A new Survey reveals that close to 70% of lawyers are not even adequately competent with technology or are at least perceived not to be.
On Wednesday, Relativity Fest 2021 featured a panel discussion of Ari Kaplan’s annual General Counsel Survey. This Survey is the third such Survey done by Kaplan jointly with Relativity and FTI Technology. On the panel with Kaplan were Wendy King, Senior Managing Director of FTI Technology, and Monique Ho, General Counsel of Course Hero.
Kaplan surveyed GCs in a wide array of companies in virtually every type of business, employee count, and revenue. Kaplan spent over 40 hours interviewing in-house counsel to complete the Survey.
Lots of interesting findings. For example, the three things that concern GCs the most, in order:
Cyber security, privacy, and data security. The impact of Covid and the accompanying uncertainties. Increased regulation and compliance requirements, particularly in light of the change of Presidential administrations.
But what got my attention (and the attention of Joe Patrice of Above The Law in a well writen post on this same subject) is the level of perceived technological incompetence of lawyers.
Kaplan asked the GCs a simple question: Do attorneys have adequate technical compliance? Given the ethical duty of lawyers to keep abreast of the risks and benefits of relevant technology and the increased use of technology over the past 18 months, I expected GCs to report a high percentage of lawyers with adequate competence. I also expected the percentage would have improved over the three years since more lawyers are presumably doing more with technology.
Kaplan’s most recent Survey revealed that GCs believe 67% of lawyers lack adequate competence. That’s almost 7 out of every ten lawyers.
So I was surprised by the numbers. Kaplan’s most