The data explosion within law firms has seen the transformation of both external functions like litigation and contracting, as well as internal functions like financial and document management. Technology-enabled services have let legal teams not only better serve their clients, but collect metrics to determine what’s working and what’s not as well. However, there remains one area within law firms that has seemed more reluctant to embrace metrics to measure department success: IT departments themselves.

The International Legal Technology Association’s (ILTA) 2022 Tech Survey revealed that 63% of surveyed law firm IT departments reported using “none/non-applicable” metrics to measure IT department performance. That figure was lower, but only slightly, from 2021’s 67%. The most popular available metrics used were downtime per month (37% of surveyed firms), Help Desk closed ticket feedback (36%), and Help Desk ticket resolution times (32%).

The ILTA report did note that “the larger the firm, the more likely they are to actually poll users on satisfaction with regard to the performance of the IT department.”

Kenneth Jones, chief technologist at law firm Tanenbaum Keale and ILTA committee member, notes that in the corporate world, technology projects tend to be tied directly to return-on-investment, with collecting metrics baked directly into employment.

In the ILTA survey, less than 30% of surveyed firms reported measuring law firm success via IT capital costs per lawyer (29%), IT operating costs per capital lawyer (25%), or IT spending as a percentage of revenue (22%). Jones views this as a missed opportunity, as the goal of any IT department “should be to make sure as many dollars as possible are actively being utilized.”