Ride the Lightning

Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Survey: The Most Effective Tech Tools for Lawyers

August 12, 2019

On August 7th, our friend Bob Ambrogi posted on his LawSites blog the results of the 2019 Aderant Business of Law and Legal Technology Survey, published by Aderant, a global provider of business management software for law firms.

If you thought that AI and blockchain would be ranked as some of the most effective tech tools for lawyers, well, they simply weren't. In fact, they were at the bottom of the list. To add our own anecdotal insights, we are just beginning to see law firms, including solo/small firms using AI receptionists and AI incorporated in legal research. The numbers are small but growing.

The survey asked lawyers about the technology tools that have the greatest impact on their ability to work efficiently and manage their work effectively.

Here are the tools which lawyers ranked as having the greatest impact on their efficiency.

  1. Document management.
  2. Time and billing.
  3. Case management.
  4. Financial management.
  5. E-discovery.
  6. Docketing.
  7. Knowledge management.
  8. Mobility and mobile applications.
  9. Business intelligence.
  10. Matter pricing and planning.

The survey also asked law firms about their adoption of cloud technologies. Three-quarters said their firm is "somewhat" or "slightly" in the cloud. But only 2% say their firm is completely cloud based and just 12% are mostly cloud based. Another 12% do not use the cloud at all. These numbers were generally consistent across firms of all sizes, the survey reported.

Here I suspect that ignorance was in play. Law firms and lawyers use the cloud more than they know – they aren't in the business of providing IT/cybersecurity and have no idea how their backups are handled. These days, it is the very rare law firm we see that doesn't have cloud backups. Since ransomware has caused an explosion of carefully engineered, multiple backups (usually in the cloud), I am guessing that many respondents don't know how their backups are managed.

Are firms entirely cloud-based? No, but they are becoming more cloud-based every year. Somehow, many lawyers don't understand that if they are primarily working with Office 365 (or have case management systems like Clio, Rocket Matter or MyCase), that IS the cloud. So I think the numbers in the survey are inadvertently skewed.

On the topic of ebilling, the survey found that 29% of law firms process half or more of their invoices through client spend-management or ebilling systems. That is up 9 percent from the prior year. That number seems right based on our experience. Without question ebilling is preferred by most clients and gives you a more reliable cash flow.

The survey questioned 147 business-of-law and legal professionals from law firms all over the world, with 87% of responses from North America. Most respondents (87%) were from larger firms in the U.S.

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
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