Every year, the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center conducts a survey to gauge the use of legal technology by attorneys in the United States. This year's report was released this past Friday, and as always, I was particularly interested in Volume VI, titled Mobile Lawyers. No survey is perfect, but the ABA tries hard to ensure that its survey has statistical significance, and every year this is one of the best sources of information on how attorneys use technology. Note that the survey was conducted from January to May, so even though we are looking at these numbers in late Summer of 2015, remember that the survey answers were given in the beginning of 2015.
My thoughts on the prior reports are located here: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010. The numbers in this year's report are similar to what we saw in 2014; once again, about 60% of all attorneys use an iPhone, and about 40% of all attorneys use an iPad.
Six out of ten attorneys use an iPhone
For the past few years, the survey has been relatively consistent in revealing that about 9 out of every 10 lawyers use a smartphone for law-related tasks while away from the primary workplace. In 2014 and 2013, the number was 91%; in 2015 the number is 90%. As was the case in the last four years, once again in 2015 there was a slight correlation between law firm size and smartphone use. For example, in 2015, 16.9% of solo attorneys do not use a smartphone and 12.9% of attorneys in a firm of 2-9 do not use a smartphone. On the other hand, in firms with 50-99 attorneys, every single attorney reported using a smartphone, and at firms with 100 or more attorneys the numbers were about 95% or more of their attorneys reported using a smartphone. As a whole, though, it is fair to say that the survey consistently shows around nine out of every ten attorneys use a smartphone.
For those nine out of every ten attorneys who are using smartphones, 75.7% reported in 2015 that they were using a personally owned smartphone, and 26.4% used a smartphone permanently assigned by their law firm. Those numbers didn't change much from 2014.
Whether they buy it themselves or it is purchased by their law firm, what smartphones are those nine out of ten attorneys using in 2014? In 2013, the big news was that over half of all attorneys were using an iPhone. Last year, that number rose to 60.8% (66.8% of the 91% of attorneys who use a smartphone). In 2015, that number stayed roughly the same; it was once again 60.8%, and in 2015 that number comes from 67.5% of the 90% of attorneys who use a smartphone. It seems fair to say that the percentage of attorneys using an iPhone remained steady in 2014 and 2015.
So if you can imagine a row of ten attorneys, this year one of them doesn't use a smartphone at all, and six of them use an iPhone. What about the other three? Just like in 2014, two of them are likely using an Android phone, and that last attorney is probably using a BlackBerry or a Windows Mobile phone. In 2015, 23.9% of the 90% of attorneys who use a smartphone reported using Android, which is just a slight decrease from 2014 when it was 24.5% of the 91% of attorneys. In 2015, 5.2% of the 90% of attorneys who use a smartphone reported using a BlackBerry and 2.5% reported using a Windows Mobile phone, which are not very big changes from 2014 when 6.8% of the 91% of attorneys who used a smartphone reported using a BlackBerry and 1.9% reported using a Windows Mobile phone. Finally in 2015, 2.2% of attorneys were not sure what model of smartphone that they used.
If you are adding the numbers, you'll notice that adds to 101.3%. But it makes sense for the number to be slightly over 100% because I'm sure that a small number of attorneys use multiple smartphones.
The following pie chart is somewhat imprecise because, as I just noted, the actual numbers add up to just over 100%, but if you don't pay attention to the percentages listed and instead just generally look at the size of each slice of the pie, this pie chart gives you a general, graphical sense of the relative use:
Although the decrease in the number of attorneys using BlackBerry phones was small from 2014 to 2015, it's not like there were that many attorneys still using a BlackBerry in 2014 to begin with. I'm always amazed to look at the decline of BlackBerry over time and the rise in the iPhone use by attorneys over the five years that the ABA has been collecting this data:
Looking at the past five years, as BlackBerry use among attorneys plummeted from 40% in 2010 to under 5% in 2015, iPhone use increased from 31% to 61% and Android use increased from 15% to around 22%.
Why are attorneys choosing iPhone, Android or BlackBerry? Firm size seems to have something to do with it. Almost all of the BlackBerry users are at large law firms with 100 or more attorneys, especially those few megafirms with 500 or more attorneys where iPhone use is 64%, Android is 15% and BlackBerry use is 23%. And as for iPhone and Android users, Android use is highest among solo attorneys, with 62% iPhone use and 31% Android use. But once firm size increases to 50 or more attorneys, Android use drops to around 16% while iPhone use jumps to around 75%, except for the 500+ attorney megafirms where BlackBerry use is so much higher than elsewhere. This chart shows what I mean:
Other than the fact that BlackBerry users are primarily at large law firms, you probably shouldn't read too much into this chart. Clearly, iPhone and Android users come in all shapes and sizes. But perhaps it is not just a coincidence that I work at a large law firm, whereas The Droid Lawyer — the leading website for attorneys who use Android smartphones — is published by Jeff Taylor, a solo attorney in Oklahoma City.
What are these attorneys doing with their iPhones and other smartphones? Almost all are using them to make phone calls and handle emails. Around 75% are using smartphones for calendars and contacts. Over half are using smartphones for internet access and text messaging. Other popular uses are GPS/maps, taking pictures and mobile-specific research apps. Only 7% use a smartphone to track time and expenses.
The survey also shows that attorneys are continuing to think more about security. Back in 2011, 23% of respondents were not using any security on their smartphone. That number has decreased every year and is down to 6% in 2015. Of those attorneys using security measures, 92% use a password. It's nice to see the numbers improving, but given how much security is in the news, I would have hoped to see 100% of all attorneys in 2015 using a password to lock their smartphones.
Four out of ten attorneys use an iPad
Apple introduced the original iPad in 2010. In 2011, only 15% of all attorneys responded that they use a tablet, and that number more than doubled to 33% in 2012 and rose to 48% in 2013. But since then, the number has essentially held steady: 49% in 2014 and 49.6% in 2015. It was amazing to see attorneys take to the tablet so quickly; few other items of legal technology jumped to almost 50% usage in just a few years. But after reaching that point, the numbers have held steady.
It used to be that around 90% of attorneys using a tablet were using an iPad. It was 89% in 2011, 91% in 2012, and 91% in 2013. But in 2014 the number decreased to 84%, and it is 83% in 2015. Overall, this means that in 2013, 2014 and again in 2015, just slightly over four out of every ten attorneys is using an iPad.
As for the lawyers using a tablet but not using an iPad, in 2015 11.8% use Android (up from 10% in 2014) and 8.3% use Windows Mobile, which I presume includes the Surface (up from 6% in 2014).
Looking at the past five years on a chart shows visually how the percentage of attorneys not using a tablet had been declining rapidly but then has held steady since 2013, and the percentage of attorneys using an iPad rose quickly to 2013 but then has had the slightest of declines since then, while Android and Windows have had the slightest of increases.
That relationship between firm size and platform use seems to exist in the tablet world too. For lawyers at firms of less than 50 attorneys, around 80% use the iPad and 10% to 15% use Android. For lawyers at law firms of 50 or more attorneys, iPad use jumps to 90% or more, while Android use drops to the single digits. For example, for the attorneys who use a tablet, 79% of solo attorneys use an iPad and 15% of solo attorneys use an Android tablet, but at firms of 50-99 attorneys, 96% use an iPad and 4% use an Android tablet.
What are these attorneys doing with their iPads and other tablets? Pretty much the same thing that they are doing with their smartphones (other than the phone function), with over half of attorneys reporting that they are using their tablets for internet access, email and calendars.
Popular apps
The survey also asked attorneys to identify apps that they use. I should note at the outset that I don't like how the ABA asks the question. The ABA first asks "Have you ever downloaded a legal-specific app for your smartphone?" In 2015, 41.4% said yes. when I see the word "smartphone" in this question, I think of my iPhone, not my iPad. Then the next question asks: "What legal specific app(s) did you download?" When I read the questions in that order, I'm thinking of the apps that I downloaded on my iPhone, not my iPad. But others must be reading the question differently because I see WestlawNext, TrialPad and TranscriptPad in the answers, and those apps exist only on the iPad, not on the iPhone. I would have never mentioned those apps when answering the question, even though I use them on my iPad.
So while I question how much value you can put in these answers, for what it is worth, the #1 app mentioned in response was Fastcase (which exists on both the iPhone and iPad). The full list, in order, is:
- Fastcase
- WestlawNext
- A legal dictionary app
- Lexis Advance
- TrialPad
- LexisNexis Legal News
- TranscriptPad
- Courtlink
- LexisNexis Get Cases & Shepardize
- HeinOnline
- Westlaw News
- Casemaker
- Clio
By the way, I apologize to the makers of those excellent apps for including the above caveat; it's not their fault that the ABA's questions were worded so poorly.
The ABA then asked about general business apps, and the questions have the same ambiguity: the ABA first asked if the attorney ever downloaded a general business app to a smartphone (44.6% said yes), and then the ABA asked which apps were downloaded, without making it clear whether the question was asking about the iPhone and iPad. The answers provided were, in this order:
- Dropbox
- Evernote
- GoodReader
- QuickOffice
- Documents to Go
- LogMeIn
- Box
- Notability
It amazes me that Microsoft Word is not on this list. It is surely one of the most useful general-purpose apps for lawyers, and it is now available for both iOS and Android.
