InsideLegal

LegalTech New York 2015 Agenda Word Cloud (& Comparison to Past Years)

In a few weeks, a few thousand people will convene at LegalTech New York (LTNY) for 3 days of exhibitions, networking and legal technology sessions. To give an overview of what will be covered in those sessions, we have again created the LTNY agenda word cloud, visually displaying the words/themes included in the event's agenda of sessions (minus days, times and people's names). FYI ... the size of selected words dictates how often they have been mentioned or referenced within the agenda (aka, how popular they are). [Click on image to enlarge]

 

This is the fifth year we have used the event program to create a visual snapshot of the main content themes and discussion topics. How does this compare to previous years? What topics made headlines in our word clouds for 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011 (shown below)?  Here are some musings on 2015 and past year comparisons:

• Content wise, LTNY 2015 is heavily focused on information governance (IG), risk and compliance... particularly as it relates to eDiscovery, corporate security and information management. We heard it last year but this year it is loud and clear.. IG is no longer a sideline, add-on activity but a broader strategy of managing information overload. The time to simply check off IG and compliance tasks is over.
• So what happened to big data? I thought it was bigger than ever? Yes, but we are seeing two distinct trends ... 1) Big data is being rolled into IG, risk management and information management themes as opposed to positioned stand-alone and 2) analytics, a hotter than ever topic, is essentially a big data off-shoot. Case in point, the 2014 ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey revealed that over 50% of responding ILTA member firms would use analytics as a primary big data technology. 
• Considering privacy and security are on everyone's 'major challenges' and 'top priority' lists, the topics themselves are somewhat downplayed. We suspect these topics are central to most information governance discussions which seem to be dominating this year.
• Last year we asked "where did the big pricing discussion go? Remember AFAs?" Session wise, LTNY seems to have moved on, although we did notice an increase in cost-related themes and sessions.
• Based on our five year comparison, the 2015 LTNY cloud has by far the most government focused content. IG, information management, compliance and increased regulations are all intertwined with government so this trend adds up. 

As a comparison, we have included the LTNY Agenda Word Clouds from 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011.

 

 

Subscribe to InsideLegal for LTNY updates and market information and follow us on Twitter at @InsideLegal for timely updates. 

 

The word cloud was pulled from the agenda listed in the LegalTech NY Show Brochure from www.LegalTechShow.com.

A Look Back at InsideLegal's Top 10 Posts in 2014

Happy New Year! To help you kick off 2015, we will be publishing a variety of useful resources and posts on the legal space over the next couple of weeks. [Subscribe now to receive these tools via email.]

Before we look forward to 2015, we wanted to take a look back at InsideLegal's highlights from 2014, beginning with our 10 most read posts...

1. Law Firm Technology: What Law Firms Said They Bought Last Year (broken down by firm size) (January 6)
2. ILTA's 2014 Technology Survey: An Early Holiday Gift for the Legal Tech Community (December 4)
3. Law Firm Technology Budgets: Who is Spending What (February 6)
4. InsideLegal[Tech] New York 2014: Privacy, Innovation and New(ish) Technologies (February 13)
5. 2014 ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey Delivers Promise ... Increased Tech Spend (August 20)
6. ILTA 2014 Conference Registrants by Country (July 28)
7. LexThink.1 2014 'End of Irrelevance' Speakers Announced! (March 10)
8. LegalTech NY 2014 Agenda Word Cloud (& Comparison to Past Years) (January 23)
9. ILTA 2014 Conference Registrants by Firm Size (August 13)
10. ALA's Legal Management Goes Digital ... Looks Ahead with Future Legal Technology & Strategy (January 14)

Here are a few that didn't rank, but that we felt should have:

1. AALL Big Data Panel: Discussing Big Data Opportunities with Firm Partners (July 15)
2. InsideLegal[Tech] New York 2014: Essential Facts, Figures & Predictions (February 4)
3. What Technology ILTA Law Firms Said They Plan to Buy This Year (broken down by firm size) (January 27)

Stay tuned...

AALL Big Data Panel: Discussing Big Data Opportunities with Firm Partners

Earlier today, we presented for the first time at the Annual AALL (American Association of Law Librarians) Conference on the topic of Big Data. The session/presentation was part of the ILTA's AALL education track. The big data panel consisted of:

• Jobst Elster - Moderator - Head of Content & Legal Market Strategy, InsideLegal.com
• John D. Bowers - Assistant Director, Business Development, Fox Rothschild LLP
• Gina B. Lynch - National Director, Knowledge Services, Bingham McCutchen LLP
• Emily Rushing - Competitive Intelligence Manager, Haynes & Boone, LLP

Three objectives were set for the program:

1. Provide an overview of big data and share tips and best practices for planning and executing a big data project including where to start and who to involve.
2. Have attendees gain a deeper understanding of big data’s current and future role in the legal profession, and learn about specific legal big data scenarios that will broaden this understanding – and perhaps even inspire projects of their own.
3. Provide a list of tools and resources (many that they already own) which can serve as big data “kick-starters.”

We really enjoyed our first visit to the AALL Conference and would like to thank our fabulous panel for their time and assistance in developing the program as well as ILTA/TJ for her assistance and work coordinating all the education as part of the technology/ILTA track.

For more Big Data information, visit InsideLegal's Big Data Resource Page.

Global Big Data Week: Celebrating Data Instead of Cursing it

While more and less familiar commemorative celebrations such as Earth Day, Law Day, World Book Day and even World Intellectual Property Day are already in the 2014 books, this week kicks-off Big Data Week, a week-long global celebration of data and our (in)ability to aggregate it, process it, mine it, calculate it, action it and learn and prosper from it.

While you might think dedicating an entire week to one ‘overhyped’ marketing buzz word is beyond overkill, try some of these statistics on for size … According to CSC big data research, data production will be 44 times greater in 2020 than it was in 2009 (while individuals create 70 percent of all digital data, enterprises are responsible for storing, protecting and managing 80 percent of it). Intel reports that the number of networked devices is equal to the global population. By 2015, the number of networked devices will be twice the global population. Still not convinced? Check out DOMO's 'Every Minute of Every Day' digital big data infographic to blow your mind.

In total, Big Data Week (#BDW14) involves 40+ cities, 5,000+ people and 250+ events all connected through locally hosted meetups, networking functions, data visualization demos, debates, discussions and hackathons. Events are designed to provide a platform to educate, inform and inspire – organized by data scientists, business executives, technologists, data analysts and big data content providers … anyone passionate and knowledgeable about data. While data is growing at a ridiculous pace, the combination of technologies, people and process can reign in the bits and bytes and bake the yummy big data pie we are all longing to get our hands on. Consider Big Data Week the test kitchen!

My hometown Atlanta is one of the more prominent venues with 25 meetings and events around town this week. Here are some Big Data Week ATL highlights:

• #BDW14 Kickoff Keynote Panel w/Delta, Home Depot, Bloomberg, etc.
• Business Intelligence Meets Big Data
• Artificial Intelligence: What’s Possible and how it will change your business
• The Growth of Digital Content w/GigaOM, Bloomberg, CNN

Other cities with an abundance of big data-themed sessions and programs this week include Berlin, Chicago and Kuala Lumpur.  

If there’s a common theme among the hundreds of sessions and events this week, it’s the collaboration between the public sector and industry in showcasing how big data technologies can deliver critical information to make our lives healthier (health care big data), safer (crime fighting big data), and void of traffic jams (transportation/transit big data).

So what does this mean for Legal and the individual legal professionals, law firms and GCs/government legal and how we run our firms, companies and governments?  Have we transitioned from “Big Data, big promise?” to “Big Data, big priority!”

Stay tuned this week for our Legal Big Data ‘State of the Union’ and in-depth coverage of big data events taking place in Atlanta and other spots throughout the globe.

Follow us at @InsideLegal and #BDW14 for all things Big Data Week 2014.

 

InsideLegal[Tech] New York 2014: Essential Facts, Figures & Predictions

LegalTech New York is here, again. The Super Bowl and Groundhog Day are over; the snow is here, so it must be time for another LTNY. This year marks our 15th LegalTech attendance and if you aren't able to be on-site with the 1,000s of attendees, 200+ vendors and countless legal technologists, consultants, media/bloggers and influencers from literally all over the place, tune in to our daily LTNY reports and recaps. To kick-off our 2014 edition, here’s our short list of pre-show topics, sessions to watch, trends to notice and conference stats.

LegalTech or eDiscoveryTech?! We have long tracked and reported on the trend of eDiscovery vendors taking over LTNY and 2014 is no exception. 82 of the 216 registered vendors (38%) touting eDiscovery solutions vs. 41% in 2013. 30 of the 64 sessions (including keynotes and plenaries) are EDD-themed and 11 of those are solely focused on the buzz around predictive coding and technology assisted review (TAR). 65% of the official LTNY educational sponsors are eDiscovery product and service providers. 

Big Data: Ready for prime time? We’ve likened the interest of legal big data in 2012 and 2013 to a ‘first date’ ... lots of uncertainty and nervousness about what’s next. Consider the 2014 ‘big data and legal’ relationship a serious one. New big data technologies are steadily emerging and established eDiscovery vendors are increasingly joining the big data mix with ‘industrial strength’ enterprise search and predictive coding/TAR technologies ready to assist legal professionals with more than ‘just’ tackling gargantuan sets of documents. Of the 7 dedicated big data sessions spanning two educational tracks by the same name, only three are not TAR/predictive coding themed, so the big data = eDiscovery stigma is still alive and well. 10 LTNY vendors are what we would label big data -- spanning predictive analytics and search, legal spend management and machine-enabled data processing. We did not include eDiscovery companies in this count, some of which are starting to promote aforementioned big data processing capabilities.

Information Governance: The LTNY 2014 agenda word cloud cites information governance (IG) as the hottest topic based on educational content covered in 14 IG-themed sessions. Consider IG as an umbrella topic including risk management, IT security, governance policies/procedures and privacy. Governance is an ‘equal opportunity’ hot topic, challenging law firm CIOs and other C-Levels, GCs and CISOs to come together and devise best policies and practices to protect their own and their clients’ information interests. We also counted 23 LTNY exhibitors focused on various information governance products and services ranging from secure data storage to email archiving and IG process and workflow management.

The cloud all grown up: Law Technology News’ latest cover story features Thomson Reuters’ new president and her quest to accelerate development of the company’s cloud and mobile technologies. Last month, LexisNexis published its “Cloud Technologies in the Legal Industry” report citing that 72.4% of the surveyed attorneys say law firms are more likely to use the cloud in 2014. These numbers also jive with what we analyzed and reported on in the 2013 ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing survey. So what’s next: Like we mentioned in our LTNY word cloud post, the time for talking is over with the focus on real world cloud applications beyond DR/BC and storage. David Whelan, manager of legal information for the Law Society of Upper Canada, also says so in his recent LTN piece ... “mobile apps are enhancing lawyer productivity and new tools are emerging to manage and integrate cloud services with existing web-based legal technology.” There are 17 companies offering practice, case and matter management products, some client-server but many of the being offered in the cloud or via SaaS model.

Sessions worth getting up for: With 58 educational options, as well as a daily keynote and plenary session to choose from, it might be tough to narrow down the ‘best bang’ for your educational buck.

·         Beyond the Buzz: Perspectives on Big Data & the Challenges of the Digital Age for Legal Practice [Tuesday, Track 3, 10:30-11:45] Explore big data tools & learn about real world applications

·         Day One Plenary Session: “Disrupt” for Lawyers - Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in the Legal Industry [Tuesday, Track 12:30-1:30]; international bestselling author Luke Williams shares ways legal professionals can innovate and disrupt

·         Information Governance Best Practices: Taking your Organization to the Next Level [Tuesday, Track 2:00-3:15]; Good IG primer presented by an esteemed group of panelists

·         IT: The Catalyst [Tuesday, Track 7, 3:45-5:00]; ILTA’s advanced IT track is always a LTNY winner. This session features rapid fire presentations on the power of IT as change agent

·         Total Cost of Ownership - Cloud vs. Premise: An Appellate Court-Style Debate [Wednesday, Track 7, 2:15-3:30]; Should I choose cloud-based software or software that’s installed at my office?

·         Day 3 Keynote: Privacy and Security [Thursday, 9:00-10:00]; The biggest challenge facing all of legal, co-presented by ILTA Distinguished Peer Awards ‘Thought Leader’ winner Donna Payne. A must see!

·         Measuring for Value: Addressing the Challenges in Measuring Performance Quality In and Outside of the Corporate Law Department [Thursday, Track 1, 10:30-11:45]; Kia’s Casey Flaherty, Lex Machina’s Josh Becker and Reinvent Law’s Daniel Katz look at metrics that can fully measure law firm and vendor value and quality.

Direct mail Noise: Is it worth it? We read a tweet last week of a legal professional exasperated with the barrage of vendor mailers and emails leading up to LTNY. He mentioned receiving 150+ emails/vendor communications and ‘I’m not even attending LegalTech”. We agree, vendor pre-marketing efforts are unprecedented this year. In fact, we have been collecting the ‘best and worst’ of the mailers and emails we have received ... done right, a mass email can actually solicit a positive response or a neutral delete. Done wrong (10 misspellings in a 50 word sales pitch or a 2000+ word ‘direct mail’ novel meant to ...) these expensive pre-show efforts can really back-fire and make sure you’ll be singled out, for all the wrong reasons. Our perfect example of what not to do is referenced above. That intro was the beginning ... of numerous errors and typos within the email introduction to their company. We do feel like we know them now! 

If you are in New York, we hope to see you this week ... on the exhibit floor, in conference sessions and keynotes, at the media and bloggers breakfast, or at Friday’s ReInvent Law event. 

LegalTech NY 2014 Agenda Word Cloud (& Comparison to Past Years)

Next week, a few thousand people will convene at LegalTech New York (LTNY) for 3 days of exhibitions, networking and legal technology sessions. To give an overview of what will be covered in those sessions, we have again created the LegalTech New York agenda word cloud, visually displaying the words/themes included in the event's agenda of sessions (minus days, times and people's names). FYI ... the size of selected words dictate how often they have been mentioned or referenced within the agenda (aka, how popular they are). [Click on image to enlarge]

 

 

This is the fourth year we have turned the event program into this type of word cloud, a visual snapshot of the main content themes and discussion topics. How does this compare to previous years? What topics made headlines in our word clouds for 2013, 2012 and 2011?  Here are some musings on 2014 and past year comparisons:

• So 2014 is the year of information governance and data (not necessarily 'big')... proactive risk management. How can we properly (legally/ethically/affordably) manage and control data? What is the intersection with eDiscovery and big data? ARMA, which in 2013 put together several high quality big data sessions, looks to be focused on information governance education in 2014. 
• Big data made a big showing in 2013 but didn't appear in 2012 or 2011. This year, even though there are a 2 dedicated 'big data' conference tracks, the topic itself appears a bit muted. Our conclusion: Most sessions and content themed big data on the agenda are actually eDiscovery related - see predictive coding, technology assisted review, etc. After all, the main big data track sponsors are eDiscovery folks. Include 'analytics' and 'metrics' and the slew of info governance topics and a more well-rounded big data picture takes shape.
• Considering privacy and security are on everyone's 'major challenges' and 'top priority' lists, the topics themselves are somewhat downplayed. We suspect these topics are central to most information governance discussions which seem to be dominating this year.
• What happened to law firm clients and corporate? Sessions focused on clients/serving corporate were a much bigger deal in years past ... a disappointing trend considering GC dissatisfaction with outside counsel is growing and not going away.
• Where did the big pricing discussion go? Remember AFAs? Session wise, LTNY seems to have moved on.
• The 'cloud' has officially left the building... but only in terms of being talked about and labeled. While everyone was talking about cloud solutions in 2011 and 2012, we couldn't find much talk of it in the agenda. Now, the true cloud focus is on real world applications beyond DR/BC and storage.

As a comparison, we have included the LegalTech NY Agenda Word Clouds from 2013, 2012 and 2011.

 

Subscribe to InsideLegal for LTNY updates and market information and follow us on Twitter at @InsideLegal for timely updates. 

Big Data for Law Firms: Do Believe the Hype

The latest issue of the Association of Legal Administrators' (ALA) member publication Legal Management, features an article by InsideLegal's Jobst Elster on "Big Data in Law Firms". If you aren't familiar with the ALA, the association includes nearly 10,000 members in 30+ countries with a mission "to be the undisputed leader for the business of law, focused on the delivery of cutting-edge management and leadership products and services to the global legal community."

The big data topic is definitely in vogue and the chatter surrounding what it is, what it could be, and why law firms and all legal professionals should care is louder than ever. Although written for the legal administrator/executive director audience, the lessons learned apply to all legal professionals:

• Big data is real and here to stay, so start figuring out what it means to you/your firm/company.
• According to a 2012 IBM Big Data study, 71% of businesses are still in the big data education and exploration phases versus only 6% who have deployed two or more big data (mostly analytics) initiatives.
• When asked how big data might positively impact legal IT within the next five years, 16% of those participating in the 2013 ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey, said that "big data would lead to more strategic use of data via predictive data modeling, data mining and more accessible data analytics".
• Big data does not mean you have to have ginormous volumes of data and information. The smallest data sets, if properly mined and analyzed, can yield the largest nuggets of KM and business intelligence 'gold'.
• Big data analytics is often the big data default when it comes to answering the 'what is it?' and 'how do I use it?' question.
• The business world is excited about big data because it provides a proven method for integrating structured and unstructured data sources for mining and analysis purposes.
• Big data ROI is not an oxymoron. There are dozens of real world use cases of big data in legal.

Do you prefer to listen versus reading? We previously recorded a 'Big Data for Lawyers' podcast for ABA's Law Practice Today which provides a good big data primer and legal insights. 

Big Data Innovation Summit: Day One Learnings & Musings

I guess it is fitting that at the conclusion of Innovative Enterprise's Big Data Innovation Summit Day One, my brain is jumbled and severely overheated with big ideas all related to the 14 or so Big Data Innovation Track sessions consumed throughout the day. Topics ran the gamut from StubHub's big data strategy focused on ticketing transactions and their master plan to become a single source provider for the sports fan (not just for tickets) to how NASA is using big data analytics to make commercial airplane flights safer.

While I'll be the first to admit that a few of the sessions went squarely over my head (namely GrindGain's In-Memory Computing talk and TerraCotta's harnessing 'big fast data' session), there were many others that definitely got my 'big data juices flowing'. My overall feedback based on the nearly 7 hours of big data content is that despite many 'heavy hitter' vendors offering industrial strength analytics technology and big data architecture options, most companies (at least based on Twitter chatter and session Q&As) are still in the big data exploration phase. A good chunk of time was spent by multiple speakers explaining big data basics and sharing big data survey benchmarks, likely not being completely aware of the audience's overall big data prowess. This worked for me, plus the speakers and Twitter Nation provided some great big data resources as well (see separate, later post).

Something else that struck me was how openly commercial many of the speakers were when it came to mentioning and promoting their big data solutions and offerings. Oddly enough, this did not really bother me since hearing from the likes of IBM or HP about their Big Data Analytics and Sentiment technologies is pretty much industry standard anyway. It is just a departure from what we see in the legal vertcial where any speaker 'selling from the podium' is a big no-no and anyone doing so is pretty much 'shunned' for ever. Like I said, it did not bother me, in fact, many of the use cases featuring vendor customers were very informative and factual.

There were a handful of sessions that definetly stood out so here's my short Big Data Innovation Summit (day one) best of:

Most Memorable: The enthusiasm, energy and sheer brilliance exuded by WolframAlpha's CEO and Compuational Knowledge Engine creator Stephen Wolfram was something to behold (even just watching him via the livestream). Wolfram demonstrated Wolfram|Alpha, an answer engine with a new approach to knowledge extraction and an easy-to-use interface first launched in May 2009. In fact, Wolfram/Alpha is one of the answer engines behind Apple Siri and Microsoft's Bing. While I am still processing his explanation of the mathematics and 'logic' behind the unique search engine (he earned his Ph.D. from Caltech at age 20!), Dr. Wolfram's vivid examples of how we can all (not just math wizards) use Wolfram|Alpha engine to find and 're'-discover everything from pictures to a visual map of our facebook friend relationships were mesmerizing.

Best Use Case: Analytics & the 2012 Obama Victory. Andrew Claster, Deputy Chief Analytics Officer for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign shared how big data analytics influenced the Obama campaign’s fund-raising, messaging, communications and voter contact strategies. He also talked in detail about the roles and duties of Obama's 50 person big data 'Dream Team' which included 3 former professional gambles, a particle physicist, stem-cell researcher; 2 former Capital One Credit Card modelers and various PHDs, engineers from Amazon and Google as well as consultants from Accenture, McKenzie.

We are running late for Day 2 AM sessions so will report back within the next few days with more big data madness.

Big Data Innovation: Boston Summit Focused on (Big) Data that Matters

When we first heard about Innovative Enterprise and its Big Data Innovation Summit Boston back in March, we knew this would be a non-vertical specific big data event to watch and follow. The Big Data Innovation Summit taking place at the Westin Copley Place in Boston's Back Bay, September 12-13, includes the largest gathering of Fortune 500 business executives leading Big Data initiatives and is billed as targeting 800+ senior execs (81% are from orgs with more than 300 employees), featuring 40+ educational sessions, panels and hands-on workshops. The 80+ speakers include leading data scientists, engineering, architecture & big data analytics leaders and marketers, represent industry heavyweights including AT&T, CERN, Dell, GE, HP, IBM, LinkedIn, NASA, Netflix, PayPal, Salesforce.com, Sears, Walmart and Yahoo.

A closer look at the jam-packed session schedule reveals many flavors of big data ranging from innovation to analytics, marketing, visualization as well as Hadoop (and beyond) as well as interactive/lab sessions for techies. The Summit schedule is comprised of 6 tracks with up to seven mostly 30 minute sessions per track running concurrently on Thursday with 5 track-agnostic sessions on Friday. The annual Big Data Innovation Awards recognizing big data achievements within the data science community takes place Friday morning as well. Here are a few of our favorites: 

• Big Data Platform at the World's Largest Fan-to-Fan Ticket Marketplace [Sastry Malladi - Chief Architect, Stub Hub]
• In-Memory Computing will Change Everything You Know About Business [Jon Webster - VP, Product Marketing at GridGain]
• Monetizing Big Data with Analytics [Jeff Veis - Vice President, Solutions at HP Autonomy]
• Big Data Innovation and Crowdsourcing - Will They Make a Happy Couple? [Rinat Sergeev - Data Scientist, NASA Tournament Lab]
• Mobile Big Data Insights [Yanling Zhang - Head of Merchandising Insights, Nokia]
• Metrics, Monkeys & Marketing: Lessons on Using Big Data from MailChimp [John Foreman - Chief Data Scientist, MailChimp]
• Big Data Innovations and Applications at NASA [Nikunj Oza - Data Science Leader at NASA]

While InsideLegal is a Big Data Innovation Summit media sponsor this year, a previous commitment has us relegated to spectating/participating from the virtual sidelines so be sure to check out our Twitter feed throughout the day, as well as the one dedicated to the event #BIGDBN and #BigData.

2013 ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey Released

This afternoon, in conjunction with our annual International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) vendor education program, we presented the findings of the 8th annual ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey. The 2013 Survey includes detailed technology budget data; updated information on firms’ social media and publication preferences; an in-depth look at tablet and mobile purchasing patterns; legal IT and Big Data trends, and expansive sections on current and future legal technology purchases. 

The 2013 edition garnered an 18% response rate with 223 unique ILTA member firm responding. ILTA law firms with 1-49 attorneys were included this year in addition to the 50+ attorney firms featured in previous years. The survey report includes some breakdown by firm size, but we will be offering an additional series including the breakdown of each question by firm size in the upcoming weeks on InsideLegal.com.

2013 Survey highlights include:

• 48% of all respondents spend between 2-4% of total revenue on technology; 25% of those surveyed spend 5% or more.
• 76% of firms with 'under 50’ attorneys spend 4% or less on technology.
• 60% of all 'under 50' respondents spend 'less than $8,000' per attorney on technology compared 26% of ‘50+ attorney’ firms.
• Top technology purchases among all surveyed firms in 2013 include desktop hardware (58%), laptops/notebooks (49%), storage area networks (48%), network/server upgrades (44%), and disaster recovery (33%).
• Based on all survey responses, internet research, peer recommendations and ILTA e-Groups are the top influences when it comes to legal IT purchasing decisions.
• While 63% of all '50+' firm respondents rely on feedback from peers/other law firms when making IT purchasing decisions, only 39% of 'under 50' firms indicated the same.
• 81% of respondents reported that they use outside technology consultants to assist with some aspect of firm operations, technology and infrastructure.
• 70% of all survey respondents outsource website design and related services, followed by printer repair/maintenance (60%).
• 16% of respondents indicated that Big Data would lead to more strategic use of data via predictive data modeling, data mining and more accessible data analytics.
• 59% of all respondents purchased Apple iPads, while 36% purchased competitive devices including Android products, Microsoft tablets, and Kindles. Last year, only 17% purchased 'non iPad' tablets.
• 47% of all '50+' firm respondents have a security policy specific to tablet devices vs. 15% of 'under 50' firms that have established one.
• 22% of respondents stated their firms have either developed their own apps, are in the process of doing so, or planning to develop them.

The 39 question web-based survey was distributed to approximately 1,232 law firms, ranging from 1 to 4,200 attorneys, and yielded 223 unique firm responses. 85% of all participating firms came from the U.S., 10% from Canada, and 5% from the U.K., the rest of Europe, South America and Australia. 

The complete survey can be downloaded here. For more information on the survey results, methodology and other legal market research initiatives, contact Jobst Elster.