LESA offers a range of professional development options. You can attend live, in-person seminars or access educational resources from your home or office: including seminar papers, seminars on demand, practice manuals, and more.
Back in December we gave our customers an opportunity to tell us how you like to access high quality legal resources. We’ve compiled the results of the survey and thought you might be interested to see some of them for yourself.
Demographic Factors
183 respondents provided feedback and insight into their needs, wants, and preferences for accessing legal resources. These needs, wants, and preferences may be influenced by demographic factors, including the size of firm, time at the Bar, and practice area.
Here’s a breakdown of how respondents classified themselves in these categories:
| Practice Area | % of Respondents | Respondents also identified other areas of practice, including tax, municipal, administrative, regulatory, labour and employment, securities, intellectual property, and construction. | |
| Business Law | 42% | ||
| Civil Litigation | 36% | ||
| Criminal Law | 17% | ||
| Family Law | 29% | ||
| Real Estate | 32% | ||
| Wills & Estates | 34% |
Sources
Those surveyed indicated that that they typically access legal information from the following sources (respondents could select multiple options):
As you know there is a wide range of available sources for legal information. Of those who responded in our survey, the most popular sources for legal information (used by at least 20% of respondents) are:
• CanLII (90%)
• Alberta Queen’s Printer (77%)
• Textbooks (print) (64%)
• Seminar materials (print) (57%)
• Practice manuals (print) (42%)
• Westlaw Canada Law Source (41%)
• Legal blogs or websites (36%)
• LexisNexis (33%)
• Quicklaw (32%)
• Law firm newsletters (30%)
• Subscription legal updates (free, email) (27%)
• Seminar materials (digital) (23%)
• Practice manuals (digital) (22%)
• Wikipedia (21%)
Platforms
Those surveyed continued to show a desire for print-based resources (69% would like legal information accessible in a print format), but the greatest format preferences were for PDF (85%) and Word (70%). Just over 55% would like legal information to be accessible through a web-based online service.
Respondents indicated that they would like to access legal information on the following devices:
Barriers to Access
5 barriers to accessing legal information were identified in the survey: cost of resources, time to search for resources, knowledge about available resources, lack of quality or trust in resources, and comfort with or access to technology.
The 3 most significant barriers identified by those surveyed were cost, time, and knowledge.
1. Cost. The most significant barrier identified by respondents was cost:
• 74% indicated that the cost of legal resources was a challenge in accessing legal information
• 68% agreed or strongly agreed that staying up-to-date in the law is costly
• 78% agreed or strongly agreed that they are price-sensitive when it comes to legal resources
2. Time. The second most significant barrier identified by respondents was time:
• 70% indicated that time to search for resources was a challenge in accessing legal information
• 57% agreed or strongly agreed that finding legal resources online is time-consuming
• 42% agreed or strongly agreed that they are too busy to look for new legal resources
3. Knowledge. The third most significant barrier identified was knowledge about resources:
• 59% indicated that knowing what resources exist was a challenge in accessing legal information
• 29% agreed or strongly agreed that there are too many legal resources to keep track of
• 44% agreed or strongly agreed that they don’t know what legal resources are out there
Conclusion
We appreciate all the thoughtful responses that survey participants provided us! Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and opinions.
We’ve taken all of this feedback into consideration and we’re preparing for some exciting new resources that we hope will meet the needs you’ve identified.
To access the resources that we currently have available, check out our live event offerings and our educational resources.
