The International Legal Technology Association has released an executive summary of its annual technology survey of law firms that underscores firms’ continuing adoption of cloud-based technologies while finding that only about 20% of firms are currently using or testing artificial intelligence and machine learning.
ILTA will release the full 2019 technology survey later this month, which will provide in-depth reporting on survey results compiled from 537 firms representing more than 116,000 attorneys and 240,000 total users. About two-thirds of respondents were from firms with 150 lawyers or fewer.
The executive summary, prepared by Jim McCue, director of information systems at the Rodey Law Firm, showed a clear trend of firms moving more of their functions to the cloud. Seventy-two percent of firms said that their adoption of cloud-based technologies will increase over the next year, capping a four-year trend of firms each year saying their use of the cloud will increase.
When asked which firm functions are already in the cloud or will be migrated there within the next year, the top category was payroll, with 70% of firms saying their payroll functions are already in the cloud and another 7% saying their payroll migration is planned.
Other functions with significant percentages already in the the cloud or being migrated there were:
Email security. Email archiving. Email. E-discovery.
Just 12% say their accounting and finance are in the cloud, but another 16% say they are migrating those functions there. Notably, 23% of firms have plans to migrate to a new accounting system over the next year, of which 64% plan to stay with a firm-hosted system.
In contrast, of the 15% of firms that plan to move to a new document management system this year, 82% say the DMS will be in the cloud.
To the extent
