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2013 legal tech survey
RICHARD WEINER
Law and Technology
Published: March 7, 2014
The 2013 International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual law firm survey is out. Here are some of the findings, broken down by firm size (over and under 50 lawyers).
Like 2012, purchases focused on core hardware and mission critical software purchases, while software upgrades declined. Purchases of printers/MFDs and server-based virtualization was strong, the same as last year.
Overall technology spending as a percentage of total revenue, and per attorney, was down in 2013. In 2012, more than 60 percent of large firms spent 2 to 4 percent of income on technology, percentages that comprise the majority of firms. In 2013, less than half did.
Sixty percent of over-50 firms spent less than $8,000 per attorney on tech; only a quarter of smaller firms responded in that way.
Tech spending went this way for all firms: 58 percent bought desktop hardware; 49 percent bought laptops/notebooks; 48 percent bought storage area networks (scared of the cloud?); 44 percent upgraded their networks/servers and 33 percent spent money on disaster recovery.
Smaller firms out-purchased the larger firms in cost recovery; courtroom technology/trial presentation software; dictation hardware and software and voice recognition software.
More than 80 percent of all firms hired outside technology experts.
The top three uses for the cloud are storage/backup/archiving, disaster recovery and email.
Trending: Android and other non-iOS operating systems continue to penetrate the legal technology market, as 36 percent of firms are purchasing non-iPad tablets—up from 17 percent in 2012.
Also trending: “Big Data,” already the tech buzzword for 2014. It means (according to Wikipedia) “a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications.”
Look for big data to make a big impression in law firms in the future, according to this survey.
Asked to predict the future of big data in the legal profession, 16 percent felt that big data would lead to more strategic use of data using functions like predictive coding, data mining, and more accessible data analytics.
Twenty-five percent felt that big data will increase data storage/ backup costs.
Ya think?