Addressing Generational 'Tech Gaps' for More Efficient, Effective Legal Practice

In today's challenging economy, corporate legal departments and law firms face pressure to meet their responsibilities with leaner organizations and fewer staff. For example, a recent study conducted by Corporate Counsel magazine for LexisNexis found that 68% of in-house legal professionals feel pressure to reduce the law department budget, and a majority of them have already experienced actual reductions in total budgets. Law firms feel similar pressures too as corporate cutbacks ripple through the industry and impact bottom lines.

One way legal practices are trying to address these realities is through increased use of technology ' essentially harnessing software and online technology to make employees and operations more efficient while maintaining quality work. Working with IT colleagues, this has proven to be a successful strategy for many lawyers. However, it turns out there are some rather sharp differences in how technology is perceived and used by legal professionals among different generations. These differences, or “generational gaps,” can lead to issues in the workplace between colleagues, as well as less efficient use of time and resources by law firm or company employees. Naturally, each of these concerns is amplified given difficult economic circumstances.

This technology gap situation should serve as a wake-up call to senior business and IT managers at law firms and corporations that they need to identify ways to resolve differences in worker use of technology and to maximize productivity. I would assert that this can be done by implementing effective usage policies for employees and by adopting more effective workflow solutions and integrated resources that address the challenges workers face. However, before discussing these options in more detail, let me tell you a little more about how the generations differ in their use of technology.

The Survey

LexisNexis recently commissioned a survey that examined the impact of technology in the legal workplace. The national survey compared technology and software usage among three generations of legal professionals (age brackets as per the survey): Baby Boomers (born 1964 or before), Generation X (born 1965-1979) and Generation Y (born 1980 or later). The Technology Gap Survey found generational differences in the effect of technology on workplace etiquette, the blurring boundaries between personal and professional tasks, and the impact of technology overload.

WorldOne Research, an international market research agency specializing in the collection and analysis of data for leading organizations, conducted this survey of 250 legal professionals. The detailed findings are available online at www.lexis nexis.com/media/pdfs/LexisNexis-Technology-Gap-Survey-4-09.pdf.

Concerns About
Office Etiquette

According to the survey, there are vast discrepancies between generations on the appropriate use of technology and software, potentially causing tension in the legal workplace. For example, while 75% of all Boomers agree that personal digital assistants (PDAs, such as Blackberrys or Palm Treos) and mobile phones contribute to a decline in proper workplace etiquette and believe the use of a laptop during in-person meetings is “distracting,” only 44% of Gen Y legal professionals agree.

The survey also found that 23% of Boomers believe using laptops or PDAs during in-person meetings is “efficient,” but nearly half of Gen Y legal professionals think it is. In addition, only 27% of Boomer legal professionals think blogging about work-related issues is acceptable, compared with 52% of Gen Y legal professionals.

Based on those results alone, it is apparent that there are significant differences in how the generations feel about using technology. Further, it's not a stretch to see how those differences could cause problems in the work environment and many experts are now studying the notion of technology etiquette in the office as a growing concern in the workplace.

The Blurring of
Work/Home Boundaries

Another interesting finding from the survey is that new technologies have blurred the lines between personal and professional tasks ' especially online technologies such as blogs and social networking sites. The survey found that 55% of Gen Y and 40% of Gen X report accessing a social networking site from work, versus only 13% of Boomers. Moreover, 52% of Gen Y legal professionals think it is appropriate to “befriend” a colleague on a social networking site, compared with only 20% of Boomers.

Additionally, Gen Y survey respondents reported that they spend an average aggregated 10.6 hours a day accessing social networking sites, news Web sites, blogs, Internet forums and multimedia sharing Web sites. Boomer respondents reported spending only 5.6 hours a day on the same types of technology, or nearly half as much as Gen Y.

One challenge this presents to companies is to figure out how to manage consumer technologies in a way that doesn't limit their usefulness, but also doesn't result in lost time and money. This is an important point as social media has increasingly become a valued channel of business communication too. For example, a November Gartner survey found that 80% of companies said that social networking was important to their business, but 36% of them banned access to Facebook at work. What is the right balance? Most business school experts say that good management practices ' educating employees about company violations and monitoring productivity ' are better than technology bans.

Risks of Technology Overload

According to the survey, more than half believe that the amount of technology available encourages “too much” multi-tasking. Respondents were asked to report on how much time they spent on each of four types of applications in an average workday (e-mail, Internet browsers, instant messaging, and Microsoft Office). The average time reported for “using” each application every day added up to a total of 16.2 hours, far exceeding the standard 8-hour workday.

This suggests that workers keep many different applications open at the same time, and access them concurrently. Interestingly, the multi-tasking phenomenon has a dramatic generational skew, with Gen Y logging a cumulative total of 20.5 hours across all these applications in a workday, versus 11.9 hours for Boomers.

The current economic climate is certainly not going to help with this challenge. If anything, information overload could worsen as companies look to cut costs and, in some cases, reduce headcounts. To take control of the influx of constant data in the workplace, legal managers are starting to implement various strategies that may make a huge difference in how workers deal with the information that enters their minds. Much like a computer, we only have space for so much, until our own hard drives (i.e., our brains) start to miss things. To further the analogy, if we're overloaded, then our “system management” will shut down.

Some Management Strategies

The good news for business and IT leaders is that if they help their professional workers get a better handle on how to manage the flow of information in the workplace, employee performance, productivity and workplace morale will all benefit. And that, in turn, can produce a competitive advantage. To do this, here are three actions for managers to consider:

• Invest in technologies and solutions that integrate more activities and functions into one place, and that are more directly mapped to steps in an employee's every day workflow. Unified platforms with seamless access to multiple high impact functions will enhance workplace productivity, increase focus and minimize multi-tasking.
• Establish clear, practical guidelines around acceptable uses of technology in the workplace, as well as provide training on new technologies. Inventory the generational makeup of the firm or group to better understand the likely gaps organizations face. Solicit input from both younger and older team members to generate a policy that has as much widespread support as possible. Communicate the policy clearly and enforce when necessary.
• Acknowledge, address and embrace the significant impact of social media by encouraging smart use of professional networking solutions. For example, law firms and lawyers are setting up accounts on social media applications such as Twitter or Facebook and using them for business purposes ' other than leaving it to workers to talk about business on their personal social media sites or networks.

Conclusion

The main takeaway from the survey is that business and IT leaders simply can't stand on the sidelines and hope for technology gaps to work themselves out over time. Instead, to maximize efficiency in the workplace, managers must provide their employees with guidelines, technologies and solutions that help address the needs and challenges of today.

Finally, all lawyers need to embrace the fact that technology in the workplace ' especially mobile technology and social media ' is here to stay and will only become more diverse as new ways are found to facilitate or automate activities. If used correctly, however, technology can be a real asset rather than a divisive force.