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Vol. 73, No. 8, August 2000 |
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."
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