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Bloomberg survey finds a legal tech takeover
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: August 21, 2020
According to a recent Bloomberg legal technology survey. The law office has finally succumbed to a technology takeover in 2020. Those of us who write extensively on this topic have been waiting for this news for some time.
I think this historic tipping point has arisen for three basic and obvious reasons. One—the pandemic has forced many of these folks, against their will, to embrace the tech that is necessary to run a law office remotely. Two: legal tech has matured to the point where it seamlessly integrates into the law office environment. And three: the old fogies are vanishing into the mists of time.
The new service conducted a survey of about 600 independent and in-house counsel, including some of the largest firms in the business. Survey says:
For most of my career as a legal tech writer, most attorneys have looked at law office technology as “something over there somewhere.” They didn’t care how the job got done and didn’t want to be bothered with the details—especially if they were engaging outside counsel.
Now, they are paying attention. Most (70 percent) of supervisory attorneys now expect outside counsel to have already migrated to technology-based solutions or now want them to do so. Eighty-two percent of them think that clients want outside counsel to be technologically proficient—although most do not think that clients base their decisions on that factor.
Here’s the big one, though. Last year, less than half of responding firms said that they were technologically prepared. In 2020, more than three-quarters of them said that they were. This may very well be because the responding attorneys are now more aware of technology, it could be because all lawyers are now painfully aware of their past tech shortcomings because they had to adjust to remote work, or it could just be historic forces at work.
But reasons don’t matter. Legal technology, once an esoteric outlier, is now more than mainstream. Knowledge of legal tech is now expected by people, lawyers and clients, who hire lawyers. So that’s a win. Celebrating in quarantine….