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 recently released the results of ILTA's 2015 Technology Survey, which is based on the input of 420 law firms. In prior years, this survey has asked quite a few questions about iPad and iPhone use. For example, here was my post about the 2014 survey, and here is my post on the 2013 survey.
This year, there was only one survey question that directly addressed iOS use. The survey asked: "Please indicate which of these popular wireless email devices are in use at your firm based on their embedded operating system." Multiple results were allowed, so a firm could, for example, select both iOS and Android.
It comes as little surprise that virtually every firm reported having iOS users. Of the 420 firms that responded, only 7 firms said that their attorneys were not using an iPhone or iPad to get firm email. So that is 413 out of 420 firms, over 98% of law firms, that report having iOS users.
331 out of 420 firms reported that some of their attorneys used Android, so almost 79%. 196 firms reported some BlackBerry use, so almost 47%. 131 firms reported some Windows Mobile Phone use, so about 31%.
The results were also broken up by firm size. For iOS, firm size did not make much difference; 97% to 100% of all firms of all sizes reported having some attorneys using an iPhone or iPad to check their email. For Android, I'm not sure that you can read much into the numbers.
But for BlackBerry, it seems that it was really the larger law firms that still had most of the BlackBerry users. BlackBerry use was reported in only 19% of firms with under 50 attorneys, 50% of firms with 50 to 149 attorneys, 54% for firms with 150 to 459 attorneys, and then 85% in firms of 350 to 699 attorneys and 87% in firms with 700 or more attorneys. It would be interesting if we could drill deeper — for example, does each of those 700+ lawyer firms have only a single BlackBerry user, or is overall BlackBerry use higher at the largest law firms? — but this report doesn't reveal that.
As for iOS, you really don't need a survey to learn that a whole lot of attorneys are using iPhones and iPads. Just look around any courthouse, CLE, etc. But in case you were curious, the ILTA survey data does tell us that attorneys can and do use iPhones and/or iPads at virtually all law firms.