Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/83718
www.iltanet.org Firms with 51+ attorneys, on average, spent more on annual support and maintenance than hardware. lower than pre-2009 recession figures, despite aggressive cost-cutting measures introduced by most firms. And the need to "catch up" with the latest technology is still a major focus, so knowing internally what to purchase first and how it will help the bottom line is a key C-level decision compared to the traditional IT upgrade. Survey Says… Enter IT purchasing benchmarks. There probably isn't a CFO out there who doesn't get asked the question, "What are other firms doing?" They are always trying to measure firm technology spending not only in terms of gross dollars, but also per attorney and as a percentage of revenue. Scale is also important as the size of firms can dictate what technology solutions to pursue. Earlier this year, Aderant conducted a law firm technology spending survey aimed at gauging spending patterns of law firms ranging from small to global. The results, based on 128 unique law firm responses, yielded interesting financial benchmarks, including average IT budget per attorney; average hardware per attorney; average software maintenance per attorney; average cloud per attorney; and average new software acquisition per attorney. What do these numbers mean? How do they help CFOs and other firm decision makers make informed technology budgeting decisions? And how will new technologies potentially impact law firm tech budgets in the future? 26 ILTA White Paper The survey revealed an average IT budget per-attorney allocation of $8,126 across all respondents. Firms with 11-50 attorneys yielded the lowest average ($5,602 IT budget per attorney), while firms with 101+ attorneys recorded the highest ($13,391 average). These statistics are on par with what the 2012 ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey showed with 46 percent of survey respondents spending between $8,000 and $17,000 on technology per attorney, not including salaries. The Aderant survey dug deeper to further establish benchmarks related to average hardware and software maintenance spending per attorney. Amazingly, the per- attorney averages for hardware versus software were nearly identical, and overall surveyed firms with 51+ attorneys, on average, spent more on annual support and maintenance than hardware, $2,973 versus $2,819, respectively. Further analyzed, these benchmarks closely reflect the changing technology marketplace. While the average cost of hardware is going down and firms are keeping their equipment longer, typical maintenance agreements add up to 20 percent of total software costs, a number that probably won't go down — at least for now. Again, from a CFO "show me the value" perspective, it is difficult to quantify support value. From the vendor end, the value of stellar user support and maintenance is often underappreciated until a key piece of business software stops working or a major system upgrade or enhancement is available. When something mission-