In February 2007, Edge Legal Marketing surveyed online people who had attended LegalTech New York. Eleven percent of the respondents were from law departments. One of the questions asked respondents to mark all of the software categories that they “checked out at Legal Tech.”
Of the 51 choices, all but 11 of them would be applicable to both law departments and law firms. The firm specific ones include “accounting/finance,” “client relationship management,” “debt collection,” “docket/calendar/conflict of interest” (which law departments might consider for docket and calendar functions, though few do), “document accounting solutions,” “metadata removal tool” (a conceivable package for law departments that have sophisticated litigation support facilities), “networking communications equipment,” “networks security,” “software leasing solutions” (which is not really software) and “tax” (which someone in the tax function might use).
Hence, if you set aside the software that a law firm needs because it runs its own computer system, the law firms and departments might equally license most of these kinds of software. Some software, not necessarily listed, could be law-department only (See my post of March 31, 2007 on software unique to law departments.).