How Well Are Wisconsin Lawyers Adopting Technology?

The Impact of the Internet on CLE

Nearly half the respondents to the fourth annual technology survey say they're very comfortable using computers and are interested in staying current with new technology. Alarmingly, the other half say their computer skills are at most adequate or worse. Observers are concerned that merely adequate computer skills are not good enough in today's competitive legal marketplace.

by Dianne Molvig

n light of recent survey findings, how well Wisconsin lawyers are doing in adopting technology depends on whether you view the glass as half full or half empty.

Nearly half the respondents to the State Bar of Wisconsin 2000 Law Firm Technology Survey described themselves as "very comfortable using computers" and having "an interest in keeping abreast of new technologies." But 2 percent said they never use computers and never intend to, while 15 percent stated they use computers only when "absolutely necessary" and that their computer skills are limited. Thirty-four percent of respondents acknowledged that using computers daily is necessary to practice law. Lawyers in the latter group assessed their level of computer skills to be "adequate."

The fact that roughly half the surveyed attorneys rated their computer skills as at best adequate, and at worst limited or nonexistent, is a cause for concern in the eyes of many observers. Merely adequate computer skills are not good enough for law firms to thrive in today's world, they say.

"It comes back to client service," says Debra Hix-Sykes, an administrator for a Milwaukee/Madison-based law firm and an office management consultant for other firms in the state. "It used to be that if you were meeting with clients to try to win their business, they'd ask about what type of work you did and what victories you'd had. Now some of the first questions are 'What kind of technology systems do you have in place? Can you communicate with us in an efficient manner?' And it's not just the corporate clients asking those questions."

Attorney Ross Kodner, president of MicroLaw, a nationwide Milwaukee-based law technology consulting firm, agrees with Hix-Sykes' assessment. "What I'm seeing in the field right now is that the marketplace is dramatically changed," he says. "Clients are demanding far more technological savvy from their lawyers. And I'm not sure this survey reflects that they're getting it" in Wisconsin.

In fact, Kodner would go so far as to say the survey suggests the state's attorneys are slipping backwards in technology usage. "The level of technology focus in our state is minimal compared to what other states are doing," he says. "We're behind the curve, and we used to be way ahead of it. This survey should be a wake-up call."

Who Responded

The State Bar staff sent a survey questionnaire to 1,773 Wisconsin law firms in April 2000. Selection of surveyed firms was by a stratified sampling, based on firm size, to obtain a representative cross-section of the state's attorneys. Survey responses came back from 607 attorneys, for a 34 percent response rate.

Of those responding, 52 percent were in one-attorney firms, 32 percent worked in two-to-five-attorney offices, and 16 percent were from firms of six or more attorneys. These percentages are nearly the same as those of the most recent previous survey, completed in 1998. Again, in this survey, as in the last, sole practitioners are under-represented compared to the Bar as a whole where firms of one attorney now account for 68 percent of all Wisconsin firms.

Responding attorneys represented law firms statewide, with the smallest proportion of the firms (12 percent) located in the 22-county northwest region, and the largest proportion (24 percent) located in Milwaukee County. The remainder were in the southwest (22 percent), central (17 percent), northeast (13 percent), and southeast outside of Milwaukee County (13 percent).

The rural/urban split was even, with 38 percent of respondents having their primary offices in cities with a population of 100,000-plus, and the same percentage located in towns with populations of less than 25,000. These proportions are close to those of previous surveys in 1998 and 1997.

Systems Used

Pentium is the computer of choice among the state's lawyers, with roughly 88 percent of firms owning Pentium I, II, or III machines. Twenty-five percent, however, currently own Pentium IIIs. Seventeen percent of firms say they'll buy Pentium IIIs within the next year.

As for operating systems, only 5 percent of firms have adopted Windows 2000, and 9 percent use Windows NT Workstation. Windows 95 (46 percent) and Windows 98 (60 percent) still prevail in most Wisconsin law offices. A sizable proportion still use DOS (21 percent) or Windows 3.x (8 percent), considered by technology experts to be obsolete. The fact that these figures add up to more than 100 percent, however, indicates that many offices use multiple operating systems. Thus, many firms still using DOS and Windows 3.x perhaps also have computers equipped with newer operating systems.

As for future plans, only 4 percent of respondents said their firm will go to Windows NT Workstation in the next year, and 12 percent will adopt Windows 2000 during that same period. Fifteen percent will upgrade to Windows 98.

As Kodner sees it, too many lawyers in the state are slow on the draw to upgrade their equipment and systems. And that can hurt their ability to keep or attain clients. "I know plenty of law firms," he says, "that have been given ultimatums by their clients, saying, 'If you can't communicate with us electronically, we don't want to use you.' I would predict that in the next two years, it will be far more the norm that any communication with clients and any transfer of documents will be done electronically, rather than by sending paper. Firms that can't do that aren't going to continue to exist."

That trend, Kodner adds, applies in rural and urban settings. "There are lots of manufacturing companies in small towns," he points out. "Or it could be the local hardware store that's more computerized than its law firm, and says, 'Stop sending us paper.'"

Milwaukee attorney and computer consultant William Gleisner observes that in his work with firms around the country, he sees a much faster pace of adoption of Windows 2000 and Windows NT Workstation elsewhere than in his home state. Lawyers using the older systems are missing out on capabilities only newer systems can provide.

As just one example, Windows NT Workstation or Windows 2000 are necessary to support Citrix application server software. With Citrix, a firm having two branch offices in, say, La Crosse and Eau Claire, can have lawyers in each office dial up to work on the same document simultaneously.

Or a sole practitioner could use Citrix to access data on an office computer via a laptop, no matter where he or she may be. "Say I have a case that has thousands of documents," Gleisner explains, "I could put that on my laptop and go with it. But maybe I want to put it on my server back in my home office, and then I don't have to worry about clogging up my (laptop's) hard drive. I can just call into my server and work with those documents wherever I am."

The point, Gleisner emphasizes, is that "things are changing very, very fast. And we're well beyond simple Windows applications." Looking at survey results on technology usage patterns, he doubts most Wisconsin lawyers are poised to take advantage of the new possibilities.

Another observation on trends in operating systems comes from Green Bay attorney Mark Pennow, chair of the State Bar's Electronic Bar Services Committee. Noting the possible breakup of Microsoft, Pennow predicts "a dramatic upswing in the law office implementation of Linux," a system created by a nonprofit, worldwide consortium of programmers. "In fact," Pennow says, "it's a poorly kept secret that Microsoft is already working on porting over Word and Excel and a bunch of other applications to the Linux platform, in anticipation that they're going to get cut in half and will need to compete on multiple software platforms. So it's likely that the world of Linux will expand dramatically for the law office."

How Lawyers Use Computers

The survey asked respondents how much they used computers to perform various tasks. Figure 1 shows the results. The scale ranged from 0 to 5, with 1 indicating low usage (1 to 19 percent), 2 for 20-39 percent usage, 3 for medium usage (40-59 percent), 4 for 60-79 percent usage, and 5 for high usage (80-100 percent). Most firms do not plan to computerize in the next year any tasks that they haven't done so already, and responses revealed only modest interest in increasing computer use for most applications.

A few comparisons to the 1998 survey findings illustrate today's modest interest in increasing computer usage. In 1998, document assembly was at 4.1, versus the current 4.0; time and billing was at 4.3, versus the current 3.7; calendaring was at 3.4, versus 3.0 today; and conflict checking was at 3.2 versus the current 3.0.

The medium to low usage levels for many tasks, other than document preparation, indicate that many lawyers aren't getting all they could out of their computers, technology experts say. For instance, lawyers ought to consider making far greater use of automated conflict checking, advises Hix-Sykes. "We can no longer rely on our old methods of having physical file cards or relying on memory," she notes. "And it's only a matter of time before our malpractice carriers want firms to use more than manual methods."

And while the "jury is still out" on whether and how attorneys can practice in multidisciplinary settings, in which lawyers pool their expertise with other nonlawyer professionals to jointly serve clients, MDPs spur an even greater need for computerized conflict checking. In such settings, Hix-Sykes points out, "Lawyers are going to be exposed to additional people, additional companies, and they'll need a conflict-checking system that's quicker and more accurate."

Lawyers also could be making better use of computerized presentations, Hix-Sykes says. "It depends on the clientele you're serving," she notes, "but it can have a powerful impact. It's something lawyers should consider learning, especially when they're trying to do business development." Likewise, much potential remains untapped for using computer technology to present information in a clear, engaging way in trials before juries.

Figure 2 shows the frequency of use of various applications, ranging from "never" to "daily." This question was not asked in the 1998 survey, so no comparisons with this year's results are possible. Naturally, the highest daily usage numbers are for word processing (91 percent), a task for which law firms use WordPerfect more than Microsoft Word (see Figure 3). Sixty-eight percent access the Internet daily, and 50 percent send email outside the office daily. But 17 percent of lawyers still use the Internet only monthly or never, and 0 percent send email to parties outside their firms at most once a month.

Legal research by CD-ROM gets nearly as much daily usage as legal research by the Internet (29 percent versus 31 percent) - a finding that concerns Kodner. "Those firms using CD-ROM are relying on the once-a-month updates," he points out, "and that means for the 29 days in between those updates they're (potentially) giving their clients outdated advice."

The high "never" usage levels for such applications as intranet (85 percent), extranet (95 percent), and voice recognition software (87 percent) indicate a huge need for education, says Kodner.

What Lawyers Want and Need

Visiting the State Bar's WisBar Web site is a fairly regular practice for many state attorneys. A total of 92 percent of surveyed lawyers have visited the site at some point, and 52 percent check the site at least several times a month (see Figure 4).

Still, while 68 percent of respondents indicated they log onto the Internet daily, only 5 percent go to WisBar that often. "I think that reflects that we've done a good job working on the medium," Pennow says. "We have a great Web site that has plenty of pizazz and lots of potential. But we need to work on the message. There's obviously something WisBar doesn't provide."

That situation may be remedied somewhat upon completion of an initiative to put on the Web electronic copies of all Wisconsin Supreme Court cases dating back to the 1940s, as well as all Wisconsin Court of Appeals cases. Currently, only cases from 1995 forward are available online.

But WisBar's potential extends far beyond that, to include enormous possibilities for continuing legal education. "Right now WisBar does a good job of providing static information," Pennow says, "and it does somewhat of a good job providing knowledge, that is, information in context. We don't do any kind of a job at all of disseminating wisdom - that is, knowledge tempered by judgment. We have a good deal of wisdom penned up in the continuing legal education (CLE) materials. Yet none of that surfaces on the Web site."

Many survey respondents agree that they'd like to be able to access CLE materials via the Internet. Thirty-seven percent said they'd be interested in purchasing CLE seminar materials by downloading the audio lectures and/or written materials. An equal percentage also want to be able to purchase CLE book chapters, and 74 percent would like to be able to buy legal forms over the Internet.

Stumbling Blocks

Remaining at the top of attorneys' list of barriers to adopting computer technology is the lack of time for research and implementation. In the 2000 survey, 57 percent of respondents cite time scarcity as an obstacle to using computers in their practices (see Figure 5). This percentage has stayed at roughly the same level ever since the State Bar's first technology survey in 1996. Tied for a rather distant second place were "shortage of financial resources" and "lack of training," both at 38 percent - compared to 35 percent and 38 percent, respectively, in 1998.

Sheryn Bruehl, an Oklahoma attorney and nationwide speaker on technology, says she empathizes with the time shortage issue. But she's learned - sometimes the hard way - that investing time and effort to learn technology pays off. "I see lawyers spending two or three hours on projects their secretaries could have done for them in 15 minutes with the right tools," Bruehl says. "I've done the same thing. I've left my office many, many nights at 11 o'clock."

Then a few years ago her firm installed case management software. "My capacity to do work," she notes, "increased radically just by organizing the details - not searching for files and papers, not looking for lost information, and not retracing my own steps over and over. What had been overwhelming for me six months before was maybe 40 percent of my work capacity" after installing case management software.

Still, finding the time and energy to get started with technology can seem impossible. That's when it's wise to turn to outside help, says Bruehl, adding that she's surprised to see 20 percent of survey respondents marked "lack of knowledgeable vendors and consultants" as a barrier to technology usage "when Wisconsin has some of the best in the country," she says.

Paying for outside expertise can be a smart investment, Bruehl argues, emphasizing that she makes her living from her law practice, not from consulting, and thus she has no stake in drumming up work for technology consultants. "Lawyers will spend $3,000 on a computer they're using as just a glorified typewriter," she says. "They truly have no idea of the scope and power of legal software available to them. But a law technology consultant could spend an hour with a firm and show it how to save $10,000 or $20,000 a year in billable time or staff salary."

Ironically, the logic of investing in technology help - whether for hiring consultants or enrolling in training seminars - often escapes attorneys, Bruehl says. "It strikes me as funny that they're the same people who tell their clients they can't afford not to have an attorney," she notes. "Lawyers know that people (who try to handle their own legal matters) cheat themselves because they don't know what they don't know. I think attorneys are in the same position when it comes to technology."

Surf or Sink

Reading between the lines of the survey results, technology experts glimpse lingering attitudes that hinder effective use of law technology. In the eyes of many, technology may still be just one more detail to worry about and spend time on, one more expense to pay for in today's overhead-heavy law firms. But, in fact, technology is a tool for survival in today's competitive marketplace, where the "million-pound gorilla of multidisciplinary practices hangs over us," Kodner says.

Fending off that kind of competition demands "knowing what you do well," he adds, "and being able to do it even better because you're extremely efficient and you're very lean internally. You have minimum overhead because you use technology as much as possible."

That's been De Forest attorney David Grove's goal ever since he set up his sole practice right out of law school five years ago. From the start, his business plan called for a staffless office. His thinking was that "if I had this standard one-lawyer and one-secretary office, and then slapped technology on top of that," he says, "all I'd do is increase my costs. So I said I'm going to get rid of the staff idea." Technology has enabled him to do that and thus keep his overhead costs low. "We're running at 28 cents on the dollar in a bad year," he says, "and in a good year we're at 21 cents. That's a big difference. I mean, we're talking about dollars you keep in your hand here."

Technology continues to develop at a rapid pace and "will absolutely increase exponentially lawyers' ability to function," Gleisner says. "It's no longer a situation where the practice of law is your primary focus and technology is just something that gets in your way. Technology is going to be the way you practice law. It's as if we're, in effect, body surfing through life on technology waves, and it's going to be the people who learn to body surf best who will survive. That's the way it is. Welcome to the 21st century."

Dianne Molvig operates Access Information Service, a Madison research, writing, and editing service. She is a frequent contributor to area publications.

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