Thomson Reuters Legal Department Operations (LDO) Index has identified three key areas of the legal department where there is new or continuous development. These are:
- Spending: Thomson Reuters’ survey revealed that 82% of legal departments identified themselves as proactive, optimised, or predictive in their approach to managing their legal spend in regard to outside counsel.
- Technology: According to the survey more than half (52%) of the legal departments have increased their use of legal technology over the past year.
- Department Management: 80% of departments responded to the survey indicating that they now have staff dedicated to the department’s legal operations function.
Key findings from Thomson Reuters LDO Index:
- 55% of respondents characterised the pace of change within their own legal department as “moderate” change (with 49% saying this) or “fast” change (6%). Interestingly, more large legal departments felt “fast” change was happening.
- The most-cited legal metric being tracked by departments is total spend by law firm, followed by total spend by practice area and total spend by matter type.
- Respondents identified nine key legal technology tools or solutions that are being used by more than half of the legal departments surveyed. These are Spend & Matter Management, eSignature, Legal Research, Legal Hold, Document Management, eDiscovery; with Contract Management, Legal Business Intelligence/ Dashboarding/ Analytics, and IP Management.
- Among the top solutions identified were Legal Workflow Automation, with 27% of departments saying they were looking to procure this technology; and Contract Management and Document Management, both with 22% of legal departments looking at this solution.
- Top three priorities for legal departments were identified as controlling outside counsel costs, focussing on internal data security, using technology to simplify workflow and manual processes.
- 86% of legal departments identify general enforcement of billing guidelines to reduce invoice fees and expenses as the standard best practice for cost control.
Access the full report on the 2021 Legal Department Operations Index by Thomson Reuters https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/legal/ldo-index-2021/
Access our blog for more industry updates https://www.lawimage.com/blog-2/law-image-blog/.
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