I hear the naysayers. According to the technophobes and others who continue to kick and scream about the invasion of technology into their practices, the recent “virus intrusion” that paralyzed the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas highlights why we should return to paper filing, and scrap systems like Pacer, PACFile and, of course, the one used so successfully for many years in the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania.

I disagree.

Returning to paper filing, and curtailing online access to court records, is not a viable option any more than it is possible to return to the days when lawyers used paper versions of Shepard's Citations and smartphones were the stuff of “Star Trek” and even “Lost in Space.” While the court's reference to a “virus intrusion” is sufficiently vague to prevent the public from learning exactly what happened, we can assume that a virus, malware or ransomware is the cause of the problem.