Information Overload

Opening Statements

July 2008 Issue
By Jenny B. Davis

Think lawyers are feeling overwhelmed by the onslaught of junk e-mails, random mailings, and other bits and bobs of time-wasting, brain-clogging, largely irrelevant information?

Well, you may be right.

A recently released survey of 650 professionals commissioned by LexisNexis reveals that 77.2 percent of legal professionals—including associates, partners and law librarians—say they’re overloaded by the amount of information they have to deal with to do their jobs. For nonlegal professionals across 23 disciplines like consulting, financial services and education, the rate drops to 69.6 percent.

That said, law professionals surveyed feel better able to manage their info influx. In an average week, nonlegal professionals say they are more likely to miss a meeting because of miscommunication, more likely to have had to re-create a missing document, and twice as likely to miss deadlines because they can’t find the right information.