Barriers to technological acceptance in a legal environment: A case study of a Florida law firm

Technology is made available in the law firm to promote time efficient tasks and to provide resources that allows the accurate billing and storing of documents. This study examined the impact of three major technologies that are used by attorneys in a law firm. Quantitative procedures facilitated the identification of barriers to Personal Digital Assistants (PDA devices), FileSiteRTM (an electronic database), and WordTricksRTM (a toolbar in Microsoft WordRTM designed to make it easier to create documents). Attorneys enter the field of law with knowledge regarding laws and the processes of law; however they often lack basic technological skills. The inability to employ technologically advanced systems such as PDA devices, FileSite, and WordTricks results in the lost of time and money for a firm. Capital has been allocated to purchase PDA devices for attorneys at the law firm to adequately record billable time and provide customer service to their clients. In addition, FileSite was purchased to keep all client information such as emails, word documents and PDFs in a centric database that allows attorneys to collaborate. Furthermore, the firm spends large sums of money for upgrades and maintenance of servers that store WordTricks data. The purpose of this research was to (a) obtain information about the utilization of PDA devices, FileSite and WordTricks, (b) analyze the firm's ability to determine their return on investments with those technologies, (c) are the attorneys using their time more efficiently by using these technologies, (d) has professional development in the usage of the technologies improving the attorney's productivity and, (e) have age, gender, experience, and office location play a pivotal role in the confidence and use of the technologies. This research addressed the reasons why the use of those technologies are or not limited. It examined whether technology is or not utilized and the reasons for this usage or lack thereof. Pearson's chi-square analysis was utilized to determine statistical significance between two categories. The research indicated that 11.4% of the attorneys that use their PDA devices actually record billable hours. 84.3% of the attorneys save Word documents into FileSite, 64.3% of the attorneys save PDF documents into FileSite and 48.6% of the attorneys save emails into FileSite. The data indicated in every WordTricks feature there are more attorneys that do not use the feature then there are attorneys that do use the feature. Furthermore, 34.3% of the attorneys don't use WordTricks. Training did improve attorneys' productivity in the use of WordTricks. Age, gender and experience played a pivotal role in the confidence and use of FileSite. However, PDA devices and WordTricks were not statistically significant.