P2P

92 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S P R I N G 2 0 2 1 partners, consultants, corporations and government law departments, law schools etc., on topics from infrastructure to collaboration and communications. We hear stories regularly about how the tech survey helped someone move an initiative forward or get approval for a technology purchase. The survey results are compiled in total and are parsed into firm size segments. Where a specific question is consistent over a number of years, with only the answer set changing, the history chart is shown. Those history pieces provide valuable trends that help people make decisions. The survey also looks forward. It asks questions around what people are planning to change in the next 12 months. This info helps everyone in the industry understand where things are going – are firms planning to upgrade or replace their DMS or their financial system, and are they thinking of moving more of their systems to hosted providers? M E M B E R R E S O U R C E S S poiler Alert – massive input and expertise goes into building and analyzing the ILTA Technology Survey each year. I learned first-hand how hundreds of IT leaders in all corners of the legal industry fill in the questionnaire, wait anxiously for the published survey, ask for new questions to be added, challenge the results, and provide input that helps the ILTA staff and survey volunteer committee make each succeeding survey better. I came to the ILTA tech survey volunteer committee (responsible for the content of the survey), last year. I had worked with and used the survey results since 2001 and thought I knew how the sausage was made. I had no idea how much work so many people put into it, how many trends are followed year over year. I came to the committee in a year where many trends changed or significantly accelerated and some were um, shall we say irreversibly flatlined, which provided extra challenges to making the 2020 tech survey timely, relevant and topical. ILTA's Tech Survey is completed by over 500 law firms each year. The higher that number is, the more valuable the results (just an encouragement to every firm to complete the questionnaire when it comes out in May!!). The survey results are used by those 500 firms who fill in the questionnaire, and is purchased by many others to support strategic decision making, budgeting, validate ROI discussions, staffing and so much more, by law firms, business Inside the ILTA Tech Survey by TJ Johnson

• Cover