What's Hot and Not With Small and Mid-Size Law Firm Technology
This article was first published in Law Office Management and Administration Report, October 2003
By David P. Whelan, director, ABA Legal Technology Resource Center
If your law firm is typical of most U.S. private practices, odds are your technology has not changed much in the past few years. According to our recently released 2002 Legal Technology Survey, law firms now adapt technology on an as needed basis. But for the most part, the majority of the 3094 respondents to our survey (35% were associated with small firms, which we define as having 2-20 lawyers) seem comfortable using tried and true applications and keeping their eyes open for the next tool that will help them better serve their clients. Consider the following findings revealed in our new data:
- Lawyers continue to see new technologies as tools, while shunning the latest fads. Consequently, our survey suggests that while some pockets of the profession are moving ahead with cutting edge technology (such as real-time transcription in the courtroom) others are lagging behind. As we note in our survey, however, “it seems inevitable that the erratic adoption of new technologies within the legal profession will even out as those technologies become more mature, offering economic efficiencies, and other incentives that are simply too powerful to overlook.”
- Technology planning and decision making also happens on an as-needed basis. According to the data, only 29% of respondents (compared to 27% in last year’s survey) indicate that their firms rely on a technology committee. Moreover, the number of respondents who report having a multi-year strategic technology plan also declined from almost 25% last year, to 21% this year. Only 20% of those queried say they have a multi-year technology budget in place and-as one would expect give the sluggish economy-the mean projected budget for 2003 was lower ($85, 650) this year than was reported in 2002 ($90, 518).
- Solos and small firms are more likely than larger firms to have adopted Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) wireless networks. Overall, 4% of respondents indicated that their firm had wireless, but 6% of solos were using it. Consider: If you are in a solo or small firm environment, consider the dual 802.11a/802.11g access points for greatest coverage, speeds, and compatibility.
- Personal digital assistants (PDAs) are gaining ground, with nearly 40% of respondents having access to one and 36% actually using one. Still, most lawyers use a desktop computer and laptops remain the primary tool of only about 20% of lawyers. Unless you intend to travel significantly - even between home, office, and the courts - stick with a desktop computer to get the most power for the least expense.
- Dial-up connections are still commonplace. Our data show that solos remain the greatest users of dial-up connections-56 Kbps modems, primarily-for Internet access from the office. However, a type of broadband Internet access called a digital subscriber line (DSL) is the predominant connection method for all law firms, used by 28.4%, edging out the 24.6% of firms using T1/T3 dedicated lines. Consider: if you haven’t already, choose a broadband connection to greatly enhance your communications and electronic capabilities.
- Spam filters are not used to the extent necessary. E-mail and Internet use continues to climb towards universal adoption. Over 93% have access to e-mail (although less than 73% use it) and nearly 98% have access to the Internet while in the office. Of those using e-mail, nearly 80% send work-related messages, but only about half filter or otherwise circumvent their messages. Consider: using filters built-in to your Microsoft Outlook or other e-mail software, or purchasing specialized software to delete spam messages and otherwise manage the increasing amount of e-mail your firm receives.
- Some technologies remain more hype than reality for lawyers, although firm size can determine availability and, possibly, use. Videoconferencing, for example, has only been used by about 30% of lawyers responding to the survey. It is available nearly exclusively at firms with more than 100 lawyers and is used predominantly by those firms as well.
- Microsoft products continue to gain in popularity over others, with over 72.5% using Word or Office as their word processor, and nearly 95% using some version of a Microsoft Windows operating system. Only 1.7% of respondent to our survey say that they use Apple Macintosh.
- Legal research remains the domain of the lawyers, with 90% of lawyers in all firms performing their own research. Similarly, 92% of lawyers perform some kind of research on the Internet, with more than half preferring the Google search engine.
- Law firms turn to a range of inside and outside experts to develop, maintain, and provide content for their Web sites, our survey shows. Every firm with 50 or more lawyers surveyed had a Web site, and the percentage remained consistently high in firms of all sizes: 85% of firms with 10-49 lawyers and 56% of firms with 2-9 lawyers have a Web site. Interestingly, although 39% of respondents overall use an outside consultant or provider to develop their Web site, 17% relied on an individual lawyer, 10% on marketing staff, 10% on firm information systems (IS) staff, and 8% turned to multiple lawyers in the firm. Web site updates and maintenance, however, were most often handled by outside providers (23%), a single firm lawyer (22%), IS staff (21%), and marketing staff (16%).
