InsideLegal

Case Management System Study Underway

The legal profession will soon benefit from results of a comprehensive study on case, matter and practice management systems. The Case Management System (CMS) study, conducted by the University of Florida Levin College of Law's Legal Technology Institute and Perfect Practice®, will distribute the survey to approximately 25,000 U.S. legal professionals to understand current use and future trends of case, matter and practice management systems. Once completed, CMS study results will assist law firms and corporate legal departments in making better management software decisions. In addition, the study will clarify the terminology used by the industry and will provide software designers with insight on how to improve the usability and efficiency of their CMS products.

"Although case and matter management systems have been available to the legal industry for 30 years, there is still confusion about the differences between case, matter and practice management," said Andrew Z. Adkins III, founder and director of UF's College of Law Legal Technology Institute (LTI). "Everyone has their own definitions. This survey will help set the standard for terms used by the industry." (See our previous post on this topic)

In addition to developing an industry glossary, Adkins said the survey results, which will be released in early 2010, will benefit the legal profession and software companies alike. The findings will enable law firms and legal departments to compare software capabilities and costs, and will give software companies valuable information on user trends.

In addition to Perfect Practice, other companies lending support to this project include Client Profiles, LexisNexis (Time Matters), Thomson Reuters, InsideLegal.com, Legal Files Software, Omega Legal Systems, PerfectLaw Software and LawBase by Synaptec Software.

Contact Andy Adkins if you are interested in sponsoring the survey (1 sponsorship left) and stay tuned for results from this survey. 

Kennedy-Mighell Report Podcast Features 2009 InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey

Earlier this week, the Legal Talk Network posted its most recent edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report, a regular podcast focused on analysis of legal technology trends by well-respected legal technologists and thought leaders Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell.  The current program, Law Firms and Legal Technology: Trends and Challenges, covers the annual release of the InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey. 

Listen to the entire podcast and hear for yourself why Dennis Kennedy considers this "the best info about legal tech in law firms available." 

ILTA Vendor Program Recap #1: ILTA Vendor Business Meeting & ILTA Technology Purchasing Survey Overview

For the sixth year, InsideLegal partnered with ILTA to produce its annual ILTA Vendor Education/Media program at the Annual ILTA Conference.  This year's topics included:

• ILTA Vendor Business Meeting
• 2009 InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey Overview
• Thought leader & industry expert panel discussions:
  • Utilizing Social Media to Maximize Your Company’s Message
  • Working with Legal Technology Media
  • Working with ILTA (outside of the Annual Conference)
  • Advice for Selling to Law Firms in the Down Economy

We'll be posting a recap of each of the sessions, with this first post covering the ILTA Business Meeting led by Peggy Wechsler and the InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey presented by InsideLegal's Jobst Elster.

ILTA Vendor Business Meeting
The ILTA Business Meeting was led by Peggy Wechsler, ILTA's Program Director, who welcomed the vendor audience to ILTA 2009.  She again thanked the vendors for supporting ILTA and kicked off the meeting by introducing several key ILTA staff members that were in attendance:

• Ken Hansen (ILTA Vendor Coordinator)
• Anne Flippin (Managing Editor - ILTA's Peer to Peer Magazine & ILTA's whitepaper series)
• Maureen Babcock (ILTA Conference Co-Chair)
• Randi Mayes (Executive Director)

Peggy then discussed the main initiatives for the ILTA conference this year - going green and virtual outreach of the conference.  To continue in their mission to produce a "greener" conference, all program guide information was paperless this year and sent as e-files before conference.  Also, there was a section to recycle badges and conference bags at the end of the event.  ILTA also made the conference easier to access for those members not able to attend by offering ILTA TV by ii3, which had live broadcasts from the event.

Attendance was another hot topic with ILTA feeling the hit that has affected the attendance numbers of other industry events.  ILTA did offer a few programs to assist firms that were not otherwise able to send members due to budgetary constraints.  They offered one day passes and a registration for local firms that could attend during the day.  The total attendance on the firm/member side was
around 850 while vendor attendance totaled 1,400. 

InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey
Next on the agenda was an overview of the 2009 InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey presented by Jobst Elster of InsideLegal.  Jobst covered the main changes to the survey this year including:

• Expanded survey pool to include firms with 50-99 attorneys - sent to total of 730 firms, ranging from 50 - over 3,000 attorneys, yielding 115 responses (17% response rate)
• More detailed breakouts of technology purchases - past & future (i.e., included questions about purchases that were held over from last year, and in which cases vendor selections had already been made)
• Added questions about social media/cloud computing/SaaS
• Separate section on how firms are approaching IT spending/technology purchasing amidst the economic downturn as well as a closer look at firm-vendor relationship

You can view the complete survey at InsideLegal and download the audio file of the program below.

        Download MP3 of Survey Overview

Stay tuned for our next posts where we will cover the panel discussions from the ILTA Vendor Program. 

2009 InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey Released

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), and InsideLegal.com, an online legal community providing an insider’s guide to doing business in legal technology, today released the findings of the 9th annual ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey (Survey). The 2009 Survey, focused on feedback from 115 ILTA member law firms with 50 or more attorneys, covers IT budgeting, technology purchasing patterns, selection criteria and influencers, technology trends & IT challenges, and state-of-the-economy questions. Survey findings and analysis were presented as part of InsideLegal.com’s ILTA Vendor Education & Media Program in conjunction with ILTA’s Annual Conference August 23-27.

 

2009 Survey highlights include:

• Budget cuts in 2009 are severe: Only 15% of survey participants spend more than 4% of total firm revenue on technology vs. 28% in 2008. However, economic recovery is closer than many might believe with 14% of respondents claiming their firms are already on the way to recovery and 47% stating firm financials will be on the upswing within the next 12 months.
• 2008 saw major hardware projects rolled out with at least a 40% implementation rate (based on all survey responses) for server upgrades, desktop hardware, virtualization, laptops and printers/multi-function devices (MFDs).
• 75% of all 2009/10 planned purchases are for technologies that were put on hold or deferred from last year.
• ILTA’s Peer to Peer magazine is 2009’s publication favorite with a 95% read rate among respondents.
• Technology blog readership is still below 50% but LinkedIn, as a social media tool for firms, is well entrenched.
• According to ILTA respondents, virtualization, cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) are among the ‘hottest’ future technologies.
• Email management continues to be IT’s #1 challenge, this year followed by staffing concerns and managing firm growth.
• Majority of IT decision-makers say getting discounts/price cuts is the best way their vendors can work with them in the downturn. 62% indicated they have received specific vendor ‘economic stimulus’.

2009 InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey

 

Press Release on Survey

ABA Technology Survey - Two Volumes Released

The first two volumes of the 2009 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, Technology Basics (Vol. 1) and Law Office Technology (Vol. 2), are now available for purchase.  Each survey volume is priced at $350.00 for non-members / $300.00 for ABA Members.  Survey Highlights:

• Metadata removal software is available at nearly half of respondents’ firms (46%). Large firm respondents report the highest availability (86%), with solo respondents (27%) and respondents from firms of 2-9 attorneys (31%) reporting the least availability. The brands most commonly listed were Adobe Acrobat (46%), Workshare Protect (18%), and Payne’s Metadata Assistant (14%).
• The percentage of solo respondents reporting that laptops are their primary computers decreased to 26% this year from 38% in the 2008 survey, returning to the percentage in 2007 (26%).
• Seventy-seven percent of respondents report the availability of Smartphones/BlackBerrys at their firms. Of respondents that provided brand names, the BlackBerry/RIM (64%) was cited most often followed by the iPhone at 14% then the Palm Treo (13% in 2009, down from 21% in 2008). Despite increased iPhone interest, only four percent report Mac OS as the operating system on their primary computer, roughly equivalent with 3% in the 2008.
• Windows XP is still the most frequently reported operating system for respondents’ primary computers, with nearly three-fourths of respondents (74%) indicating its use. This slight decrease reflects a similar increase in reports of Vista as the operating system on respondents’ primary computers, up to 9% from 4% in 2008).
• Overall, forty-seven percent of respondents report that online storage is available at their firms, equal to 47% in the 2008 survey but for solo respondents online storage availability increased to 48% from 34% in the 2008 survey.
• Sixteen percent of respondents report having used a web-based software or service solution/Software as a Service (SaaS), compared with 13% who reported using an online service provider in the 2008 survey. The largest increase was seen amongst solos with twenty-two percent of solo respondents (up from 14% in the 2008 survey) reporting its use.

The findings of the six volume ABA Legal Technology Survey Report will be published serially; Technology Basics (formerly Baseline and Budgets) (May), Law Office Technology (May), Litigation and Courtroom Technology (June), Web and Communication Technology (June), Online Research (July) and Mobile Lawyers (July).

Back to the Basics

When's the last time you received a fax that wasn't a solicitation or offer for a 50% off lunch coupon? With emails cluttering our Inbox, blogs (of course not this one ;-)) popping up by the thousands, and twitter starting to chirp, maybe using fax as a proactive, targeted communication tool once again makes sense. Obviously, the efficacy of the medium all depends on its intent, but why not go back to the tried and true?

What triggered this post was a friend's comment that he faxed a customer survey to select clients and he received a phenomenal 75+% response rate ... unheard of these days in the email age.

InsideLegal Vendor Marketing Survey - Results Analysis: Budgets ... Rags and Riches

Earlier we introduced our inaugural InsideLegal Vendor Marketing Survey that we administered last fall.  Here's the first in a series of posts containing the results. The survey, primarily completed by senior marketing folks (90+% are managers or higher), provided a balanced cross-section across the legal vendor community from small companies to large, publicly traded, multi-billion dollar companies.

• Of the 67 vendors completing all 40 survey questions, roughly 60% of respondents work for legal technology companies ranging from 11-100 employees, with the largest single percentage (22%) stemming from within the 11-25 employee range.

• While most companies (70+%) staff their marketing departments with 1-4 marketers, a much smaller number (roughly 15%), count 6+ marketing team members.

With the recent trend of workforce reductions and across the board marketing-related belt tightening, it will be interesting to compare these statistics with the upcoming 2009 InsideLegal Vendor Marketing Survey.  (All participants receive a copy of the complete final results. Email us now if you would like to participate in the 2009 survey.)

One of the key focus areas of the marketing survey is the budgeting and marketing spend section. While we realize that budget and spending realities and outlooks have worsened since our survey completion in the fall, the data proves very useful when looking to establish industry spend benchmarks, marketing mix priorities based on marketing investment, and broader marketing cost cutting trends.

• Marketing spend based on total company revenues:  Nearly half spend 4+% of their annual company revenues on marketing, while 25% (highest single percentage) answered more than 6%. (Check out our separate post on this topic)

• 67% reported marketing budget increases for the past year.  What will happen in 2009 and even into 2010 with the state of things?

Cost cutting priorities: When forced to trim their budgets, the respondents rank the following in order from first to go...

• Advertising must go, or at least be trimmed back

• Promotional items/giveaways

• Industry events (besides the ‘usual’ legal technology trade shows)

• Direct mail

• Market research

Oddly enough, this does not match up with where respondents indicate they are spending marketing dollars. the following is the rank of the breakout of allocation in order from biggest budget line items...

• Events

• Web design (development and maintenance)

• Collateral

• PR

• Industry relations (consultant arrangements, whitepaper development by third parties, etc.)

Does this provide insight into marketing executives budget challenges?  We think so. Stay tuned for more survey insight on legal technology vendor marketing - targeting and segmenting, goal setting/planning, outsourcing, and vendors that have reputations for great marketing efforts. 

Legal Technology Vendor Marketing Spend vs. Total Company Revenues Benchmark

How many times have you wondered how much your competitors are spending on their marketing initiatives compared to you or even compared to the industry as a whole?  Based on our decade long conversation with the legal technology vendor community through Envision Agency, this question has come up a lot but without many answers.

Where other industries routinely benchmark marketing spend as a percentage of overall company revenue, our market has had no standards to measure against ... until now. The inaugural InsideLegal Vendor Marketing Survey of the legal technology community reveals that 46% of vendor respondents spend more than 4% of their company's total revenue on marketing, with 25% spending more than 6%. While this might sound like a healthy allocation, it pales in comparison to other overall industry standards.

According to Go-to-Market-Strategies (GTMS), a resource center for sales and marketing professionals and business leaders, 45% of companies spend over 6%, with most of those between 6-10%.  GTMS adds: "The general guideline for using the percentage of revenue approach is 8-10% of revenue should be spent on marketing, with approximately 5% of that going to labor (either for a department, or outsourcing to a marketing firm). What percentage you use is determined by a number of factors, how mature is your market (how much education do you have to do), how well known is your company in your industry (are you a new or established business, how much brand awareness do you have to do), and how fast do you intend to grow ..."

We'll be talking more about this in the upcoming months, but it's a good time to think about where you stand in the mix...

InsideLegal Legal Vendor Marketing Survey: Results Preview

This is a first in a series of preview posts on the inaugural US edition of the 2008 InsideLegal Legal Vendor Marketing Survey that was completed last fall. The survey yielded invaluable information and feedback from 97 vendor company participants and InsideLegal will be covering the results for its subscribers. Watch for upcoming posts on key findings including:

• Marketing Budgets: How much are you spending on marketing efforts? How does this compare to your competitors and other vendors? Where do you look to cut costs first?

• Marketing strategy: Who do you market to? Do you have executive buy-in? What are your key marketing objectives?  What aspects of your marketing program have you outsourced?

• Marketing Events: The good, the bad, and the ugly of the legal trade shows based on criteria such as quality of attendees, cost-benefit value, and show leads-to-sales ratios.  Does your company host a User Conference? Do you/how do you use webinars as a marketing tool.

• Advertising:Where do you advertise? What is the mix of print vs. online?

• Public Relations: What is your media relations approach?  What is included in your (and your competitor's) PR plan? 

• Market Research: Who uses research to support marketing and sales efforts?  What type of research proves most effective?  What industry surveys do you and your competitors follow?

A little background... InsideLegal founders has been heavily involved in the legal industry for more than a decade, from working with technology vendors to collaborating with industry consultants to liaising with law firms and the legal trade media. During this time, we have assumed an advisory role to the legal vendor community, and have worked with a large number of companies on marketing programs, consulting initiatives, market scope and custom research projects as well as various thought leadership roundtables and events. Based on this intensive interaction, we identified a glaring information and knowledge gap when it comes to marketing intelligence and general marketing budget and spend statistics maintained by legal vendors. Over the years, basic questions about how much total budget to spend on marketing, what line items to cut, where to advertise, and the general consensus on trade shows (how valuable are they?) have been commonplace. Finally, this summer we initiated an inaugural survey (completed in the fall) designed to serve the legal vendor marketing community. The survey includes 97 separate confidential company responses and 67 completed surveys (39 questions) representing legal technology vendors ranging from less than 10 employees to 500+, all who completed the entire survey in exchange for the complete final report. Beyond numerous posts on the topic over the upcoming weeks, we will issue the complete report to participating companies and host a webinar at a later date.  Also, we will be administering the Global InsideLegal Legal Vendor Marketing Survey soon and will be covering those results as well.

Am Law Tech 2008: 13th Annual Technology Survey of Am Law 200 firms

The 13th Annual Am Law Technology Survey was published this week in law.com's Legal Technology Bulletin and provides another look (in addition to ILTA's Technology Survey and the 2008 ILTA Legal Technology Purchasing Survey) at what technology Am Law 200 firms are using and what issues and challenges are paramount. The survey includes charts spanning software, budgets, communications, operations, quality of life, technology developments, and wireless preferences.

Here's an excerpt of the lead article written by Incisive Media frequent contributor, Alan Cohen:

" ... Of all the findings our thirteenth annual technology survey of Am Law 200 firms turned up, the most important was this: Law firm chief information officers and IT directors have a lot on their minds. Among the issues they're grappling with: What emerging technologies are worth investing in -- and which aren't ready for prime time? Should increasingly tech-savvy attorneys be able to download software they find on their own, or should firms vet everything first? Does the new generation of Web 2.0 tools -- blogs, wikis and social networking sites -- have a place in a law firm environment? And, of course, the real brainteaser: How can the enormous quantities of data lawyers generate possibly be managed?"