Dropbox usage at 30 percent.
Small law firms flocking to iPads were also moving in numbers to cloud software to run their business, a survey of 1,200 US lawyers has found.
The iPad “continues to be a game-changing device for lawyers” with nearly 60 percent of respondents currently using an iPad in their law office, the Apple in Law Firms survey by legal practice cloud software company Clio. Of those that didn’t, 60 percent planned on purchasing an iPad in the following year.
A quarter of respondents were using Clio and cloud storage service Dropbox, 15 percent were using Google Apps and 5 percent QuickBooks Online, the survey said. Apple’s consumer cloud storage and synchronisation service, iCloud, was used by 16 percent of respondents.
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Apple and Android smartphones dominated small law firms with 62 percent and 25 percent adoption rates respectively. The once ubiquitous BlackBerry had fallen from 28 percent adoption in 2010 to just 7 percent, the survey found.
Nearly half of respondents said they chose Apple hardware over PC options because the technology was more reliable and secure. Surprisingly, aesthetics and design dropped to 2 percent from 3 percent.
“This is the third year Clio has conducted this Apple in Law Firms survey to benchmark the degree of adoption of Apple products and other emerging technology in the legal industry,” said Clio CEO and Co-Founder Jack Newton. “Apple hardware and devices – especially the iPad and iPhone – continue to capture the attention and dollars of lawyers; cloud-based applications have won attorneys’ confidence and gained more traction.”
Some notes from the survey: 1212 people participated, 79 percent of which were practicing lawyers and 20 percent of which were law students or non-lawyers. 76 percent of respondents were lawyers at firms with 10 attorneys or less. Many of the survey respondents were relative Mac newcomers: 60 percent of respondents have been using Macs in their law offices for two years or less.