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A year in tech trends, part 2
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: January 2, 2015
Legal case management software company Aderant has released its annual survey of trends in law technology. Here are some highlights. Maybe you can see where your firm fits in.
The survey found a shift in the reasons that firms adopt new technologies, or upgrade current services. Choices firms face are generally between optimizing or upgrading current equipment and software, and investing in new.
Somewhere in the middle lies the use of technology in marketing, the use of social media, and so forth.
In previous surveys, a majority of small and mid-sized firms engaged new tech because of the service/software provider’s customer service and performance. In 2014, the primary reason shifted to the functionality of the service itself. Sounds to me like this could be an indicator that lawyers are getting smarter about their software.
Price, by the way, was cited by only 5 percent of respondents in small to mid-sized firms, and 10 percent of large firms (over 50 lawyers).
As we’ve written about before, there are numerous reasons that lawyers acquire technology. Interestingly, small to mid-sized firms devote more than half of their business efforts, based upon their basic business models, to acquiring new clients, and another 13 percent to upselling current clients. Half of those firms expect to add lawyers and staff.
Improving client satisfaction came in at 7 percent and employee satisfaction clocked in at a robust 1 percent.
Fourteen percent of respondents list lowering business costs as their primary objective; a majority of those are seeking to optimize existing technology as a part of that business plan.
In what looks like it could be a stabilizing trend, only 11 percent of small firms laid off people last year. It was double that number for the large firms.
Of the firms that listed selling more services to existing clients as their most important business objective, more than 70 percent of them are investing in technological tools to help that effort, as opposed to firms that do not have that as a primary business objective. Less than 20 percent of those firms are investing in new technology. But nearly half of small/mid-sized firms are investing in marketing, business development, etc.