To coincide with the Law Society's annual conference last month, the legal publisher LexisNexis published the results of a survey it had commissioned on the differences between the legal profession's perception of itself and how solicitors were viewed by the general public.

Although many of the questions dealt with more general issues, the point that particularly interested me was that the results highlighted an apparent technology 'gap'.


Charles Christian: clients value an efficient deliverer of legal services

For example, although 96% of solicitors in the survey sample reckoned their firm either fully or partially embraced IT, only 50% of consumers said they would class lawyers as technology-savvy. Paradoxically, only 25% of solicitors believed that better use of IT would result in a better service to clients, through improved response times, access to up-to-date information and greater efficiency, compared with 90% of the public.

Now it is always tempting to dismiss awkward survey results by trotting out the old Mark Twain remark that there are 'lies, damned lies and statistics', but these figures highlight two important aspects of what is effectively a consumer revolution in the public's attitudes towards the providers of all professional services, including law.


The first is that although law firms have come a long way in the past decade, with individual solicitors displaying a generally higher degree of computer literacy than ever before, this needs to be set in its proper context; namely, that previously law firms had relatively primitive IT systems - mainly back-office accounts and word-processing systems that just churned out bits of paper to be posted to clients - whereas many clients have been working with more sophisticated systems for several years.


Indeed, some of your clients' children (and possibly even your own children) probably use more advanced IT systems than your firm. Or, to put it another way, just because you now have practice-wide e-mail does not mean you are technology-savvy. Out in the commercial world, e-mail has been in widespread use for nearly 20 years.


The second, possibly more important aspect, relates to the role of IT in delivering a better service to clients. Now it is understandable that solicitors should think the most important service they offer to their clients is their legal skills - but that is not looking at the issue from the client's perspective.


From the client's position, it is taken as read that all solicitors offer the same quality of legal advice and service, but what does differentiate one firm from another is price and the delivery of those legal services - and that latter aspect is an IT issue.


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