Although the preparation of next year's edition of the Law Society's Software Solutions guide is still under way, the extensive market research that underpins the venture has already revealed some interesting information about the priorities and concerns of high street firms when it comes to legal technology.

For example, when participants in the survey (the sample was randomly selected from 640 firms using the different software being evaluated for the guide) were asked what they considered were the most pressing IT challenges they faced over the coming year, the number one concern was getting everyone within their firms actually to use the technology.

As this was closely followed by the related concern of getting value for money, this would tend to indicate that solicitors have now firmly grasped the concept of return on investment and the importance of getting tangible, rather than ephemeral, benefits from the money they spend on IT.

This increasingly business-oriented attitude towards the use of IT is also reflected by the next two challenges identified: using software to support risk management processes - in fact, a growing number of firms are finding that IT really can help them obtain more favourable professional indemnity insurance premium levels; and business continuity/disaster recovery planning.

With regards to the latter concern, although only 10% of firms said they did not have a recovery plan in case of a major disaster, it is worrying to see that just 50% were confident that they actually did have a plan - the remaining 40% responding that they were 'not sure' or that they 'sort of' had a plan.

The survey also asked firms about their use of the Internet for business purposes.

Not surprisingly, almost everyone uses e-mail and more than 70% said they used it for legal research, and a similar number of firms reported having their own Web sites.

After that, the most widely used business purposes were downloading forms (63%), and on-line purchasing (47%).

Over the next 12 months, e-conveyancing services and the development of client extranets will have the highest priority.

In terms of the positive and negative impact of the Internet, the top four benefits reported were: ease of communication (28%), ease of research (24%), speed of communication (13%) and speed of accessing information (9%).

The top drawbacks were perceived to be viruses (9%), junk mail (8%), staff using it for non-business purposes (5%) and increased pressure/higher client expectations (4%).

But, to end on a positive note, 61% considered that there were no negatives.

The 2004 edition of the guide is scheduled to be published in February.

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