Lawyers' confidence in their IT departments has fallen for a second successive year. As law firms call for more reliability in their systems Legal Week Intelligence reports on what lawyers want from the year ahead

As belt-tightening across the legal profession notches up another level it is not surprising that IT departments have joined the list of casualties as a result of cutbacks.

Legal Week Intelligence's fourth annual Information Technology Survey shows lawyers' confidence in their IT departments dipping for the third successive year, with just 11 of the 42 different categories seeing improved grades this year.

At the report's launch earlier this month, delegates lucky enough to have signed off systems upgrades in last year's budgets breathed a sigh of relief as they listened to their counterparts' problems after orders to reign in costs for the foreseeable future. While the general sentiment was that projects that would lead to rapid, demonstrable cost savings would still get signed off, the majority of equipment and software upgrades were likely to be put on hold.

The survey, based on responses from just under 2,800 lawyers centred on the UK's top 25 firms, showed lawyers' general impression of service and support falling to an average of 2.95 out of four, down from a 2006 high of 3.11. That said, almost a third of firms managed to buck the trend and improve their overall performance this year.

While as a whole lawyers were fairly satisfied with the equipment they are provided with, the score also fell from last year's survey, demonstrating the cut in investment already starting to bite.

System security saw the biggest declines in ratings since 2007, although remains the highest ranked category in terms of reliability. Meanwhile, with just one out of four, the speed of firm's IT systems came in as one of the most criticised areas.

However, as Gartner analyst Debra Logan told delegates, this is likely to be because people compare their work systems to their home set-up, where they are likely to run more up-to-date computers, entirely unlinked to other systems. She added that lawyers in particular remain suspicious of email archiving, wanting to retain records of all their work. With thousands of emails sitting on individuals computers, this can also dramatically slow down the systems.

Transactional support

Both customer relationship management (CRM) systems and know-how systems have come in for a hit this year, with fee earners increasingly sceptical about their use for winning business and client care.

As one delegate summarised: "People are quite happy to ride along with the old CRM system thinking it will see them through the downturn. What they don't understand is that it is only as good as its content and unless people don't update it, it is just going to get worse and worse."

Systems in place for charging and billing clients – while still getting the highest score among the transactional support categories – have seen one of the biggest falls in this section. Support given when drawing up bills or resolving billing disputes scores particularly badly.

The year to come

Support was one of the key areas singled out as needing improvement over the coming year. Fee earners are calling for more out-of-hours assistance, as well as more support on site.

However, there was little interest in the introduction of more up-to-date systems, with most lawyers preferring their IT departments to concentrate on getting the systems they already have to work reliably. Respondents also suggested IT teams got more in touch with fee earners in order for any changes to be best tailored to their needs.

Looking forward, Gartner's Logan also predicted that electronic disclosure tools, currently hot in the US, were going to take off in the UK, also suggesting collaborative technologies, while growing in popularity, would continue to be a headache for many firms and their clients alike.

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