By Brian Anderson
Valley Times

Sept. 10, 2000

WALNUT CREEK — From the lobby, Clancy, Weisinger and Associates looks pretty much like most law offices.

A receptionist sits at a desk topped with a small, bronze replica of the scales of justice. There is a closed-door conference room where an expert witness is being prepped for trial. And, of course, a couple of lawyers are tucked behind dark wooden desks, busy with the day's duties.

But not so apparent are the staples of the American law firm, the standard knick-knacks Hollywood directors cram into television legal dramas to give sets an instinctive judicial aura.

There are few boxes bulging with papers from cases past, and the cliché rows of thick, dusty law books are instead a couple of volumes stuffed in a corner rack.

"There are some old (books) in the back that are for looks," said attorney Patrick Clancy. "They're not even updated. They're a total waste."

Welcome to the future of American law, where e-lawyers, as Clancy identifies himself on his business card, use new-world technology to replace old-school tricks of the trade. It's where being an attorney is as much about knowing the Web programming language of HTML as it is being versed in the language of law. And at Clancy's workplace, a firm that, through a courtroom victory, forced the Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office to board the electronic revolution, it's a way of daily life.

The small Walnut Creek firm is a premier player in a legal world that's still, at least digitally, in diapers. With high-speed laptops and scanners that read 25 double-sided pages a minute, it is an early Goliath in a soon-to-be commonplace arena.

The firm's nucleus is Clancy's corner office in a red brick office building along South Main Street. Whirring just inside his door are three servers powering his Web site, www.accused.com, which, Clancy proudly notes, he built himself.

The site is a near-bottomless host to information and resources about the firm's specialty -- sexual and physical abuse. Visitors can watch an hourlong movie about memory recovery and sign up for newsletters. They can buy books, download legal briefs or find support groups.

"We get a lot of dot-govs," Clancy said of the 30,000 hits his site registers each month. "D.A.s visit my Web site all the time. I'll go into a case and the D.A. will have printouts of my Web site."

The home on the Web is just the beginning.

The office's lack of boxes of copied cases is testament to its almost entirely electronic operation. Documents that come through the door are scanned into computers and saved on disks where they are viewed, searched, highlighted, noted, indexed, sliced and diced, Clancy said, using Adobe software. A handful of paper shredders take care of them from there.

Forever burned onto CD-ROMs, cases that have run their legal course are tossed in folders and dropped into a filing cabinet in a closet-like room that is shared with a copy machine.

"This would have filled the room," Clancy said, glancing over a drawer of files holding the details of several dozen cases. "We used to have storage problems."

Adding to the firm's electronic prowess is an arsenal of high-end gadgetry. There are projectors that flash photos before jurors and software that can bring a crime scene to life. Everything and anything to paint a picture that their clients are not guilty.

And as for those outdated books, their contents and galaxies more are still available to the firm — online.