The legal industry is evolving and a recent research article by Thomson Reuters suggests that legal teams are under immense pressure as we enter 2023.
With the post-pandemic opening of businesses in 2022, the Australian legal teams, among other industries, faced numerous challenges. Rising inflation, remote work adjustment, work volume, employee shortages, and budget cuts are a few of the significant challenges that the industry is facing.
Top Priorities of Law Departments
As per Thomson Reuters, 2022 State of Corporate Law Departments, the top priority for law departments considering the current environment will be efficiency in conducting business. This accounts for 50% of the concern, closely followed by safeguarding the company at 46%.
Other factors being considered are talent retention and cost. Let us look at how these factors are impacting the legal industry.
Talent Retention
While the pandemic resulted in cost cuts and a freeze on salaries, the industry is facing an increase in demand that outruns the supply of lawyers. Also, the employee skill shortages due to prolonged border closures could be one of the factors influencing the demand and supply gap. However, with international borders now reopened, the associated costs of resources are showing an upward trend, and thus in-house resourcing costs have been increasing.
With the flexibility of the work environment coming into the picture, lawyers are shifting their focus to personal development and activities that directly contribute to their organisation’s strategic objectives. Therefore, to retain internal talent, legal departments are forced to investigate tools and strategies to minimise the burden on lawyers and boost their focus on core work.
External Cost Pressure
After internal team costs, the following significant cost that impacts the legal departments are external factors. It is expected that executive leadership in legal teams should be able to forecast and report on the budget spending; however, more systems and tools are needed to achieve this.
How can Outsourcing be one of the solutions?
Over the years, the legal industry has seen outsourcing as an opportunity to reduce internal costs and work pressure. It is becoming increasingly popular with the associated benefits of leveraging skilled expertise in budget options. Read more about the benefits in the ‘Changing Outlook for Legal Document Review’ article here https://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/biglaw/36132-the-changing-outlook-for-legal-document-review.
Law Image provides managed services and legal process outsourcing solutions to law firms across Australia. Outsourcing work allows law firms to keep up with the latest technology and upcoming trends. Furthermore, it provides them with an added advantage in the legal field. Law firms reach out to Law Image for their legal service needs, including but not limited to document review, eDiscovery, document production, court and appeal book creation, court runs, and much more.
Outsourcing reduces costs and allows in-house teams to focus on their core work. This is advantageous for legal departments in many ways.
About Law Image: Law Image is a leading document management company with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth. Law Image operates on a true on-shore model and is ISO 27001:2013 certified for information security. Equipped with an industry-leading data security model, Law Image assures to protect the integrity of our client’s information.
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