In-house lawyers are failing to communicate their full value to the broader organisations they work for according to LexisNexis
In-house legal counsel are under increasing pressure to deliver – and they believe legal technology is their silver bullet.
But instead of looking to innovate across the board, the focal point for many is streamlining the simple, low-level tasks so there’s more time to dedicate to strategic work.
A short-term outlook means in-house legal departments risk getting stuck inside a legal labyrinth of their own making.
In this survey of 200+ in-house legal counsel we reveal how legal departments are so focused on coping with their increased workloads that they’re missing out on the opportunity to demonstrate their value to the wider organisation through data insights and analytics.
Forging a new way forward
In-house legal departments are determined to prove the value they know they provide to their businesses.
In recent years, in-house legal teams have made huge strides to integrate within their wider organisations by understanding the inner-workings of each department, building trust and rapport with their leaders, aligning their goals with those of their business, and demonstrating how they can add value beyond the traditional confines of their roles.
In many ways, they’ve switched from being the linesmen on the sidelines to key players on the court.
But with this added responsibility comes mounting pressure to perform, and in-house teams are now being pulled in dozens of different directions.
To manage rising workloads, the majority have turned to legal technology for help, automating the routine, lower-value tasks so there’s more time to dedicate to the strategic work that makes the biggest impact and best utilises their lawyers’ skills.
Whilst totally understandable in these pressured times, this short-term mindset towards the use cases for legal technology is exactly what’s stopping many from seeing the bigger opportunity.
In today’s business world, data is the real silver bullet. Yet the survey shows very few legal counsel are interested in using data insights from their legal technology to help demonstrate and drive the value they’re adding to the wider business.
Instead, they’re trapped in a legal labyrinth – doomed to walk in circles without a clear way out. It is time legal departments forge a new path by looking beyond the here and now, taking their investment in legal technology to the next level and using it to showcase their real worth.
