The study presents findings from a survey of 96 faculty members and staff from 63 law schools in North America. The report presents highly detailed data on satisfaction with information technology support services, and with specific features such as speed of response, training services and online tutorials and tech knowledge, and identifies current and emerging areas of need for information technology services and support. Faculty and staff evaluate their need for help with the following: posting video and audio files to course web pages, using videoconferencing or live streaming, using legal information databases, accessing library resources, using PDF’s, citation software, use of the course management system, use of social media, use of Word and PowerPoint, and much much more.
The study also presents focused and specific data and/or commentary on how much faculty and staff need and value various forms of IT hardware and related services such as interactive monitors, group study rooms, microphones, printers, podcasting equipment, iPads, video cameras and more.
Respondents comment on what their law school IT departments do well, and what they could be doing better. Just a few of this report’s many findings are that:
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A shade more than 58% of faculty and staff considered their law school’s information technology services either good or excellent.
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Fewer than 20% of respondents feel that they need help with learning citation software but nearly 60% of respondents aged 30-39 felt that they needed this help.
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On average, respondents sought assistance of or interacted with members of the Information Technology Staff 23.05 times within the past year
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Adjuncts and clinical faculty had the highest rate of satisfaction with special technology equipped classrooms or study rooms.
Data in the report is broken out by numerous useful benchmarking criteria such as law school ranking, enrolment size, for public and private institutions, and by personal variables such as academic title, gender, age and even course load.