Perceived Usefulness and Ease of Use as Predictors of Early-year Lawyers Satisfaction with Law Pavilion Electronic Law Reports

This study examined perceived usefulness and ease of use as predictors of early-year lawyers’ satisfaction with Law Pavilion Electronic Law Reports (LPELR). Descriptive survey design was adopted and questionnaire was the instrument used to collect data. Total population sampling was adopted to select sample size. A total of 300 copies of questionnaires were administered on the respondents. However, only 248 copies were returned completely filled and validated for the study. The Cronbach alpha reliability for the study is 0.782. It was found that there is strong positive relationship between perceived ease of use and perceived satisfaction and that there is positive relationship between perceived usefulness and perceived satisfaction. The study findings show that electronic law reports are easy to use and useful for early-year lawyers in their legal research. The study concludes that, as much as the law profession is conservative in nature, the use of e-law reports is making inroads to the profession. It was recommended that technical service provision by LPELR should be improved significantly. Above all, electronic law reports licensors should ensure that task importance of electronic law reports is given utmost consideration when they are designing the system qualities of e-law reports.


INTRODUCTION
The emergence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) brought about the birth of digitization of information and it has changed the face of the communication of information. In the legal profession, law reports are essential in carrying out legal research as they contain precedents judgments that are case laws. Many law firms and lawyers have adopted and some slow adopters are still adopting the utilization of electronic law reports in the carrying out their various legal research. It has been observed that the most common electronic law reports among lawyers in Nigeria is the Law Pavilion Electronic Law Reports (LPELR), which is a fee-based subscription law reports that provide for judgments and other legal resources that aid in the legal research of lawyers.
The investigation of the perceived usefulness is dichotomous in nature. It can be from the organizational or individual perspectives. On one hand, from the organizational perspective, it is the overall general benefits of the electronic law reports to the law firm. This may be in the form of economic, timeliness, improvement in research output and so on. On the other hand, from the individual perspective, this simply denotes users' perception of the usefulness of the law reports. This study looks at perceived usually from the lens of individual perspective. Davis' Technology Acceptance Model theorizes that perceived usefulness is the potential user's subjective likelihood that the use of a certain system will improve his/her action (Davis, 1989). Petter, DeLone, and McLean (2008) supported that perceived usefulness or job impact is the most common measure at the individual level of analysis to examine net benefit of an IS.
Akinde and Adetimirin (2017) described perceived usefulness as the ability of people to see, conceive, realize or come to the understanding of the value, relevance, usefulness and impact (or otherwise) of ICTs in enhancing instructional preparation and delivery. They observed that perceived usefulness in relation to the use of ICTs has been universally recognized as an important factor in the success of ICT integration in a process. Sanusi, Sanjaya, and Sylvana (2017) described perceived usefulness as the benefit from which an individual obtains during the technology use. They opined further that in the context of user service, this benefit is closely related to the adjustment of available information to users' needs. Above all, perceived usefulness is simply the overall impact of information system on lawyer's needs. Ohk, Park, and Hong (2015) observed that the term perceived usefulness is interpreted as the belief to high performance by using a certain system. They noted that perceived usefulness can be obtained when users find a system easy to use. Petter et al. (2008) described net benefit as the extent to which information systems are contributing to the success of individuals, groups, organizations, industries, and nations. Examples of which include improved decision-making, improved productivity, increased sales, cost reductions, improved profits, market efficiency, consumer welfare, creation of jobs, and economic development. Zhu, Lee, Gwendolyn, and Chen, (2009) view perceived usefulness as an individual's point of view that using a system will improve his or her job performance. In the case of lawyer's use of electronic law reports, perceived usefulness can be described as how the use of the electronic law reports will improve lawyers' research output and productivities.
According to Wang and Pho (2009), perceived ease of use is the degree to which an individual believes that using a particular system will be free of efforts. This implies that ease of use comes with the simplicity and effortlessness faced in the utilization of Law Pavilion Electronic Law Reports. The effortlessness will save the lawyers of possible mental exertion in the process of carrying out their legal research. Consequently, upon that, this will ensure stress-free research process and improve the efficiency of lawyers in their course of legal research. Above all, the research output will get better. Daneji, Ayub, Jaafar and Khambari (2017) reported that the positive impact of perceived ease of use on continuance intention to use technology was supported by many studies. This continuous intention to use is a great reflection of the satisfaction derived from the use of electronic resources. In order words, intention of users to continue using the electronic law reports (LPELR) will only mean that they perceived it to be easy to use. User satisfaction has been studied and filled with literature but it has not been understood how lawyers are satisfied with electronic resources like e-law reports. The coinage e-law report is drafted from the term e-law resources. This study describes e-law report as electronic case law report that offers access to wide ranging case laws with features such as search engine tools and automated update so as to lawyers, magistrates and judges case laws from courts judgments. Albeit there are other electronic law reports in Nigeria, for example Nigeria Law Reports, LPELR has been the most widely use e-law report used among lawyers in Nigeria. Law Pavilion is an electronic law report that is powered by GIT Limited. LPELR is an e-law report that report Nigeria case law in both Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Nigeria.
According to Shin (2009), technology acceptance model assumes that individual beliefs towards the usefulness and ease of use to determine attitudes towards the system. Kim and Lee (2014) found that perceived usefulness has positive, significant impact on user satisfaction, and it was revealed that efficient service delivery has the most significant impact on user satisfaction while ease and diversity of information has the least significant relationship user satisfaction. Petter et al. (2008) found that there is strong support for the relationship between perceived usefulness (i.e. net benefits) and user satisfaction. Abugabah, Sanzogni, and Alfarraj (2010) found that system support of overall goal/desire has most significant impact on user satisfaction while system aid in accomplishment of task is the least significantly related to user satisfaction. Chen (2012) found that better research output has the highest significant relationship with acceptance of the information system while productivity of the students has the least significant impact on the acceptance of the information system. This acceptance in this study can be translated to mean lawyer's satisfaction. This is because an information system that does not fulfill the desire of the users will not be accepted and vice-versa. Miyamoto, Kudo, and Iizuka (2012) investigated perceived usefulness of information system from the perspective of reputation, standard, and function. The study found that functionality of the system has the most significant impact on user satisfaction while there is no significant impact of reputation on the system. Oliha (2014) examined perceived usefulness from the lenses of simplicity in using Web portal, effective completion of academic related task, recovery from error or mistake, efficient completion of task, comfortable with use, ease to learn, and improvement in learning experience. The study found that majority of the participants was not pleased regarding the usefulness of the Web portal system. However, it was found that most of the respondents (61.2%) find the Web portal simple to use. The study concluded that user satisfaction captures users' general confirmation and post-acceptance beliefs in the usefulness of the system.
Omotunde, Babalola and Omotunde (2014) examined the perceived usefulness of private universities portal in South-west, Nigeria. The universities under study were Babcock University, Covenant University and Bowen University. The study found that the university portals are not being optimized for academic activities. Therefore, the perceived usefulness is minimal among the students. Tolentino (2011) found that perceived usefulness has significant impact on students' behavioural intention to continue using the Web portal. All these indicate that students' perceived usefulness of Web portal varies and differs across institutions. Adeyemi and Issa (2020) noted that perceived usefulness determines user satisfaction when an individual makes use of an information system. Matusiak (2012) asserts that research on perceptions, as it is the case with ease of use and usefulness in this study, provides insight into users' intentions to use e-resources and sheds some light on barriers to a wider acceptance of digital library systems. Al-Azawei and Lundqvist (2015) in a study on learners' perceived satisfaction with online learning using TAM in an extension of Arabic sample, it was found that there is perceived usefulness has significant impact on perceived satisfaction. The study revealed that the significant impact of perceived usefulness on perceived satisfaction is more than that of perceived ease of use. This indicates that most perceived usefulness may have more significant effect in determining perceived satisfaction than perceived ease of use.
In the Technology Acceptance Model, Davis theorizes that perceived ease of use is the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system is free of physical and mental effort (Davis, 1989). In the perspective of usage of electronic law reports, perceived ease of use is the utilization of electronic law reports without much physical or mental exertion of efforts. Isaac, Abdullah, Ramayah, Muhatar and Alrajawy (2018) integrated user satisfaction with Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) within an organization and they found that from the multivariate analysis that perceived ease of use has positive impact on user satisfaction. Cho and Kim (2012) regard perceived ease of use as a factor that influences users' satisfaction, which focuses on user's gratitude in the website layout and navigation in their search for product or services that are provided on the website. Tung (2013) found that perceived ease of use has a positive significant effect on user's satisfaction. Liaw (2008) investigated students' perceived satisfaction on the use of blackboard system and found that there is relationship between perceived ease of use and perceived satisfaction of the blackboard system. In similar vein, it was also found by Sun, Tsai, Finger, Chen and Yeh (2008) examined the critical factors influencing learner satisfaction of e-learning system and it was found that the ease of using e-learning is high and that there exist positive significant relationship between perceived ease of use and perceived satisfaction. In discountenance to the findings above, Al-Azawei and Lundqvist (2015) found that there is perceived ease of use does not have significant impact on perceived satisfaction.
Ariff, Shan, Zakuan, Ishak and Wahi (2014) described satisfaction as the overall psychological state of customer resulting from the emotion that surrounds the utilization of a product or services based on their experience and expectation. This means that user's satisfaction can be positive or negative. If positive, it means that their expectations were met with their result while vice-versa for negative experience. Verma and Laltlanmawii (2016) examined use and user's satisfaction with library resources and services at a College library and they found that students are satisfied with the information resources provided.
According to Su, He, Liu, Zhang and Ma (2018), while most organizations that is handling product or service use "sales" as a measure of user satisfaction, satisfaction is not always a function of "sales". Moreover, user's satisfaction can help improve the loyalty of customers, elicit positive feedbacks and help boost sales. Verma and Laltlanmawii (2016) noted that satisfying the users would mean that their information needs. In the context of this study, satisfying the early-year lawyers means meeting the needs of this category of lawyers and ensuring that there is qualitative service provision, which may include the simplicity and ease in making use of the e-law report. More importantly, the early-year lawyers make use of LPELR to reach a particular goal, therefore, meeting their needs can go a long way in ensuring satisfaction.
Generally, it has also been observed that some of the newbie in the law profession practice sees legal research as onerous and a task they could avoid if they have the privilege. This is not unconnected to the fact that it has been observed most early-year lawyers found the research instruments/materials difficult to learn and use. In a bid to alleviate this concern and unravel the puzzle behind this, there is need to empirically test the perceptions of the early-year lawyers as it relates to the ease of use, usefulness and satisfaction with LPELR. User's satisfaction is a significant measure to get the required feedback from users and it is also an avenue for the organization or institution offering the product or service to improve on the grey areas that may require change as it relates to the system, service or the information provided on the system. It is based on this premise that this study seeks to examine the perceived usefulness and ease of use of Law Pavilion Law Reports among earlyyear lawyers in Lagos State, Nigeria The research questions of this study cover: a) what is early-year lawyers' perceived usefulness of the Law Pavilion Electronic Law Reports (LPELR); b) what is early-year lawyers' perceived ease of use of Law Pavilion Electronic Law Reports (LPELR); and c) what is early-year lawyer's satisfaction with Law Pavilion Electronic Law Reports? While, the null hypotheses tested include the following: H01: There is no significant relationship between perceived usefulness and early-year lawyers' satisfaction of Law Pavilion Electronic Law Reports (LPELR). H02: There is no significant relationship between perceived ease of use and early-year lawyers' satisfaction of Law Pavilion Electronic Law Reports. H03: Perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness does not significantly predict earlyyear lawyer's satisfaction with LPELR. This study is limited to early-year lawyers practicing in Lagos State of Nigeria. The scope of early-year lawyers in this study means the lawyers who have one to four years postcall (call to bar) experience. The choice of young lawyers is informed by the observed penchant of young lawyers to make use of electronic law reports compared to the conventional book law reports. The choice of Lagos State as location for the study was because the state is the commercial hub of Nigeria, which offers a high chance of getting a job opportunity. Moreover, most of the top law firms in Nigeria have their headquarters situated in Lagos State, Nigeria.

METHOD
This study adopts the descriptive survey method. The total population sampling was used to select the sample size for the study. Structured questionnaire was used to collect all the needed data for the study. This was done with the help of three research assistants who helped to administer copies of questionnaire at High Court of Lagos State, Ikeja and Igboosere and Federal High Court, Ikoyi. This took place in the month of May and June, 2019. Owing to the difficulty of getting the respondents in a defined place, close administration and referral was adopted. A total of 300 copies of questionnaire were administered on the respondents. After all, a total of 248 copies of the questionnaire were returned completely filled and validated for the study. This represents 83% return rate. The samples were drawn from early-year lawyers practicing in Lagos State, Nigeria. To ascertain the reliability of the questionnaire, ten copies of the questionnaire were administered on 10 lawyers at Pinheiro LP, Ilupeju, Lagos State. The Cronbach alpha for the study is 0.7821, which shows that the questionnaire is reliable for the study.  Table 1 shows that 113(45.6%) of the respondents were female while 135(54.4%) were male. This indicates that most of the respondents were male lawyers. This shows that most of the early-year lawyers in Lagos State were male. Moreover, Table 1 shows that 20(8.1%) of the respondents were in their first year of call to the bar, 64(25.8%) of the respondents were in their second of year of call to bar, 81(32.7%) were in their third year of practice while 103(41.5%) were in their fourth year of service. This indicates that most of the respondents were in their fourth year of practice. Lastly, it is shown in the Table that 189(76.2%) of the respondents were practicing as lawyers for private law firms, 44(17.7%) were working in the Ministry of Justice while 15(6.1%) were in-house lawyers for various organizations/institutions. This reflects that most of the respondents were practicing in private law firms. Table 2 above shows that 222(89.5%) of the respondents agreed that it is quick to carry out legal research using the LPELR, 26(10.5%) were undecided while none of the respondents disagreed. This means that legal research on LPELR is speedy. Also, it can be seen in Table 2 that 225(90.7%) of the respondents agreed that LPELR helps better their research, 10(4.1%) were undecided while 13(5.2%) disagreed. This implies that most of the respondents agreed that LPELR helps better their research.

Results
Moreover, it can be seen in Table 2 that 181(73.0%) of the respondents agreed that legal research is easier with LPELR, 15(6.0%) were undecided whereas 52(21.0%) disagreed. This indicates that majority of the respondents agreed that it is easy to carry out legal research using LPELR. Also, it can be seen in the Table that 226(91.2%) of the respondents agreed that usage of LPELR helps increase their research output, 7(2.8%) were undecided and 15(6.0%) disagreed. This implies that overwhelming number of the respondents agreed that the usage of LPELR helps increase their research output. Moreover, it can be seen in Table  2 that 235(94.8%) of the respondents agreed that LPELR is useful to their research, 4(1.6%) were undecided while 9(3.6%) disagreed. This means that most of the respondents agreed that LPELR is useful to early-year lawyers. It can be seen in Table 3 that 206(83.0%) of the respondents agreed that learning to use LPELR was easy for them, 8(3.2%) were undecided and 34(35.5%) disagreed. This shows that most of the respondents agreed that learning to use LPELR was easy for them. Also, it can be seen in the Table that 176(71.0%) of the respondents agreed that it is easy to access the website of LPELR, 18(7.2%) were undecided and 54(21.8%) disagreed. This indicates that most of the respondents agreed that it is easy to access LPELR website. Moreover, the Table 3 shows that 232(93.6%) agreed that using LPELR was clear and understandable, 4(1.6%) were undecided whereas 12(4.8%) disagreed. This implies that most of the respondents agreed that using LPELR was clear and understandable.
It can be seen in Table 3 that 180(72.6%) of the respondents agreed that they found LPELR to be flexible to use, 13(5.2%) were undecided while 55(22.2%) disagreed. This reflects that most of the respondents agreed that they found LPELR flexible to use. Also, it can be seen in the Table 3 that 240(96.8%) of the respondents agreed that they found LPELR Buletin Al-Turas Vol. 26 No. 2 July 2020, pp. 239-252 | 247 ease to use, 8(3.2%) were undecided while none of the respondents disagreed. This is an indication that most of the respondents found LPELR easy to use. In Table 4, it can be seen that 126(50.8%) of the respondents were highly satisfied with the information content on LPELR, 120(48.4%) were extremely satisfied, 2(0.8%) were satisfied, and none of the respondents were lowly or not satisfied. This shows that more than half of the respondents were highly satisfied. Also, it can be seen in the Table that 91(36.7%) of the respondents were lowly satisfied with the service provision of LPELR, 64(25.8%) were not satisfied, 47(19.0%) were highly satisfied, 36(14.5%) were extremely satisfied and 10(4.0%) were satisfied. This implies that the highest distribution of the respondents was lowly satisfied with the service provision of LPELR.
It can be seen in Table 4 that 126(50.8%) of the respondents were extremely satisfied with the usefulness of LPELR, 72(29.0%) were highly satisfied, 50(20.2%) were satisfied, whereas none of them were lowly satisfied nor not satisfied. This is an indication that more than half of the respondents were extremely satisfied with the usefulness of LPELP. It can be seen in the Table that 84(33.9%) of the respondents were satisfied with the ease of using LPELR, 73(29.4%) were extremely satisfied, 40(16.1%) were not satisfied, 31(12.5%) were lowly satisfied while 20(8.1%) were satisfied. This shows that the highest distribution of the respondents was satisfied with the ease of use associated with the usage of LPELR.
On the perceived satisfaction of early-year lawyers with the overall usage of the LPELR, the Table 4 shows that 95(38.3%) of the respondents were highly satisfied, 82(33.1%) were extremely satisfied, 30(12.1%) were not satisfied, 26(10.5%) were lowly satisfied and 15(6.0%) were satisfied. This implies that the highest distribution of the respondents was highly satisfied with the overall use of Law Pavilion Electronic Law Reports. It also shows that although there is a high representation of satisfaction among the early-year lawyers, it is observed that there was a bit of dissatisfaction with about 16.5% respondents acceding to that.

Test of Hypotheses H01:
There is no significant relationship between perceived usefulness and early-year lawyers' satisfaction of Law Pavilion Electronic Law Reports.  Table 5 shows the test of hypothesis on the relationship between perceived usefulness and early-year lawyer satisfaction with LPELR. It is shown in the Table that 0.883 was the r-value. The p-value is 0.000. This shows that the common alpha of 0.05 is more than the p-value. Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected. As such, it is interpreted that there is a strong positive relationship between perceived usefulness and perceived satisfaction with LPELR.

H02:
There is no significant relationship between perceived ease of use and early-year lawyers' satisfaction of Law Pavilion Electronic Law Reports. It can be seen in Table 6 that the r-value is 0.754. Also, the Table shows that the p-value is 0.000. This means that the p-value is less than the common value. Therefore, there the null hypothesis which states that there is no significant relationship between perceived ease of use and perceived satisfaction shall hereby be rejected. Hence, there is strong positive relationship between perceived ease of use and perceived satisfaction.
H03: Perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness does not significantly predict early-year lawyer's satisfaction with LPELR. It can be seen in Table 7 that 87.1% of the total variance in perceived satisfaction can be explained by perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. Also, it can be seen in the Table  that goodness-of-fit for the model is 0.862 while the fitted line is about 0.1% body fat, which means that the observations are closer to the fitted line.  Table 8 shows that the f-value is 1.74644 while the p-value is 0.000. This indicates that the p-value is less than the common alpha of 0.005. Hence the null hypothesis shall be rejected. Therefore, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness can significantly predict early-year lawyers' perceived satisfaction with LPELR. It can be seen in Table 9 that the p-value for perceived ease of use is 0.740 which is above the common alpha level of 0.05. This means that perceived ease of use cannot Buletin Al-Turas Vol. 26 No. 2 July 2020, pp. 239-252 | 249 independently have effect early-year lawyers perceived satisfaction with LPELR. Also, it can be seen that the p-value for perceived usefulness is 0.000, which is below the common alpha level of 0.05. This means that perceived usefulness can independently have effect early-year lawyers' perceived satisfaction with LPELR.

Discussion
On the perceived usefulness of LPELR, the findings of this study revealed that earlyyear lawyers found LPELR speedy in carrying out their legal research. This means that the electronic law report is quite fast in carrying out their case law research. Also, the findings of this study show LPELR helps better the research output of early-year lawyers. Chen (2012) found that better research output has the highest significant relationship with acceptance of the information system while productivity of the students has the least significant impact on the acceptance of the information system. It was also found that it is easy to carry out legal research using LPELR and that the usage helps increase or better improve research output. Moreover, the findings show that LPELR is useful to early-year lawyers on the overall.
On early-years' perceived ease of use of LPELR, the findings of this study revealed that early-years lawyers found LPELR easy to learn. Also, the results show that it is easy to access LPELR webpage. It was also found that using LPELR was clear and understandable. This means that there was no form of ambiguity in the use of LPELR. Moreover, it was found that LPELR is flexible to use and also easy to use. Sun, Tsai, Finger, Chen and Yeh (2008) found that the ease of using electronic system is relatively high. This can be import to this study because LPELR is an online law report.
On the perceived satisfaction of early-lawyers with LPELR, the findings of this study revealed that more than half of the respondents were highly satisfied with the information provided on LPELR. The findings of this study show that early-year lawyers were lowly satisfied with the service provision associated with the use of LPELR. Moreover, the findings of the study revealed that early-year lawyers were satisfied with the usefulness of LPELR. The findings of this study also show that early-year lawyers were satisfied with the ease of use associated with the use of LPELR. Also, it was revealed in this study that earlyyears lawyers were satisfied with the overall use of LPELR, and most of those satisfied were extremely satisfied.
On the hypotheses tested, the findings of this study revealed that there is a strong positive relationship between perceived ease of use and satisfaction. Liaw (2008) found that there is relationship between perceived ease of use and perceived satisfaction. In somewhat dissimilar fashion, Al-Azawei and Lundqvist (2015) found that there is perceived ease of use does not have significant impact on perceived satisfaction. Also, it was revealed that there is positive relationship between perceived usefulness and satisfaction. Moreover, it was found that perceived ease of use and usefulness can significantly predict perceived satisfaction. This is because the study found that perceived ease of use has negative significant effect on perceived satisfaction. However, it was shown that perceived usefulness has greater individual effect on early-year lawyers' satisfaction with LPELR than the perceived ease of use. This is dissimilar to the finding of Tung (2013) that perceived ease of use has a positive significant effect on user's satisfaction. This may be connected to the fact that by Tung (2013) was on mobile service industry.

CONCLUSION
Since last decade, the use of electronic law reports has been on the increase among users in different categories. As much as the law profession is conservative in nature, the use of electronic resources and services has been making inroads to the law profession practices.