Law boos IT, but applauds as well

One of the questions asked in a survey of UK law departments was “how good is the support that you receive from the IT function in the delivery of legal services.” As presented in Law Dept. Quarterly, Vol. 2, May-July 2006 at 25, on a scale of 1 to ten, 31 percent praised IT (a score of 8, 9, or 10) and 20 percent damned IT (scores of 1, 2, or 3). About half the scores were in the middle between “extremely poor” and “extremely good,” with an overall median of 6.

Not surprising, this number of critics, since IT support is a common whipping boy of law departments (See my post of March 26, 2006 on poor support by IT.), but at the same time an unexpectedly strong showing of satisfaction. Law is a small pool of peculiar users – in the eyes of the IT group – and lawyers cushioned in law firms are too demanding when they come in-house.

I wonder if legal departments would evaluate HR support with something like this distribution of scores.