Nicole Black, BridgeTower Media Newswires
A little over a decade ago, the mobile revolution was launched when the iPhone was released in 2007. Just one year earlier, Amazon rolled out its first cloud computing service: Amazon EC2. Now, in 2019, many of the most popular websites, including Netflix, Pinterest and Reddit, are run on cloud servers hosted by Amazon Web Services.
It’s no coincidence that mobile and cloud computing tools launched so close in time. After all, mobile and cloud computing go hand-in-hand; together they make today’s computing possible. This is because mobile devices alone are limited by their memory, processing power and battery life. But when mobile phones and tablets are used with cloud computing tools, the data processing and storage needed to make mobile apps useful and functional can happen outside of mobile devices — on cloud computing servers.
This combined utility has contributed to the significant rise in lawyers’ use of cloud and mobile computing in recent years. According to the American Bar Association’s most recent Legal Technology Survey, small firm lawyers are making the move to cloud-based legal software more than ever before, with 55% of lawyers surveyed reporting that they’ve used cloud computing software for law-related tasks over the past year, up from 38% in 2016.
And many more are thinking of switching to cloud-based legal software in the year to come. Small law firms were the most likely to plan to do so. The survey results showed that firms with two to 9 lawyers led the way at 15%. Next up was law firms with 10-49 lawyers at 14%, followed by firms with 50-99 lawyers at 13%.
According to the survey, the reasons for using cloud computing software are many. Ease of access from any location was the most popular reason (68%), followed by 24/7 availability (59%), and the affordability and the low cost of entry (48%). Other reasons provided by the lawyers surveyed included robust data back-up and recovery (46%), the ability to get the software up and running quickly (40%), the elimination of IT and software management requirements (34%), and last but certainly not least, better security than the firms were able to provide in-office (31%).
The top reason cited for making the switch — ease of access from any location — isn’t surprising, since lawyers are more reliant on mobile devices in 2019 than they’ve ever been. In fact, according to the survey, 95% of lawyers reported that they use their smartphones outside of the office for law-related purposes. And, nearly half of all lawyers — 49% — reported that they used their tablet for law-related purposes while away from the office.
The most popular type of phone used by lawyers is the iPhone, with 72% preferring it. Androids were next at 27%, followed by Blackberrys (2%) and then Windows Mobile (1%). Notably, despite the prominence of iPhone use by lawyers, 43% of lawyers surveyed reported that their firms supported multiple platforms for smartphones, rather than just one type of smartphone.
Fifty percent of lawyers have downloaded a legal-specific app to their smartphone, with legal research apps being the most popular. Similarly, 50% of lawyers have downloaded a general business app to their smartphone. Dropbox was the most popular, with 77% of lawyers reporting that they’d downloaded it. LinkedIn was next at 63%, followed by Evernote (37%), LogMeIn (15%), and DocsToGo (14%).
Do any of these statistics about how small firm lawyers are using cloud-based legal software and mobile devices surprise you? How mobile are you compared to your colleagues? And, is your firm in the cloud yet? If not, maybe it’s time make the switch.
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Nicole Black is a director at MyCase.com, a cloud-based law practice management platform. She is also of counsel to Fiandach & Fiandach in Rochester and is a GigaOM Pro analyst. She is the author of the ABA book “Cloud Computing for Lawyers,” coauthors the ABA book “Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier,” and co-authors “Criminal Law in New York,” a West-Thomson treatise. She speaks regularly at conferences regarding the intersection of law and technology. She publishes three legal blogs and can be reached at niki@mycase.com.
