In the fall of 2016, The Ackert Advisory conducted a market-wide study on CRM utilization within law firms. The data show some striking trends that indicate law firms are abandoning hope when it comes to lawyer utilization of CRM.
While the majority of firms recognize the value of a CRM database for marketing purposes, lawyer utilization rates are increasingly low. At most firms, fewer than 5% of lawyers use CRM regularly. Even fewer lawyers used CRM in 2016 than in 2015. The reasons behind low utilization included complicated interfaces, excessive data entry, and other factors.
As a result, firms are placing less emphasis on even attempting to get lawyers to use CRM. While in 2015, firms placed a moderate amount of emphasis on lawyer CRM use, in 2016 most firms placed little to no emphasis on lawyers using CRM.
While CRM is often necessary for marketing functions such as event management and mass mailings, it appears that the marketplace is shifting away from CRM as a business development tool for lawyers.
Learn more about the results from our market-wide study in our next webinar, “My Lawyers Won’t Use CRM. Now What?” presented by David Ackert and Chris Fritsch on February 23rd.