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    Wisconsin Lawyer
    August 01, 2000

    Wisconsin Lawyer August 2000: How Well Are Wisconsin Lawyers Adopting Technology?

     

    Wisconsin Lawyer: August 2000

    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

    I 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.

    Technology"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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