Ride the Lightning

Lawyers and the Cloud: 2020 ABA Legal Technology Report Statistics

November 2, 2020

The 2020 ABA Legal Technology Report is always a good guide to where lawyers are with technology. In this summary of the section on lawyers' use of cloud computing, there are some reasons to be concerned.

The time period is pre-COVID, so take the report with a grain of salt. Cloud usage by lawyers has no doubt increased. But in this report cloud usage was flat at 59%.

67% of lawyers reported using the file sharing and storing service Dropbox. Dropbox is far and away the most commonly-used cloud services for lawyers. Five times as many respondents used Dropbox as the most popular legal-specific cloud tool.

Only 45% of respondents report that the adoption of cloud computing resulted in changes to internal technology or security policies. That of course makes no sense – changes are critical components of adopting cloud computing.

Lawyers are using business cloud services like Dropbox (67%), Microsoft 365 (49%), iCloud (19%), Microsoft Teams (18%), Box (13%), and Evernote (12%) at higher rates than dedicated legal cloud services. Clio and NetDocuments ranked the highest among the legal-specific cloud services.

Only 27% believe that cloud services provide the benefit of giving greater security than they can provide on themselves. This is concerning since experts know full well that the cloud does provide greater security.

Concerns about confidentiality/security (60%) and lack of control over data lead the "biggest concerns" list about cloud services. Almost 94% of lawyers rate the reputation of the vendor as important (very, 74%, and somewhat, 20%) in their decision-making process.

27% of respondents review vendor privacy policies. Only 27% reviewed ethical rules and opinions on cloud computing and 24% reported that they reviewed terms of service. Those are very alarming statistics.

Only 9% (up from 4%) negotiated confidentiality agreements in connection with cloud services and only 5% negotiated service legal agreements (SLAs).

These results are concerning in a COVID-19 and work-from-home world, to say the least. It seems to me, reading the results, that lawyers (no surprise here) are not even sure when they are using the cloud. There are very few lawyers who are not using the cloud in some way, whether they know it or not. It will be fascinating to see next year's report given the fact that cloud computing (as Clio CEO Jack Newton has stated) have become "table stakes." If you not using the cloud, you're not in the game.

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