Lawyers are ignorant when it comes to IT and many are not prepared to put in the effort to understand even simple technical details, a survey of legal IT professionals has revealed.

The poll of 49 senior IT directors and managers - 81% of whom work at firms with more than 100 fee-earners - asked what were the worst aspects of working with lawyers.

Apart from lawyers' ignorance of IT - the most frequently cited shortcoming - consistent criticisms included a lack of project-management skills, poor commercial awareness and a tendency to approach IT in the same way that they deal with their legal work.

One IT director who took part in the Legal IT Forum poll, said: 'Lawyers are trained to find flaws in documents - a trait they carry over to every aspect of their dealings with all projects.

Therefore, they often don't get the big picture and are overly pedantic.'

Another said: 'They find it hard to stop approaching everything as if it were a contract or negotiation.'

Other problems faced by IT professionals working in law firms included the difficulties of getting partners to buy into projects, and a business environment where decision-making can be extremely slow.

Simon Dieppe, organiser of the Legal IT Forum, said: 'There is still a massive chasm between IT professionals and lawyers, which does not seem to be getting any smaller as time goes on.

There is a feeling that the lawyers just expect from IT and are not prepared to put in the effort themselves to get the full benefits of the products.

'There is also a sense that not enough is being done to get people computer literate at the educational stage, before they take up their training contracts.

More needs to be done by the educational bodies.'

Philip Hoult