Legal Marketing & PR

Spot Survey: Less than Half of Lawyers Use their CRM Systems

By Larry Bodine

A majority of law firms are not using their commercial CRM (client relationship management) effectively, according to an on-the-spot survey that LexisNexis conducted at the recent 2010 International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference. In fact, six in ten survey respondents (60%) say that less than half of their firm's lawyers are 'active' users of their firm's CRM system.

This might be due to the fact that many lawyers find current systems in place are too difficult and time consuming, according to the survey.  Seven in ten survey respondents (70%) agree that many lawyers in their firm are reluctant to use their CRM system because they believe doing so is too difficult. In fact, nearly a quarter of attendees (23%) strongly agree with this statement.

The majority of survey respondents (80%) agree that many lawyers in their firm are reluctant to use their CRM system because they believe doing so will take too much of their time. One third of survey respondents (34%) strongly agree with this statement.

"One possible solution could be tighter integrating between CRM systems and email applications lawyers use every day, because the majority of survey respondents feel this would increase CRM usage among their firm's lawyers and enable lawyers to access and share firm-wide information to help them stay 'in the know,'" said LexisNexis spokesperson Victoria Rupeka.

Nearly all survey respondents (94%) say that integrating specialized CRM capabilities directly within the e-mail and contact management application lawyers in their firm use every day – such as Microsoft Outlook – would enable their firm to capture more useful CRM data and leverage that data in a better way.

In fact, the majority of respondents (89%) admit they think lawyers at their firm could avoid potentially embarrassing gaps in their knowledge about clients if they were able to more easily share information and updates about contacts between themselves.

The survey respondents are mostly from large firms and operate in a technology-related role. Two-thirds of survey respondents (66%) report that there are over 200 lawyers in their firm. Most respondents surveyed describe their role with their law firm as 'Chief Technology Officer/Chief Information Officer/IT Director' (31%) or 'other information technology professional' (33%).

The online study was conducted via iPads in August 2010 during the ILTA conference in Las Vegas. Only participants whose firm currently uses a commercial CRM system were included in the study.  The survey findings include the 80 qualified respondents who completed the survey.

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on September 14, 2010 (boomark / email).