I think that I shall never see

Whatever happened to the paperless society?

Once upon a time I remember reading that with computers we'd eventually find we didn't need paper.

So why am I still dumping loads of paper in the local recycling dumpster?

Obviously we still have newspapers despite predictions that the 'Net would cause their demise. They may go the way of the dinosaur, but not for a while.

I left newspapers to become a paralegal and discovered a whole new profession dedicated to the construction of trees.

Our office does title opinions for the natural gas industry.

On a frequent basis, we receive boxes full of materials we have to review to trace the chain of title for properties the gas companies intend to drill on.

The boxes contain notebooks full of paper, sometimes of a couple of thousand pages.

Our lawyers will review those thousands of pages and then produce opinions, which will be printed out for other lawyers and the paralegals to review.

More printouts will follow, and in the end, even a simple opinion can consume a ream of paper.

More complicated opinions consume cases of reams of paper.

It's not like we don't have computers and sophisticated word processing programs that could eliminate the need for paper. Those tools just make it easier for us to use up paper.

According to Conservatree -- whoever they are -- one ream of paper only requires 6 percent of a tree. I assume that's a fairly large tree.

I've not paid close attention, but it may take us all of a week to use a whole tree.

That would mean just 52 trees a year. Doesn't seem too bad. Maybe twice that much if you include the paper the companies sent to us.

But how many other firms are consuming that much paper, or more?

This is not an environmental rant. I just can't figure out why we continue to do something we don't have to do.

This trend isn't likely to end any time soon, either. Most of our lawyers are young, and we're teaching them that this is the way to do things.

They're the computer savvy generation who should be making the change, but I don't think I'll ever see it.

Drat. The printer's out of paper again.