I dug into some legal technology data last week – I found another round of it, so let’s take a look.
On budget, 65% of firms responded, “yes, my firm has a budget for technology.” Fifty-six percent of small firms with 2-9 attorneys increased their technology budget for 2022 compared to 50% in 2021. Firms of 10-49 attorneys decreased their budget over the last few years with 65% (compared with 69% in 2021, 78% in 2020, and 71% in 2019)
Respondents were asked to prioritize their firm’s top technology spending over the next 12 months. For the largest percentage of respondents, hardware was chosen for the office as their top technology spending priority (28%), followed by security (20%), mobile technology (11%), and litigation technology (10%).
Respondents were asked how comfortable, in general, they felt using their firm’s available technology. Overall, 56% report feeling very comfortable, and 34% feel somewhat comfortable with their law firm’s technology. The smaller the firm, the more comfortable the attorneys were with their technology. Sixty-two percent of attorneys at firms with 2-9 attorneys and 55% of firms with 10-49 attorneys feel comfortable using their legal technology.
Training can be expensive and part of a firm’s budget because 64% of firms with 2-9 attorneys and 79% of firms with 10-49 attorneys report having training available at their firms. Forty percent of medium-sized firms with 10-49 attorneys first turn to IT, but only 16% of small firms turn to IT for support. When asked, “where do you turn first when you have a problem with your firm’s technology,” 25% of respondents from firms with 2-9 attorneys first turn to Google or another non-legal online resource.
Something interesting in the Technology Basics & Security volume is that respondents from firms of 10-49 attorneys are most likely to have cyber liability insurance (56%), followed by 42% from firms of 2-9 attorneys.
Why do we care?
I wanted to note how specific hardware still ranks high for customers. It’s an interesting disconnect with the trends often reported in spending.
The bigger area to care about is the need for training. There’s some direction here – those slightly larger firms will be more ready to spend money on training. That said, there’s an education component to note for Google – meaning, customers will be looking for solutions to problems by searching for them. Those that do content marketing will be rewarded for their efforts.