Ken Strutin, who wrote about criminal justice issues in the digital age, has died at age 56.

Strutin, who wrote the Technology Today column for the New York Law Journal, devoted his career to educating the bar about new litigation strategies that emerged after the dawn of the World Wide Web.

“Ken's passing is a tremendous loss to the Defenders Association, to the incarcerated persons he endeavored so hard to help, and to the broader community of readers of his trenchant legal commentary,” said Charles F. O'Brien, executive director of the New York State Defenders Association.

As director of legal information services for the New York State Defenders Association, Strutin helped thousands of incarcerated people. He argued forcefully for expanding the right to counsel beyond current constitutional limits.

“The legal profession is diminished every time a gavel falls on the cause of the unrepresented,” he once wrote, “and no one feels that weight more than the pro se prisoner.”

After graduating from Temple University Law School, he began his career as a trial attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Nassau County and then the Orange County Legal Aid Society. In 1994, he abandoned the courtroom to earn a master's degree in library science from St. John's University.

He died Nov. 30 after a brief illness. He is survived by his father, Fred Strutin; brother, Dr. Millard Strutin; and sister, Stephanie Zuckerman. Funeral services were private.

Read Some of His Columns: