Given the hundreds of millions of pounds that law firms in this country spend collectively on technology each year, it remains an interesting point as to why many are still so relatively inefficient, in terms of the large numbers of support staff they employ and the low profit margins they enjoy.

In an attempt to shed some light, publisher Sweet & Maxwell recently carried out a survey among the heads of IT at the top 100 law firms - and the clear message was that the biggest problems IT faces in law firms are cultural rather than technical. For example, 39% of IT departments reported that fee-earners still lacked confidence in IT and 28% felt there was a low recognition of the business benefits of IT among fee-earners.


The survey also found that while 64% of IT directors believed lawyers now accept that IT can help retain clients, when it came to new business, 55% of IT directors said lawyers still do not believe IT plays a role in winning clients. Perhaps not surprisingly, 73% of law firm IT departments said more needed to be done to raise the status of IT within firms - with 65% suggesting it was the managing partner's or executive board's role to do this.


But is there any chance of this happening? In a similar survey, carried out last year by Informa, an apparently more disrespectful sample of IT directors were asked what were the biggest problems they encountered when working with lawyers.


Predictably, there were a lot of complaints that the nature of law firms and their partnership culture meant decision-making was a drawn-out process because everyone had a different opinion and needed to be consulted. Similarly, there was concern that the legalistic mindset of lawyers resulted in them approaching everything as if it were a deal they were negotiating.


However, the biggest source of grievances was their general ignorance of all matters technical and managerial. In response after response, concern was expressed that lawyers had poor management skills, lacked vision and commercial awareness, and wanted results from IT but were not prepared to spend any time trying to understand IT or even get a grip on the simplest technical details.


This no doubt explains why, when asked where they would like to be in five years' time, 13% said they would still like to be working in IT 'but well away from anything to do with lawyers' and 22% 'hoped to be out of the rat race altogether, sitting in the sun with a cocktail'. Quite clearly, it is not so much a cultural problem as a cultural divide.


Charles Christian is an independent adviser to the Law Society's Software Solutions guide