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It’s 2016 and most of you are using smartphones
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: December 30, 2016
This year in technology for the general population or other professions correlates roughly to 2006 for the legal profession. But you’re getting better!
The most recent ABA legal technology survey from the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center found that most attorneys now use mobile devices both for work and to keep track of work when out of the office.
More than 93 percent of attorneys now use smartphones. I’m guessing the other seven percent are nearing retirement or have the official contrarian position, although a little more than 10 percent of solo practitioners do not use one. So that might mean something.
Of those attorneys using smartphones, 68.4 percent have iPhones. This is virtually the opposite of the general population, which uses Androids phones at the rate of 80 percent of the market (according to Gartner’s).
For attorneys, 21.1 percent are using Android, a decrease of about 2.5 percent from 2015. The rest are using something that doesn’t work, isn’t selling, or they don’t know what they have.
One interesting question in the survey covered smartphone use away from the office to perform office functions like checking email, editing text, or whatever those ceaselessly driven to work do in their spare time. Only about seven percent of attorneys who have smartphones completely unplug when not at work, and do not use them for office connection away from the office. That number has been steadily decreasing through the years.
For the first time in the history of this annual survey, more than half of all lawyers surveyed use some kind of tablet for work. The vast majority of those use the iPad (43 percent of all attorneys); about 10 percent use an Android tablet, and a few use Windows tablets (less than two percent use the new Surface—the one Bill Belichick threw down and shattered).
Top five mobile apps used by lawyers are: Westlaw; Fastcase; Lexis Advance; “a legal dictionary app”; and TrialPad.
The top general business apps used by attorneys are Dropbox; LinkedIn; Evernote; GoodReader; and Documents to Go; followed by QuickOffice; Box; LogMeIn; and Notability.