Ride the Lightning

The Astonishing Stats from Clio’s Legal Trends Report

October 22, 2020

I am late in getting to this post, but thanks again to Clio CEO Jack Newton and his wonderful staff for getting me the slides from the presentation of the data from Clio's Legal Trends Report which was officially released last Tuesday. George Psiharis did a splendid job of taking attendees through the report.

Since the conference concluded, we've already talked about these stats during webinars with the law students at the Antonin Scalia Law School and the University of Oklahoma College of Law – they were amazed at how quickly law practice is evolving in response to COVID.

How are lawyers planning to change their ways? Just look at these stats:

• 96% say they'll store firm data in the cloud.
• 95% say they'll support electronic documents and signatures.
• 96% say they'll accept electronic payments.
• 96% say they'll use practice management software.
• 83% say they'll meet clients through videoconferencing.

I don't know what these stats were just before the pandemic, but I can guarantee you they were much lower. As Jack said, we moved forward 10 years in 10 weeks.

And how are they operating now?

• 85% of law firms are using software to manage their practice.
• 79% of lawyers rely on cloud technology to store their firm's data.
• 62% of firms allow clients to securely share and sign documents electronically.
• 73% of firms allow clients to pay invoices electronically.
• 83% of firms are meeting with clients virtually

As you can see, they are doing much better with technology now and plan to do MUCH better in the future.

Clients and lawyers are also converging on a consensus – that brick and mortar offices are not very important. More than half of consumers believe that most legal matters can be handled remotely.

Before the pandemic, 21% of law firms were operating without commercial office space. Since the pandemic, another 7% of lawyers have given up their commercial offices and 12% are unsure they'll keep them in the future.

The larger firms will no doubt still keep offices, but may scale them back – and certainly reconfigure them.

There is a lot of great data in the report, which you can read here.

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
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Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
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