MORE LAW FIRMS ARE BYTE-SIZED: New survey shows 83 percent of large firms usecomputersAuthor(s): Nancy BlodgettSource: ABA Journal, Vol. 73, No. 2 (FEBRUARY 1, 1987), p. 19Published by: American Bar AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20759126 .

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MORE LAW FIRMS ARE BYTE-SIZED New survey shows 83 percent of large firms use computers

Computer use among lawyers in large firms continues to grow rapidly. Eighty-three percent of the law firms responding to a recent survey said their lawyers personally are using computers in their practice, up 10 percent from last year.

Sponsored for the second consec utive year by the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, the survey draws its information from 192 law firms, in eluding 183 of the largest law firms in the country. The average size of the responding law firms was 111 lawyers.

The overwhelming favorite front office computers used by the lawyers are IBM or IBM-compatible micros. These lawyers use their computers for legal research more than for any other task.

All but 3 percent of the survey group said they use computers to do legal research, with 81 percent of them using a Lexis-dedicated termi nal and 54 percent using Westlaw.

Use of spreadsheets has in creased substantially over last year. This year, 56 percent of the law firms used spreadsheets, up 13 percent. Among spreadsheet users, Lotus 1-2-3 is the clear favorite.

Spreadsheets are being used pri marily for tax planning, financial plan ning, budgeting, modeling and decision-making.

Use of data bases has also grown substantially among law "firms. In 1986,49 percent of the firms reported using data bases, up 20 percent from last year.

Among data base users, dBase II/ III and Lotus 1-2-3 were the most pop ular. The majority of the firms with data bases used them for litigation support.

For back office data processing tasks, most firms said they use a mini computer or mainframe. This year, more firms said their primary back office computer was a Wang, while last year IBM was the leader. Wang also had the most popular word processing package.

Almost all of the firms plan to ex pand their computer use, with 62 per cent of them planning to expand "greatly." ?Nancy Blodgett

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Key-bored? Try speaking New Ulm, Minn., lawyer Dan Gislason puts his time sheet into his computer

simply by speaking to it. "The computer program recognizes my voice when I talk to it, and it types into the system the same information as a keypunch operator would," he said. "If I ask it to return to the beginning of the next line, it will do that too. I don't have to touch the keyboard at all."

Although this would be convenient for lawyers, setting up such a system is very time-consuming. "Every word I use first has to be programmed into the computer, and you have to say the word five times before the computer finally gets it," Gislason said.

To simplify the process, he uses numbers and letters as codes that signify longer phrases or commands. "I say 70 to the computer and it knows this means to type up the words 'review correspondence,'" he said.

ABA JOURNAL / FEBRUARY 1, 1987 19

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