Elevate's Crystal Ball
As you may already know, Elevate recently released a new tool: a legal-industry-specific crystal ball that lets you see into the future awaiting law departments and law firms. OK, we didn’t. But we do track industry trends, and we hope sharing that information helps you anticipate, prepare for, and respond to emerging challenges and opportunities.
Law Departments
Headcount is rising at many law departments, including legal operations teams, which must contend with greater workloads to support growing, fast-moving, increasingly digital businesses, especially around compliance, where regulatory requirements proliferate (particularly those related to data security and privacy).
The Great Resignation makes it challenging for law departments to find, secure, and retain talent. Law department lawyers report spending too much time on non-complex, rote, low value-add activities and automatable tasks.
Outside counsel rates continue to rise (both to cover increased salaries and maintain record-level profits as law firms compete in the war for talent).
At a minimum, law department leaders want access to real-time, actionable data to allow them to better manage and control their department’s activity, performance, and costs. Many want to seamlessly integrate their law department digitally with the business.
To capitalize on the opportunities that will positively impact their organizations and the industry at large, general counsels’ collective goals include:
- Ensure the highest and best use of their lawyers
- Operate digitally, integrated with the business
- Gain better control of legal spend
- Leverage data and AI to analyze law department and outside counsel activity and performance to achieve strategic business advantages
- Manage and prepare for emerging data-related risks
- Improve legal operations’ strategic capabilities
Published May 16, 2022.
