The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) is a peer networking organization for people who work in the legal technology field, such as the people who work in law firm IT departments. ILTA just concluded its annual conference in Nashville, and at the conference ILTA and InsideLegal released the results of their ninth annual technology purchasing survey. The survey was sent to about 1,400 ILTA member law firms with responses from 281 (20%) law firms, about 86% of which were U.S. firms. You can download this year's report in PDF format here. Here is what I saw in the survey results that struck me as interesting for attorneys who use iPhones and iPads
iPhones and iPads are exciting to IT departments
When respondents were asked to describe the most exciting technology or trend, the top four answers were (1) mobility, (2) cloud services, (3) virtualization and (4) artificial intelligence and wearables. iPhones and iPads fit into at least two of those categories — mobile devices used to access cloud services — and if the rumors are true about Apple announcing an "iWatch" iPhone accessory later this year, the iPhone may soon relate to three of those categories of the most exciting technologies.
For law firms that buy smartphones, almost all buy iPhones
This is a "technology purchasing survey" which means it asks about technology purchased by law firms. There are many categories of legal technology that are virtually always purchased by law firms and not individual lawyers, but the category of mobile technology is one that is moving away from IT purchasing departments. Many attorneys now buy their own device, a practice so prevalent in all companies that there is a common acronym for it: BYOD (bring your own device). Indeed, this year's survey reveals that 36% of law firms do not purchase any smartphones for their attorneys. And this is clearly the trend: in 2013, 21% of law firms were BYOD-only, and in 2012, 10% were BYOD-only.
The ILTA survey does not ask any questions about smartphones that attorneys purchase themselves, only the smartphones that law firms are buying. If 36% of law firms have a BYOD-only policy in 2014, that means that the other 64% are still buying smartphones for at least some of their attorneys. What are they buying? Virtually all are buying iPhones (63%), most are buying Android (39%), almost half are still buying BlackBerries (28%), and a small number are buying Windows smartphones (9%). Or stated differently, for those law firms that purchase smartphones for their attorneys in 2014, 98% are buying iPhones, 61% are buying Android, 44% are buying BlackBerry and 14% are buying Windows.
Because ILTA has been asking this question for three years now, we now have three years of data to chart and can start to see some trends. For law firms that purchase smartphones for their attorneys — which, as noted, fewer and fewer do each year — there have been some notable changes. Just two years ago, only about half of law firms purchased iPhones. In 2014, virtually all law firms that purchase smartphones purchase iPhones. And while only about 11% of law firms would purchase Android phones in 2012, now 61% of law firms purchase at least some Android phones.
What this chart doesn't tell you is how many of each smartphone the firms are buying, just that the firm is buying at least one of that brand. On the other hand, the chart does tell us something about which smartphones are acceptable to IT departments at law firms. Two years ago, half of the law firms refused by buy any iPhones, and now virtually all of them buy iPhones. Two years ago, very few law firms would buy any Android smartphones, and now 61% of them will do so. And while other surveys, such as the latest ABA Technology Survey that I analyzed last week, indicate that attorney BlackBerry use has plummeted over the last few years, almost half of law firms will still consider buying a BlackBerry for at least some of their attorneys.
For law firms that buy tablets, almost all buy iPads
In the 2012 ILTA purchasing survey, only 13% of law firms purchased tablets for at least some of their attorneys. That increased substantially in the 2013 survey, when 58% of law firms purchased tablets for at least some of their attorneys. But this year, more law firms have BYOD policies on tablets, and only 48% of law firms purchase tablets for at least some of their attorneys.
For those law firms that do purchase tablets for their attorneys, once again the ILTA survey reveals that virtually all buy iPads. (In 2013, essentially 100% purchased iPads for at least some attorneys, and in 2014, about 92% purchased iPads for at least some attorneys.) In 2014, about 21% of law firms that purchased tablets purchased Android for some of their attorneys (similar to 22% in 2013), and about 35% of law firms that purchased tablets purchased Microsoft Surface devices for some of their attorneys (up from 21% in 2013).
One interesting question asked in 2013 and 2014 was "What percentage of your firm's attorneys use tablets in their day-to-day work?" In 2013, 86% of law firms reported that at least one of their attorneys used a tablet, and in 2014 that increased to 91%. That tells us that it is getting even harder to find a law firm that doesn't have at least one attorney using a tablet. In 2013, 7% of law firms reported that over half of their attorneys used a tablet every day; in 2014, that increased to 10% of law firms reporting that over half of their attorneys use a tablet every day.
Security policies
As more and more of us recognize the importance of mobile device security, it is becoming increasingly important for law firms to have policies in place that govern how attorneys can use their devices — especially considering that more and more attorneys are bring their own devices to work. For example, I believe that law firms should require that their attorneys use a passcode to lock their iPhones and tablets because those devices are likely to contain confidential client information, and it is too easy for someone besides the intended user to pick up a mobile device, perhaps becuase it was left unattended, or perhaps because it was stolen.
In 2013, only 30% of law firms had a formal security policy for mobile devices. In 2014, this increased to 65%, plus another 21% are in the process of establishing a policy. This is an encouraging trend, and I hope it isn't long before the numbers get closer to 100%.
