Lawyers and Machines

Date01 March 1963
Published date01 March 1963
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1963.tb00703.x
AuthorColin Tapper.*
THE
MODERN
LAW
REVIEW
Volume
26
March
1963
No.
2
LAFirYERS
AND
MACHINES
1.
HUMAN
EFFORT
AND
MACHINES
THE
nature of the distinction between mind and body has puzzled
doctors of medicine, divinity and philosophy throughout the ages.
But like most such puzzles it has passed the layman by. He is
perfectly well able to distinguish, if not between mind and body,
then between mental and physical effort.
For
him physical effort
means using his bones and muscles, and mental effort means using
his brain.
Of
course when this distinction is applied to human
activities it
is
found to be somewhat blunt, since most human
activities involve both mental and physical effort. Nevertheless
they are mixed in different proportions in different activities, and it
is quite clear that digging the garden involves
a
higher ratio of
physical effort to mental than solving
a
mathematical problem.
Human activities take place in
a
context, the context
of
a
world
in which there exist other human beings, other living things and
things which are not alive. Even these seemingly self-evident
pro-
positions have excited the activities
of
some of the doctors, but here
too their concern
is
not the layman's. He can and does make these
simple distinctions, and
for
the most part makes them with
con-
sistency and unanimity. He recognises that human beings can
usually control their own actions, that they sometimes make plans
for
themselves, and that they occasionally relate their actions to
their plans. Many
of
these plans would be frustrated if a human
being had to rely solely on his own resources. Accordingly a
human being has to supplement his own resources. Sometimes he
turns to other human beings to help him, sometimes he uses other
living things and sometimes he uses things which are not alive.
When he is using in an indirect way something which is not alive
he
is
sometimes said to be using a tool
or
a machine. The nature of
this distinction is vague, and complicated by the existence
of
such
things as machine tools, but the word
"
machine
"
is
generally used
to refer to a fairly complicated device, often with its own power
supply.
As
civilisation develops, the number and variety
of
machines tend to increase to keep pace with the increase in the
number and variety
of
ways
in
which individual human beings
121
VOL
26
6
122
THE
MODERN
LAW REVIEW
Va.
28
wish to supplement their resources. Then human foresight being as
imperfect as it
is,
awareness of the possibilities of the machine itself
stimulates new human activities and
so
gives rise to fresh waves of
demands. In the twentieth century
it
is obvious that the standard
of living achieved in the richer countries of the world depends upon
the existence of machines and would slump disastrously without
them. This does not mean that machines, particularly new
machines, are always popular.
On
the contrary they are highly
suspected. All change is suspect, and change which replaces the
efforts of human beings is most suspect of all. Indeed
if
machines
did merely replace the efforts of human beings there would be cause
for suspicion. But the advantage of the machine
is
that it not only
replaces the efforts of human beings but
at
the same time releases
them for some other activity. The great gains lie in the multipli-
cation of possible activities over
a
given period
of
time, and in the
use of human effort where
it
is most needed.
It
is
because these
gains have been made that today machines help to sustain high
standards of living. This has not always been perceived. The
Luddites are often cited as an example of such lack of perception,
though
in
fact they were probably more clear sighted than their
masters who were merely using the machines to replace the workers,
and at a time when there was little chance of the workers’ efforts
being used elsewhere.
There is probably
no
facet
of
modern life completely innocent of
machines, although not all have been mechanised to the same
extent nor at the same pace. Some human activities are more
resistant to change than others, and some, not always the same
ones, are less suitable for mechanisation. The law comes into both
categories. Lawyers are tiaditionally conservative,1 and their work
requires more mental than physical effort. Even
so,
inroads have
been made, for example, the physical effort of holding a writing
instrument when drafting an
opinion
has largely been replaced by
the advent of the dictaphone. In many other ways the physical
side of the lawyer’s work has been reduced, though it must be
admitted that the aid of other human beings, such
as
clerks and
secretaries, has played
a
rather larger part than that played by the
machine.
If
it
were true that machines replaced only physical effort, the
distinction between mental and physical effort could
be
retained
in
this context and the lawyers could relax comfortably
on
the cushion
of their current practice. But
it
is not true. Addition of numbers,
for example, undeniably demands mental effort, yet machines have
long been capable of performing this feat much faster and more
reliably than any human being could hope to perform it.
In
fact,
the crude distinction between mental and physical effort has little
usefulness in connection with machines, and has to be replaced.
It
1
The Chancery Division’s resistence
to
typewriters, the
poetal
aervice
and
telephones wm
exposed
in
the
Harman
Report
:
(1960)
Cmnd.
967.

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