Law Firms Vs Technology: Doing business in legal technology 

International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), and InsideLegal, the insider’s guide to doing business in legal technology, released the findings of the “2015 ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey” (survey).

2015 ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey highlights include:

• 57% of all respondents spend 2-4% of total firm revenue on technology. Within this range, Medium Firms (50-199 attorneys) represent 49%, the largest percentage.
• 77% of survey respondents spend less than $17,000 on technology per attorney including 100% Small Firms (less than 50 attorneys). 86% of Large Firms (200+ attorneys) spend more than $17,000 per attorney.
• 2015 top 5 tech purchases: Laptops/notebooks (67%); desktop hardware (60%); network upgrades (51%); printers/MFDs (49%); antivirus/antispam software (40%).
• Microsoft Office add-ons (macros, templates, etc.) declined to 6% (from 12% in 2014); demand for Office upgrades stayed level at 18%.
• MS Office 365, introduced as a new category in 2015, was purchased by 13% of surveyed firms. 11% plan to purchase within the year.
• Firms utilizing big data tech prioritized business intelligence/analytics (34%); predictive coding (25%), pricing/managing legal spend (22%) and competitive intelligence/analysis (19%).
• 2015 top 5 legal/tech publications: ILTA White Papers (86%), Peer to Peer magazine (83%), Legaltech News (50%), Legal IT Today (21%) & ABA Journal (19%).
• Internet research, peer recommendations, and ILTA conferences are top 3 legal IT purchasing influences.
• 2015 ‘most exciting trend’ themes include cloud computing, mobility, security, virtualization, AI & analytics.
• 72% of all survey respondents outsource website design/services followed by printer repair/maintenance (49%) and spam/virus filtering (40%).
• Most firm BYOD policies cover smartphones (71%) and tablets (59%), only 28% cover laptops. 28% indicated they don’t have a BYOD policy.
• 60% of survey respondents stated that less than 25% of firm software and service solutions would be cloud-based within the next 1-3 years.
• 92% of respondents said they use outside technology consultants (up 2% from 2014 and 11% from 2013).
• For first time in 8 years, email management was not named biggest challenge facing legal IT departments … replaced by security management.
• Security is a hot button issue in the 2015 survey. Security software/security assessments ranked 6th in ‘what firms purchased last year’ and 5th in ‘planned purchases for next year’.

Source: InsideLegal 

---