While the technological aptitude of the average law firm or corporate legal department attorney may be in the low range, just how receptive they are to new innovation efforts could be tied more directly into how those initiatives are explained. Especially beyond the use of buzzwords such as "efficiency."

To be sure, a tech knowledge gap is still a reality inside firms or legal departments. For example, the 2020 Wolters Kluwer Future Ready Lawyer Survey, released earlier this month, showed that 67% of in-house legal respondents believed that big data and predictive analytics would have a significant impact on their department. However, only 25% claimed to understand that concept very well.

Those findings may be applicable not just to corporate legal departments, but attorneys in general. Tomu Johnson, co-founder and CEO of Parsons Behle & Latimer's tech subsidiary Parsons Behle Lab, indicated that while attorneys generally understand that technology has wrought some radical changes to the way law is practiced, that may be where it stops.

"They don't have the aptitude to keep on top of all the different changes in every different type of law tools, whether it's changes in [electronic discovery reference model] technology, changes in document drafting automation technology [or] changes in billing technology," Johnson said.

It may be that attorneys are most likely to educate themselves on a tool or piece of technology when their back is against the wall. Brett Burney of Burney Consultants indicated that many lawyers seek him out for tech-related advice in the aftermath of a litigation matter "that just went completely sour."

"In other words, that they had to pay so much money simply because it was their own mistake and they didn't have everything collected correctly," Burney said.

Still, law firms and legal departments probably don't want to be pushing tech-based initiatives exclusively when their pants are on fire. Getting lawyers engaged in those projects doesn't necessarily require a crash course in artificial intelligence, e-discovery tech, or other innovations.

According to Johnson, lawyers typically just want to know how a product is going to make their lives better or help them recoup additional money for clients. "When I talked to attorneys about our automation tool, they didn't really care what was under the hood. They just wanted to make sure it worked. But they didn't care how my engineer got it to work," Johnson said.

Still, bringing attorneys to that point can require a very finely tuned message that may be getting lost inside of the general "efficiency" push that dominates most law firm, legal department or even tech vendor messaging. Burney mentioned that he was recently working with a software provider who asked him to look over their marketing materials, which in his opinion focused disproportionately on the amount of time the solution could potentially save its users.

"It needs to be efficiency in that it allows you to get your work done and done correctly, done accurately," Burney said.

Meanwhile, the average tech IQ inside of law firms and legal departments could be growing. Burney noted that he's seen questions around a job candidate's previous technical experience or knowledge become more common during interviews. Johnson at Parsons Behle Lab also believes that the younger generation of attorneys will bring both a greater degree of tech-savvy and willingness to learn to the table.

"I think that that will be the biggest change for our profession," Johnson said.