The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) just published its annual State of the Industry Survey of in-house corporate legal departments. This report provides valuable insights into legal spend and technology adoption. Here are some highlights that we found particularly interesting.
LegalTech adoption
Unsurprisingly, LegalTech adoption is increasing, with 37% of respondents spending more than $750,000 on LegalTech in 2018 and 72% of legal teams having developed a roadmap for planning their technology investments over time. The areas of greatest tech adoption are contract management and e-billing, which makes sense as these two technologies are foundational or “plumbing” to ensure that legal departments run smoothly.
My question: What is on the LegalTech roadmap that would benefit teams outside of legal? Contract Review Automation is a great solution for the tech roadmap. It accelerates contracts, benefiting both the legal team and all other departments that use contracts, including sales and procurement, both of which are critical to the smooth running of the entire organization.
External legal spend
Of every dollar spent on legal, 46 cents goes to external legal costs. That said, external legal spend is decreasing by 24% annually on average. This makes sense given the pressure on legal teams to control costs, and it’s corroborated by the fact that the innovation that legal teams most want to see in law firms is “more creative and alternative pricing arrangements.” Again, contract Review Automation is a great solution for helping legal teams scale their work while bringing work in-house.
