I spotted a series of reports from Law Technology Today, which I’m linking to as I summarize their findings. In the awkwardly named “American Bar Association 2022 Legal Technology Survey Reports of Law Office Technology and Technology Basics and Security,” data is summarized to try and break down technology use across solo practitioners, firms of 2-9 attorneys, firms of 10-49 attorneys, firms of 50-99 attorneys, firms of 100-499 attorneys, and firms of 500 or more attorneys.
Desktops are on the decline in favor of laptops, unsurprisingly. In 2019, 57% of respondents reported using a desktop as their primary computer. In 2022, 41% of respondents reported using the desktop as their primary computer. Fifty-six percent of respondents reported using a laptop as their primary computer, including 45% using a laptop docked with one or more monitors.
More interestingly, practice management software, which would be the specific line of the business app for lawyers. Sixty-three percent of the respondents reported the availability of case/practice management software at their firms. The availability of practice management software has increased steadily in every demographic since 2019 regarding the use of case/practice management software. The percentage of responses for solo practitioners rose from 32% in 2021 to 45% in 2022; for firms of 10-49 attorneys, the number increased from 22% to 40%; and for firms of 100 more attorneys, the number went from 17% to 19%. For larger firms, this number has remained relatively steady since 2019. However, the percentage of respondents in firms from 2-9 attorneys who actually used case/practice management software dropped from 61% to 46%.
On security, The majority of respondents used some form of security tools in their practice, ranging from two-factor authentication (53%) to virus scanning (64%) to mandatory passwords (74%). Reviewing the data, the use and implementation of encryption tools should remain a focus of concern. Only 40.1% of those surveyed used encryption for their email, and 49.2 used encryption for their files. The fewest percentage of users came from firms with 2-9 attorneys (30.4% for email, 34.8% for files), with the greatest number of those using encryption being in firms of 500 or more (53.3% for email, 76.7% for files).
And finally, let’s look at cloud usage, which the survey authors note lags behind the overall industry. In 2022, 70% of respondents reported using cloud computing, up from 60% in 2021. For solos, cloud users moved from 52% to 84% in just one year. Lawyers continued to use popular business cloud services like Dropbox (66%), Microsoft 365 (59%), Microsoft Teams (51%), iCloud (21%), and Box (18%) at rates far higher than dedicated legal cloud services.
Why do we care?
This is industry specific and useful to those who serve the legal space and those who don’t. I won’t dwell on the PC data – that should be obvious. It’s the practice management software data I wanted to focus on.
Availability vs. use – there’s a real gap. It speaks to not needing more technology and instead using the technology a business has. Training, consulting, and further implementation are obvious solutions here, and what better pitch to customers than helping them be effective with the technology they already have versus needing more?
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that this is also a failure of the technology, and tech services, industry. If customers have tools they bought and don’t use, that’s a problem. One to address, for sure. Just important to recognize the problem first.
Super valuable data here.