eDiscovery Daily Blog

• November 14, 2016

In his LawSites blog last week, Bob Ambrogi reported on results from the 2016 Legal Technology Survey Report by the American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center.  One of the more notable statistics from the report is that just 38 percent of lawyers use cloud computing for law-related tasks.  But, is that really true?

In the report, 53 percent of lawyers say they have not used cloud computing and 10 percent do not know whether they have or not, according to the survey, which the LTRC conducts annually.

Bob goes on to report that of the lawyers who say they do not use cloud computing, 7 percent say they plan to use the cloud within the next 12 months, 3 percent say they plan to within the next two years, 17 percent say they will use it “sometime in future,” and 42 percent say they do not plan ever to use it.

When lawyers who do not use the cloud were asked why, the top reason they gave was “Confidentiality/security concerns at 63 percent.”  But, in-house solutions may not necessarily be more secure. Earlier this year, I covered an article by Daniel Garrie and Yoav M. Griver of Zeichner, Ellman & Krause, who made several observations, including this one:

“Almost every e-discovery platform in the marketplace today requires some sort of connectivity to the Internet to obtain software updates, be it for the platform or the solution operating the platform. Consequently, law firms that elect to avoid cloud-driven solutions with the intention of offering clients greater security may not actually be providing greater security. Odds are that your security isn’t bulletproof, you don’t have 100 percent systems uptime, and you may not have the necessary amount of staff resources dedicated to IT management.”

Anyway, back to the idea of lawyers not using the cloud.  Are that many really not using the cloud?

Bob raised doubts about that himself a couple of days later, referencing a 2012 Citrix survey on cloud computing in which 54 percent of Americans claimed never to have used cloud computing, when, in fact, 95 percent actually did use it – for things such as banking and shopping online, social networking and file sharing.  And, that was four years ago.

So, do lawyers actually realize when they’re using the cloud?  In some cases, maybe not.  And, if they don’t know when they’re using it, do they really understand its benefits?

So, what do you think?  Do you think that most attorneys have used the cloud for law-related tasks?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.