Internet at acceptable speeds. The most promising of this new wave is perhaps the O2 xda (www.bitecomm.co.uk/O2xda).

CONSUMERS and businesses can now make claims over the Internet, using a new court service website — Money Claim Online .

The system enables users to recover money owed to them without handling complex forms or setting foot in a county court. The service covers claims, such as unpaid debts and rent arrears, up to the value of £100 000.

The Government hopes that 25,000 undefended claims will be made using the service during 2002, a realistic aim given that only 36,000 of the 1.6 million claims made in 2000 went to trial. This is precisely the kind of ODR (online dispute resolution) that was recommended in the civil justice consultation paper in 1998. Indeed, this is surely electronic government as it should be — reaching out to large numbers of citizens (almost half of UK homes now have Internet access) and providing a modern and streamlined alternative to an often cumbersome paper-based service. Money Claim Online should also help those who might previously have been deterred by the forbidding nature of the process from pursuing their entitlements at all.

The author consults and lectures internationally on technology and the law. He is IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice and Gresham Professor of Law.

E-mail: richard@susskind.com
Original on-line version of the article was published at:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,200-211019,00.html