This year's global gathering of the great and the good in legal IT brought with it real energy and innovation. We are in a fast-changing world and the Legal IT Forum attendees will play a key role.

I have always been impressed by how business-focused attendees are. However, this year has seen a step-change and 'business' was very much the language of the conference. The delegates wanted to talk about their firm's issues and how they, rather than technology, could solve them. Speaking on behalf of partners at all law firms, the legal IT industry is exactly where we need it to be.

Everything bad is good for you

One of the conference's key themes was challenging established norms – everything good is bad. We asked ourselves such questions as, should we be moving towards matter-centric views; are paperless files actually a good thing; and do lawyers really want instant messaging?

The popular perception is that a lawyer's life in the future will be dull. Lawyers will be using case and matter management systems like robots, skills will be limited and law firms will become like factories. We discussed how the book Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Popular Culture Is Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson argues that – contrary to received wisdom – popular culture, computers and computer games are not dumbing down society. IQ is actually rising as brains develop the ability to analyse multiple channels.

What does this mean for the future of legal IT? Will lawyers using technology become more intelligent? Will 'laid-forward' media such as computers develop lawyers' brains much more than 'laid-back' media such as books ever could? What will this mean for the profession? More laws, more complexity, a bigger legal market rather than a smaller one, or perhaps we will have Richard Susskind's paradigm shift via the backdoor.

Life and technology in the future

Delegates heard how we are suffering from information overload. Quantity is winning over quality. To quote Richard Tomkins in the Financial Times, if you put a monkey in front of a typewriter and wait, it will eventually produce a work of Shakespeare. To state the obvious, there will also be a huge quantity of poor output that someone needs to review.

This is the approach of today's world and applies to legal IT. We are encouraging the growth of information for information's sake. Every memo of the past is replaced by 20 less-considered e-mails. Knowledge management and client relationship management systems provide access to even more information, but are we confusing action with progress?

We also heard how tomorrow's population is referred to as the iPod generation – insecure, pressurised, over-taxed and debt-ridden – a reflection of where society is going. On the one hand, lawyers will be under huge pressure to invest in technology. Clients will want increased efficiency, transparency and real expertise. E-conveyancing, e-billing and e-litigation will have to be financed. On the other, the market will harden with China, Clementi and US firms playing their part.

We heard how China and other low-cost economies might dominate our world. We have the $100 wind-up PC being introduced in the developing world. What effect will this have on our markets? Ian Pearson, chief futurologist from BT, reported how we are going to have a hippy revival – cyber drugs and edible electronics together with e-babies and ego badges.

Other theories put forward suggested that hard drives would disappear, with people carrying around personal information as portable media instead. There is going to be an increase in identity theft and the industry of trust brokering/security will grow. The public internet will collapse due to spam and an alternative will need to be found. Teleworking and thin client technologies will increase.

Computers may also become too clever. At the moment we are only 100 times cleverer than computers, and they are gaining fast. They may map out our processes automatically. Nano-technology advances means that plant and human matter will be replicated. There is a risk of a technology backlash.

The future for law firms

It was reported that law firms were not really learning from boom-and-bust cycles. According to consultant Alan Hodgart, it is cost savings rather than increased fees per fee earner that is delivering improved law firm profit margins. Tony Williams of Jomati talked to us about thousands of US legal jobs being potentially outsourced to lower-cost economies.

Beachcroft Wansbroughs' Jeffrey Ng and Richard Booty from Visualfiles talked about how increasing efficiency and winning clients were the two main drivers for how technology was being implemented. We questioned whether firms were really delivering in either of these areas?

Williams also wondered why firms seemed to be of the opinion that commoditisation was bad. Clearly Tesco was a much more formidable business than Fortnum & Mason. On Clementi there were no answers, but Robert Dow of PLC told us how we needed to segment our markets more and perhaps law firms could not be masters of all.

Somewhat surprisingly, e-business barely got a mention at the conference. Six years ago, the room was full of bold talk from future dotcom millionaires. This year Gordon Brewster, IT director at the Law Society of Scotland, and Rosemary Kind, chief finance officer and finance director at Shoosmiths, ran a debating session and the legal IT community's conclusion was that legal e-business really was going to increase. But is this actually the case?

There was much talk about Clementi but no one delivered the answers. If we do not do anything in this area, will Tesco law overtake or deny us the opportunity in the future? Have we got our head round the real issues here? There may well be a consumer market but is there a big enough business-to-business market to justify an investment in this area? Will the services be what clients actually want and will clients be willing to pay?

We listened to Peter Goodman, a senior commander for West Midlands Police. Peter delivered a fascinating talk on the use of technology in modern day policing. The talk reminded delegates of how broad the legal market is and the number of challenges coming our way.

We also have fundamental changes coming down the track such as e-conveyancing and e-litigation. Allvision Computing's Andrew Haslam gave an excellent presentation on e-litigation but the question remains as to whether law firms have really got this area sorted. On knowledge management, are law firms still in a state of flux or do they feel they have thought-through business solutions?

On a positive note, Peter Owen from Lightson Consulting delivered some thought-through work from the Legal IT Innovators Group (LITiG) on paperless files.

The client is king

Speakers at the conference raised the question of whether clients' needs are adequately reflected in the technology available to them. Clients are becoming more sophisticated in this area and have a real need, although often no budget. Andrew Dey of Barclays and Kevin Connell of BP talked about the in-house technology market.

The in-house perspective is that there are a lot of barriers, vendors do not understand and it is hard to find focused systems. Often Microsoft Office is the only global solution. That being said, things will change. Techno savvy clients are on the increase.

Clients and law firms are also beginning to collaborate, with a number of important announcements from LITiG (see www.litig.org). Standards relating to e-billing, knowledge and event taxonomies now exist.

Gillian Switalski, head of legal at F&C, also presented a client perspective. Law firms are still not being proactive enough and client care is non-existent. There is an opportunity for someone to deliver real solutions in this area.

The opportunity

Tomorrow's world will be tough but the good news is that technology change will be at the heart of everything. Change brings opportunity. Thankfully, many of the answers are in the heads of the delegates. We are now entering the golden age of legal IT, the arena in which legal technologists have the opportunity to perform. Derek Southall is head of strategic development at Wragge & Co, and was chair of the 2005 Legal IT Forum.