The paper discusses some new developments that should evolve during the next decade in automating the handling of legal information. These new developments include: automated question-answering systems to provide quick and inexpensive answers to many non-controversial, but not necessarily simple legal questions to aid lawyers, social and welfare workers, administrators, police, and the public itself; automated consistance-checking, and consequence-finding systems to aid in codifications and law reforms for legislative and administrative bodies; automated systems to assist in teaching law and legal reasoning for those who need to know the law; and automated interviewing systems for initial client and witness screening. Also included in the paper are: a brief survey of recent applications of computers to the law, a discussion of the types of automation that are presently needed, and an outline of current developments in artificial intelligence which could be applied to aid in the automation of the law. (Author)