Ride the Lightning

2019 ABA Legal Technology Survey: Cloud Computing Highlights

October 16, 2019

We were looking forward to the publication of the 2019 ABA Legal Technology Survey, which is full of nuggets that we incorporate in our CLEs. The first of the survey highlights from the report was released on October 2^nd. This one focuses on cloud computing and was written by our colleague and friend Dennis Kennedy.

In 2019, the biggest concerns from the ABA 2019 Legal Technology Survey were the poor—and worsening—cybersecurity approaches lawyers are taking to the use of cloud applications.

The 2019 Survey results again show lawyers still moving much more cautiously to the cloud than the rest of the business world. The 2019 Survey reports that cloud usage bumped up very slightly, up to 58% in 2019 from 55% in 2018. Those not using cloud services dropped slightly—from 33% to 31%. The "Don't know" category decreased slightly to 11%. Solo and small firms continue to lead the way in cloud adoption at around 60%, with the lowest reported adoption in firms with 50-99 lawyers (44%).

As Dennis notes, the 2019 Survey highlights a major concern that, while lawyers talk the talk about security concerns in cloud computing, to a shocking degree they do not walk the walk.

Although lawyers say that confidentiality, security, data control and ownership, ethics, vendor reputation and longevity, and other concerns weigh heavily on their minds, the employment of precautionary security measures is quite low, with no more than 35% (down from 38%) of respondents actually taking any one of the specific standard cautionary cybersecurity measures listed in the 2019 Survey question on the topic. Seven percent of respondents reported taking NONE of the security precautions of the types listed. Only 41% of respondents report that the adoption of cloud computing resulted in changes to internal technology or security policies. These are troubling numbers.

Despite some reservations, lawyers continued to use popular consumer cloud services like Google Apps, iCloud, and Evernote at higher rates than dedicated legal cloud services. Clio and NetDocuments ranked the highest among the legal cloud services.

Lawyers are becoming more familiar with cloud technologies and are attracted by anytime, anywhere access, low cost of entry, predictable monthly expenses, and robust data backup. Almost 30% indicate that cloud services provide the benefit of giving greater security than they can provide on their own.

Of 13 standard precautionary security measures listed in the 2019 Survey, the measure most commonly used was used by only 35% (using secure socket layers – SSL) of the respondents. Given the emphasis on data privacy in 2019 because of the European Union GDPR and "hacking" by state actors, the jaw-dropping decrease from 38% to 28% of respondents reviewing vendor privacy policies is alarming. The next most widely-employed precautions were making local data backups (27%, down from 36% in 2018), reviewing Terms of Service (27%, down from 34%), and reviewing ethical decisions on cloud computing (25%, down from 34%). Would lawyers recommend that their clients take these approaches?

A meager 17%, down from 30% in 2018, sought advice from peers and only 23% evaluated vendor company history, despite the stated importance of vendor reputation (94%) in selecting vendors.

At the very bottom of the results are things that lawyers should do quite well. A mere 4% negotiated confidentiality agreements in connection with cloud services, and, in the next to last place, only 5% negotiated service legal agreements (SLAs). Using data escrow was in the last place (1%).

The 2019 Survey asked respondents what cloud providers they had used. Google Docs topped the list at 37%. Other consumer cloud services also remained popular (notably, iCloud at 27% and Evernote at 16%), despite a lot of discussion about encryption and other security concerns about consumer cloud services in the press and among lawyers. Surprisingly, Office 365 usage is reported at only 7%.

That astonished me as we have seen nothing but a steady forced march to Office 365. What I would like to see is that part of the report which asks what software lawyers are using to generate documents. That will undoubted come out in another highlight report – and I'll bet the number is much higher!

As the summary states, legal-specific cloud services have not reached the same levels of popularity as consumer services. Clio continues to be the most popular legal cloud service named by respondents (11.4%, up from 9.7% in 2018), followed by NetDocuments (8%), and MyCase (6%). These results might reflect both the difficulties lawyers and others have with determining what exactly is a cloud service and the increased number of legal cloud service providers, especially in the case management category. Note that services that many would consider "cloud"—WestLaw, LexisNexis, FastCase, to name a few—do not show up in the results, except possibly as small components of the "Other" category (17%).

From my foxhole, it is dicey asking lawyers about cloud providers. This starts with many of them not knowing what "the cloud" is and it gets worse from there as they have no idea what kind of investigations have been done by their firms or their IT/cybersecurity consultants. So I question the validity of at least some of the results. I truly love this survey, but we are constantly reminded in our interaction with lawyers that they are pretty clueless when it comes to knowing a lot about the legal technology in their firm. And how to ask a question correctly to get the right answer is dicey too. I wouldn't want that job!

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
https://senseient.com
https://twitter.com/sharonnelsonesq
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharondnelson
https://amazon.com/author/sharonnelson