Investing in dual monitors is gaining significant momentum across various industries, but specifically in legal. As attorneys are continually pressed to eliminate inefficiencies, become more productive and even go paperless, it’s no surprise the numbers are on the rise. According to ILTA’s 2012 Technology Survey, the median of dual or widescreen users jumped from 15% to 24%from 2011 to 2012; the average jumped from 26% to 34%. Attorneys are largest percentage of users in the legal industry, followed by paralegals, staff and other.

Some advantages include:

1. Reduce risk of making errors
2. Increase collaboration by being able to share one screen
3. Less time spent on toggling back and forth between windows
4. Reference critical documents during meetings
5. Easy to use
6. Decrease paper usage
7. Increase productivity
8. Less time spent on editing/reviewing documents
9. Work in both a VDI and local environment
10. Respond to urgent email faster
11. More comfortable

Some disadvantages include:

1. Potential for distraction
2. Lack of desk space
3. Lack of computer bandwidth
4. Additional cost

Of course, dual monitors, or even triple monitors, are not going to make every business professional more productive. It depends on your line of work, daily tasks and even your ability to multi-task. Chances are, if your day-to-day activities consist of working heavily with documents, data, or design – you might want to look into a second or third monitor. If there’s not need to view two or three documents/websites/applications simultaneously, chances are, it’ll just be a distraction.

In a culture where we are plagued by multiple screens between our PCs, laptops, smartphones, televisions, iPads, etc., adding another monitor to our work space doesn’t feel all that unnatural. Although, how many is too many? Two? Three? Five?

All of our employees have at least two monitors – the majority actually has three, but we don’t encourage anything more. Three allows us to always have our Outlook open, work on a specific document/application and even attend a Skype call.

So, is more always merrier? We vote YES, but only up to three. Apparently, Bill Gates agrees.