The future is now: 'technology can free us from menial ... tasks so that we can focus on solving interesting and complex legal problems'.

Described by many as a free-thinking, fearless adventurer who revels in pushing people out of their comfort zones, Florida Bar President Ramon Abadin admitted he actually has three fears.

"I fear failure. I fear apathy. I fear complacency," 56-year-old Abadin, a trial lawyer and partner at Sedgwick LLP in Miami, told the General Assembly June 26, at the Bar's Annual Convention.

He then fearlessly launched into an enthusiastic wakeup call to Florida's lawyers and judges to help him take advantage of "the boundless opportunities made possible by technology" and realize "we can't operate today under rules from a different era. That structure simply does not work."

His eye-opening call to action advocated changing rules regarding fee-splitting with nonlawyers so they may work with companies that create online legal services; expanding limited-scope representation, sometimes called "unbundling," to all civil justice matters; changing rules restricting reciprocity; adopting the Uniform Bar Exam; giving law schools freedom to develop courses to better prepare every student to practice law; and perhaps solving the access to justice problem by creating a new type of paraprofessional.

"Since the beginning of our republic, we lawyers have had a monopoly over the practice of law. We've had exclusive access to the law. We held the keys to the law library and to the courthouse. Anyone with a legal problem had to see a lawyer. We set the standards of admission. We restricted access to the Bar and controlled who could give legal advice. We decided what we needed to know and what the client should know," Abadin said.

"We set the process and we made the rules--thousands and thousands of them! We didn't have to think outside the box. We created the box!"

But, Abadin said, those rules governing the legal profession today were set in place more than six decades ago, and some go back to the turn of the 20th century.

With images on a giant screen to illustrate his points, Abadin showed that when licensing rules were first promulgated by the Legislature in 1822, modern transportation was a horse and buggy and a quill-and-ink pen was the form of communication. In 1925, when the Board of Law Examiners was formed, the Ford Model T and the cradle phone were considered modern. In 1965, when the first UPL rules were adopted, the SR-71 Blackbird was the new-fangled stealth aircraft and the princess rotary dial phone was the latest communication gizmo. In 1986, when...