Judge Sally Montgomery says her business is still done best with books.

As the presiding judge over the county's five courts that handle civil cases, she and the other judges aren't ready for all digital justice.

"If we had to go to the Internet, the expense would be to the taxpayers, because they couldn't get their cases tried as nearly as rapidly," she said.

Montgomery says lawsuits go faster when judges and attorneys can look up cases the old fashioned way - in books.

So to keep up with a growing caseload, Montgomery wants the county to spend about $11,500 to buy new law books for each court and a library shared by the judges.

But under a new policy effective in September, county commissioners want to stop buying law books.

They're expensive and become dated. Old books already fill a warehouse floor.

"This has taken a long time to get through weaning the judges off of the hard books," said Ken Mayfield, Dallas County Commissioner.

But there's disagreement whether law online is faster.

"We would have people having to wait to have their motions heard while we painstakingly pulled it up on the Internet," said Montgomery.

"It's a whole lot more inefficient to flip through a book than to do that online on a laptop," said Mayfield.

As government and business look to cut costs, the argument echoes: what's better paper or computers?

Commissioners will decide next month when they set the budget.

"Why should we buy books when they can get it all online," said Maurine Dickey, Dallas County Commissioner.

"With that attitude we'd need to get rid of all of our libraries in this country," Montgomery added.