Legal Research

Law Student Use of Technology

By Simon Fodden

As he does every year at about this time, Rich McCue surveys the incoming law students at the University of Victoria about their use of technology. The 2010 results are available on his blog, Rich’s Random Thoughts. This year for the first time students were questioned about mobile technology and about their typing speed.

The executive summary follows:

• 50% of incoming students own ?Smart Phones? that can browse the internet.
• 99% of students own laptops, and 27% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
• 44% of student laptops are Macs.
• The average laptop price dropped to $1,198 from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
• Of the 72% of students who were able to tell us how many words per minute (wpm) they could type, the average was 60 wpm. Only 14% type less than 40 wpm.
• All students now report having high speed internet in their homes.
• 71% of students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
• 87% of students own MP3 players capable of listening to recorded lectures.
• 49% of students use Gmail as their primary email account, 6% use UVic email and 26% Hotmail.
• 67% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing. 27% chose Google Docs, 2% OpenOffice Writer & 5% ?Other?.
• 100% of students now have access to high speed internet at their homes.
• 91% of students use Facebook and 80% of those students would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar of events.

Now if only all law schools would do this, we’d have an even better picture not only for law profs and administrators but also for law firms anticipating future hires.

[photo credit: bradleygee]

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on September 09, 2010 (boomark / email).