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Shouldn’t legal tech, marketing and publishing professionals know how our courts and legal system works?

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September 15, 2022

The National Center for State Courts shared on Twitter the below brief video about state courts this morning. What they are, how they function and how they differ from federal courts.

Most would quickly dismiss the video as something that may be seen in a fifth grade civics class.

Got me wondering though how many professionals working in businesses ancialllary to the law know how our court system works. Professionals working in legal technology companies, legal marketing, legal publishing and the like.

A working knowledge of the legal system and our courts seems important, to me, if you are working in the legal industry and services anciallary to our legal system.

How can you work in an industry (the legal system here) if you don’t know how it works?

At a mimum such knowledge enables you to envision solutions benefiting people served by our legal system.

I’ll concede it wasn’t much, but in the early days of LexBlog I sat down with new employees to review our court system – state courts, federal courts, trial courts, appellate courts, administrative matters.

I reviewed how the lawyers we served, via our blog publishing system, played their part in this legal system.

Drawing things out on a tear sheet, we discussed the roles of employees in our legal system – clerks, bailiffs and judges – and law office employees, including lawyers, paralegals, secretaries and admininistrators – and how important each were in our legal system.

I explained what we should all appreciate having the opportunity to work in a business serving the law. That it’s an honor to work in one of the three branches of government. A branch the founding fathers saw as a check on the other two – protecting our rights and having our back.